Days of 47 Parade 'presses forward'

SALT LAKE CITY — Cloud cover kept the thousands of spectators lining the downtown streets cool on Monday for the Days of ′47 KSL 5 Parade.

More than 100 entrants made their way from South Temple and State Street in Salt Lake City to Liberty Park, commemorating the arrival of Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stakes paid homage to Utah's pioneer heritage by constructing floats to coincide with this year's Days of ’47 theme: "Press Forward Pioneers."

"The floats were really nice," said Adam Meese who attended the parade for the first time after moving to Utah from California.

He said he was impressed with the parade — the largest in Utah and one of the oldest and largest in the United States — and that it was different from what he's used to in California with its lack of loud music and its content.

"The themes were a lot different," Meese said.

Meese was sitting near the start of the parade. He said he arrived around 8 a.m. but friends had come earlier at 5 a.m. to save seats. All along the parade route, tents, inflatable mattresses and sleeping bags could be found marking where families had set up camp to secure their spots overnight.

The Herriman Stake won the Theme Award for it's entry titled "Press Forward and Hang On." The float depicted a rodeo cowboy riding atop a bucking bronco with two giant red boots behind him. Jeff Colton said it took more than 100 volunteers meeting three days a week almost five months to construct the float.

"It's been fun," Colton said. "A lot of work but we've completely enjoyed it."

Colton said the float bases are ambulance chassis, provided by the LDS Church. After the parade, stakes take the floats apart and return the chassis to the church for future use. Fittingly, what takes months to build requires only hours to destroy.

"We can have this whole thing stripped down in probably a day," Colton said.

Bob Simons, of the Draper Corner Canyon Stake, said his stake's Legacy Award-winning float focused on the history of Draper. The float, titled "From Egg Basket to Fantastic" featured 11 eggs hang-gliding, biking and horseback riding above and around a model of the Draper Utah LDS Temple.

"Draper was known as the egg basket from Utah," Simons said.