With sack races, trout fishing and hot air balloon rides, Wasatch County families turned out in force for Pioneer Day.
In Charleston, locals and visitors alike spent the holiday listening to live music, browsing local vendors’ stands and admiring an antique car show.
Peggy McKenzie is a lifelong Charleston resident. She’s been a quilter for two decades, and this year, she made a patriotic-themed quilt for the town auction.
“The committee came to me first and said, ‘Are you going to make a quilt for the auction?’” she said. “I did last year. And she said, ‘If you are, we’d really like it to be the 250th year.’ So I seen that panel at a fabric store, and I just thought, that’ll work out good.”
She spent hours creating a quilt that depicts the founders signing the Declaration of Independence.
Lehi local Mandi Kitchen and her dad, Don Hooser, showed off a gleaming green Buick. The car is from 1926, the same year Kitchen’s grandmother was born.
“Everything, we did ourselves,” Kitchen said. “We put the windows in – it took my dad an entire summer. My dad restored all the wheels; it took him a week [per] wheel to get done.”
Hooser said restoring the car took 19 years.
“We call her Miss Marie after my mom,” he said. “It's just been a great project, and it's been fun working with the family on it and doing it all.”
Charleston’s celebration included plenty of games for children and a laser light show instead of fireworks.
In Wallsburg, families lined Main Street for the annual parade. A wagon labeled “Mormon Trail 1847” rolled by, and horses clopped past with hooves painted red, white and blue.
Heber resident Lizzy Powell brought her young children to enjoy the festivities. The family moved to Utah from Arizona, which inspired Powell to get in touch with her roots.
“On my father's mom's side, so my grandma's side, there's a lot of pioneers that came in, and so we're going to go home after this and go learn about them,” she said.
In Heber City, the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers marked the holiday by displaying a restored 1896 flag. It flew over the Heber tabernacle the day Utah became a state.
Latter-day Saint pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. It was another decade before pioneers began making settlements in the Heber Valley.
