America’s highest town puts on a old-fashioned parade
What a difference 48 hours make. On Wednesday evening, I took off from Hawaii’s Kona International Airport, arriving in Colorado the next afternoon. On Friday, I got ready to drive up to the old mining town of Leadville for the Independence Day Weekend. There, at more than 10,000 feet above sea level, my husband and I visited friends who have a weekend house surrounded by pines and firs. The palm trees, trade winds and tropical temperatures were replaced by cool, dry air and clear blue skies decorated with billowing white clouds.
Nineteenth-century silver strikes made Leadville one of America’s richest cities (and Colorado’s largest city after Denver), but no more. It no longer thrives, economically, but survives as an island in sky with “the highest” everything in the country: the highest airport, the highest bowling alley, the highest golf course and so on. It also has the highest Fourth of July parade in the morning and fireworks in the evening, full of small-town pride and guileless charm. The parade proceeds down Harrison Avenue, Leadville’s wide main street lined with historic buildings. Units included a color guard, both fire trucks, search-and-rescue vehicles (a boat, two snowmobiles and two ATVs on trailers), three little girls with red spangly costumes and batons, Scouts, a few antique vehicles, a local trout club, the cookie bakery, a couple of candidates for public office and kids (and a few adults) on bikes and skateboards. Just about anyone who wants to be in the parade can probably do so. And flags. Lots of flags.
Firefighters get out of the truck to hear "The Star-Spangled Banner."
The whole town turns out for the parade, so why not campaign?
The youngest "marcher."
We watched the parade, passed on the barbecue at the fire station, went for a hike, had a bite at the house and took folding chairs to the high school to watch the fireworks that I couldn’t adequately capture with my little camera. There was no pyrotecchnical choreography coordinated with a symphony orchestra. Just another aspect of a real hometown Fourth of July.
