This year, I am again photographing the Pittsfield 4th of July parade after a two-year hiatus. I’ve also photographed the Williamstown 4th of July parade and countless others including the annual Fall Foliage parade in North Adams.
The people at the ranch ride in a bucket loader pulling a wagon in the parade.
Last year, while in Wyoming for my wedding, I participated in the town of Dubois’ annual parade as the ranch had a wagon to ride in, and not surprisingly I took photos as well. It was fun to stand on the wagon as some of us shot water cannons into the crowds of spectators along the parade route.
A self portrait of the author and her husband, Dan, riding a wagon in a Fourth of July parade in Dubois, WY in 2023.
As parades reflect the communities in which they are held, the contrast of the two parades — one in Massachusetts and the other in Wyoming — couldn’t have been more different even if the reason for celebration was the same.
Independence Day is our annual celebration of nationhood, marking the ratification of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.
As we approach the 2024 presidential election and the divisions in our country, we must reflect on the fabric of our country and just how diverse it is.
While Massachusetts was settled earlier and is part of New England, Wyoming, wild and vast, was settled much later as Americans moved westward. After becoming a territory of the U.S., it became the 44th state on July 10, 1890.
A self portrait of Gillian, her husband Dan, mother-in-law Peg and another camper.
I love the state of Wyoming. The first time I visited was in 1993, then again in 1995. Thirty years later in 2023, I was there a third time, spending a week there around the July 4th holiday on a family trip at a dude ranch, riding horses, enjoying the gorgeous scenery and getting married to my beloved Dan. I have an archive of photographs, mostly slide and negative film images, capturing the beauty of the area from my two previous trips. I took even more last year, many with a digital camera and my cellphone. A large majority of those images were taken on horseback.
A photo of our woman wrangler with her horse taken from horseback.
During this trip, I was impressed by the landscape and the diversity of the staff at the dude ranch. The majority of the wranglers at the ranch were women. I probably wouldn’t have really noticed, but my husband Dan said that when he was there in the 1980s as a teenager, all of the wranglers were men.
Wranglers ride their horses in the Dubois, WY Fourth of July parade in 2023. Most of the wranglers at the ranch were young women.
Wyoming is not particularly diverse in its population. The least populated state in our union, the racial make-up of the state is 88.65 percent white. When Dan and I went to get our wedding license, we drove to Lander, about an hour and 15 minutes from Dubois. In the municipal offices, I saw one person of color who looked to be Native American. It wasn’t until we left Dubois and drove to Salt Lake City via Jackson Hole that I saw a Black man.
During the parade, I took some photos of our group in the parade and then hopped on the wagon with our fellow dude ranch guests and employees to enjoy the revelry of the Fourth of July in the Wild West.
A tank traverses a roadway in Wyoming following a Fourth of July parade in 2023.
While the parade included all the usual fanfare celebrating the town’s charm and local businesses, I was stunned to see army tanks traversing the streets in the parade.
The show of at least a half-dozen tanks were apparently from the nearby National Museum of Military Vehicles. While the show of these historic, world-class military vehicles seemed relevant given that the museum was in town and a parade is a good excuse to bring them outside of the museum’s walls, the display of them in the streets caused me to feel a bit uneasy. I recalled how President Donald Trump had desired a military parade, like those in Russia and China, after seeing one in France in 2017.
Not surprisingly, I didn’t see any floats to show any support for Black Lives Matter or support of the LBGTQ community. Wyoming is a predominantly Republican state, and while there are probably small pockets of residents who support Democratic agendas, I imagine people don’t talk about it since on the range “seldom is heard a discouraging word.”
Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney ended up losing her reelection bid when she joined nine other Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach Donald Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. That, too, is a reflection of the Cowboy State’s mostly Republican electorate.
So as I cover the Pittsfield Fourth of July parade this year, I will have a new appreciation for it and relish the diversity of our beautiful Berkshires. I am grateful to be living in New England and cannot imagine living anywhere else. I still love Wyoming and hope to be able to visit it again some day in the not too distant future.