Who loves a parade? Park City, of course. Throughout the decades, Park City’s Main Street has been the place to go for the annual Fourth of July and Miners Day processions. In that spirit, the Park City Museum is celebrating the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Indepe ndence with “Park City Loves a Parade: Our Parades, Processions and Protests from Past to Present,” which is showing through April 4, 2027, said Courtney Titus, the museum’s collections and exhibits curator. “There’s a lot of alliteration in the title,” she said with a laugh. “But in honor of the 2026 Semiquincentennial, we knew we wanted to show something that would allow us to participate in this milestone event. We are one of other local museums and historical societies all over the nation who are striving to do something important and meaningful during this anniversary.”  The challenge was connecting Park City’s history and the museum’s mission of “preserving, protecting and promoting the town’s history” with the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Titus said. The staff proposed examining Park City’s communal gatherings. “We narrowed it down to parades, processions and protests to show how our community has come together to support one another and celebrate times of joy for local successes and national holidays,” she said. “But also show how we come together during difficult times.” To do so, the exhibit is divided into three sections: Park City Celebrates  Park City Mourns Park City Protests “For the Park City Celebrates section, we look at how Park City commemorates Miners Day, the Fourth of July, the 2002 Winter Olympics and other significant events like that,” Titus said. “In the Park City Mourns section, we look at how the community supported each other during strife, whether it was during a horrific mining disaster, the death of a beloved community member or a national tragic event like 9/11.” Park City Protests examines how Parkites express their values and make their voices heard when those values are challenged, according to Titus. The Park City Museum’s “Park City Loves a Parade: Our Parades, Processions and Protests from Past to Present” exhibit begins with a stroll down a hall that represents Main Street. The museum’s vintage fire truck dons Fourth of July decor. Credit: Scott Iwasaki/Park Record “The exhibit takes visitors on emotional rides with each section,” she said. The exhibit allowed Titus and her team — Executive Director Morgan Pierce, research, digital services and social media coordinator Dalton Gackle and collections assistant Sophie Krupp — to dig into the museum’s collection of historical items, newspaper articles and photo archives. “We are so grateful to The Park Record for all the photographs that they provided for the exhibit, and for the quotes we found in the newspaper’s stories,” she said. “They helped supplement our own collection of photographs, especially for the Protest section.” In addition to finding ways to display the objects and photographs, the team constructed slide shows for the celebrations and protests sections, Titus said. The Park City Museum’s “Park City Loves a Parade: Our Parades, Processions and Protests from Past to Present” gets into the Olympic spirit with the torchbearer tracksuit Richard Marriott during his Main Street run prior to the 2002 Winter Olympics. Credit: Scott Iwasaki/Park Record “We did that because we have such a large collection of historical photographs of parades and protests,” she said. “These slide shows are shown in chronological order from the beginning of the town.” The exhibit begins with a walk down a ramp that is designed to look like Main Street, Titus said. “It’s one of the exhibit’s immersive elements where you can feel like you’re walking down Park City’s famous Main Street,” she said. “Even the museum’s fire truck is decorated as if it were in a parade.” Displayed items include the suit coat and bow tie owned and worn by notable Parkite James Don, the Naval uniform worn by Victor Peterson — who was active in the newly created American Legion, which was named after his brother Frank — and Richard Marriott’s 2002 Winter Olympic Torchbearer tracksuit. Other items include a Park City High School marching band uniform, state contest medals and reproductions of protest signs from the town’s early days to more recent gatherings like the Women’s March on Main during the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and present-day federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests. A vintage Park City High School Marching Band uniform, medals and patches are part of the Park City Museum’s “Park City Loves a Parade: Our Parades, Processions and Protests from Past to Present” exhibit that is on display through April 4, 2027. Credit: Scott Iwasaki/Park Record “The protest signs are recreations of signs that appear in the historical photographs in the exhibit, and we tried to represent as many different causes as we could,” Titus said. The exhibit’s centerpiece, and main photo opportunity, is a reconstruction of a metal Frog Prince parade float facade. The original was sculpted by Park City-based artist Zaphod Beatlebrox, who recreated the item specifically for the exhibit, Titus said. “This is a familiar sight if you have attended a Park City Fourth of July parade in recent history,” she said. Beatlebrox also constructed a reduced-sized replica of the Glenwood Cemetery gate that is set up in the exhibit’s Park City Mourns section.  “Zaphod was very generous with his time,” Titus said. The exhibit also includes some interactive elements. “The Mourns section includes sticky notes in the shape of headstones where people can write things they miss about Park City and place them on a mural of the Glenwood Cemetery,” Titus said. “We also have a place where people can write and post their thoughts on the United States’ 250th anniversary.”  Titus and her team worked on the exhibit for nearly three years. “It’s an in-house exhibit, which means we did it all ourselves from scratch,” she said. “We did outsource a few things, but we came up with the concept, idea, research, writing, selection of photographs, objects and all the stories we wanted to tell.” The main goal was to show joy, strife and even culture clashes, Titus said. “We also touch on the more difficult parts of our history as well,” she said. “One example is looking at how the Chinese community in the 1800s had their own mourning customs and funeral processions that were very important to them, but seen by the white residents as entertainment and spectacle,” she said. The exhibit is a live exhibit, meaning it will be updated throughout its run, Titus said.  “The interactive display in the celebrates section is also yet to come,” she said. “It will feature the town’s many fraternal and auxiliary organizations, which were constant presences in our parades.” Titus, who has been with the Park City Museum for 14 years, said she has wanted to create an in-house exhibit for a while. “We don’t do in-house exhibits often, because they take an incredible amount of work, time, resources and money,” she said. “The last one we did was in 2017, and this is the biggest and most extensive exhibit that I have put together during my time here. We designed this exhibit so anybody can come and get something from it, but we also really hope that locals stop by to check out, celebrate and commemorate our history and the Semiquincentennial.” A stagecoach tableau sits beneath a Union Pacific railcar installation inside the Park City Museum, illustrating how rail and road transportation shaped the city’s mining-era growth. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record The post Park City Museum celebrates America’s 250th with past and present parades, processions appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less