Waldheim Park is one of Lehigh Valley’s undiscovered gems.

The Waldheim Tabernacle, a magnificent wooden amphitheater that can accommodate 800, is at the park’s center, surrounded by some 80 cottages on the tree-shrouded 50 acres in a niche of Salisbury Township.

Waldheim Park, founded in 1904 by the Evangelical Congregational Church, is not really visible from West Emaus Avenue.

After you guide your vehicle onto South Hall Street and up the gradual northern slope of South Mountain, it’s like traveling back in time to camp meetings and spirited Christian worship services.

That was the setting Aug. 11 for the 107th concert by The Allentown Band, presented by The Evangelical Congregational Waldheim Association.

Allentown Band Conductor Ronald Demkee led the program, “Celebrating America250,” with guest vocalist Chet Brown.

If my arithmetic is accurate, the first Allentown Band concert in Waldheim Park would have been in 1919.

- The 18th Amendment, banning the manufacture and sale of alcohol and setting the stage for Prohibition, was passed in January 1919.

- The Boston Molasses Disaster, when a wave of molasses released from an exploding storage tank swept through Boston, killing 21 and injuring 150, happened in January 1919.

The 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, was passed in June 1919.

- “The Algonquin Round Table,” a group of writers, critics, actors and wits led by Alexander Woollcott, first met in June 1919 at the Algonquin Hotel, New York City.

- Felix the Cat appeared in “Feline Follies” at the cinema, making him the first cartoon character, in November 1919.

And the Allentown Band played its first concert in Waldheim Park, most likely in summer 1919.

This year’s band concert in Waldheim was billed as “popular music from the Revolutionary War era to the present.”

The Allentown Band didn’t disappoint, playing not one but two versions of “Yankee Doodle,” as well as the “Shenandoah American Folk Song,” “Second Connecticut March” “Star Spangled Spectacular WWI” by George M. Cohan and “Bullets and Bayonets” by John Philip Sousa.

The band’s powerful blasts of brass, woodwinds and percussion made one want to get up and march around the tabernacle.

Demkee, in introducing Chet Brown, said, “He’s practically a member of the band because he has performed with us so frequently.”

The “Harold Arlen Medley” sung by Brown included the composer’s “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,” “I’ve Got the World on a String,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” “Stormy Weather,” and “My Shining Hour.”

The Allentown Band, responding to the energetic vocals by Brown, swung like a big band from “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

After an audience-participation hymn sing, the band continued with “The Homefront: Musical Memories WWII.”

Brown returned to sing the Ken Moyer arrangements of ”Neil Diamond’s America” and “Freedom.”

The approximate one and one-half-hour concert concluded, as always with The Allentown Band’s terrific rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Philip Sousa.

Here’s hoping for the Allentown Band’s 108h concert next August in Waldheim Park.

Waldheim Park information: https://www.waldheimpark.org/https://www.waldheimpark.org ; 610-451-6818