Eagle Medallion Hunt back to real medallion

The Eagle Medallion Hunt is back.

No, not the "virtual" medallion hunt with the imaginary medal.

This is the original, real-life, River Festival medallion hunt by The Wichita Eagle that was a beloved — if not controversial — 27-year-old festival tradition when it ended in 2001.

"We're going back and doing the old-fashioned real medallion hidden in the real world," said Wichita Eagle editor Sherry Chisenhall, who this year agreed to requests from Wichita River Festival officials — and hunt participants — to bring the contest back, full-fledged. "You go find it, and if you find it, you win."

One main difference: Instead of a cash prize, the winner of the Medallion Hunt will get a new car — a Suzuki Kizashi provided by Suzuki of Wichita.

This year's Wichita River Festival will be June 3-11.

For years, The Wichita Eagle's Medallion Hunt was one of the festival's most anticipated events.

The Eagle would hide a small, 2-inch plastic disk somewhere on public property. Each day, the newspaper would print obtuse clues as to the medallion's whereabouts, and participants would line up before dawn to be the first to get a paper.

The most zealous hunters would team up and devote their days to scouring Wichita for the medallion.

But in the early 2000s, the hunt started to go bad. Overeager hunters were damaging public property, including city parks. And non-winning teams were accusing the winners of hunting in the early morning, when the parks were legally closed.

In the following years, The Eagle replaced the hunt with several contests that didn't include any actual hunting.

But people never stopped asking for the original Medallion Hunt to return.

In honor of the festival's 40th anniversary, Chisenhall said, the newspaper decided to give it another try.

Festival officials were thrilled, said Janet Wright, the festival's president and CEO.

"We've heard about it frequently since it went away," Wright said. "There's been an ongoing thing of people asking, 'Why can't we have the Medallion Hunt? Bring back the Medallion Hunt.' "

"There's no question it was one of those things people really looked forward to and were really disappointed it went away."

Before deciding on the Medallion Hunt's return, Chisenhall consulted with Doug Kupper, director of parks and recreation for the city of Wichita. And he was all in favor.

Hunters might misbehave, he admits, but the positives of the hunt outweigh the negatives.

"We're looking forward to it," Kupper said. "I just think it's one of those worthwhile experiences for our citizens. And besides that, it might actually expose people to parks they didn't know they had."

This story was originally published May 1, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Eagle Medallion Hunt back to real medallion."