Right around the corner is one of the summer’s main events for the town of Manassa and its surrounding communities. This year’s Manassa Pioneer Days celebration will be July 18-24. The agenda is full, with two rodeos, two parades, a demolition derby, carnival, and live music, to name a few of the events.
As anticipation builds for these busy three days, so do sentiments and memories among the townspeople. Pioneer Days offers time to reflect on the celebration’s history and relevance to their lives today.
One lifelong Manassa resident, Wendy Helms, remembers going to Pioneer Days as a child. “We anticipated it as much as Christmas; it was that big of a deal.”
The celebration reminds Helms of the wonder and joy of childhood. She recalls with clarity and nostalgia some of her favorite memories. Each year, when flags went up on Main Street, Helms remembers getting on her bike with her siblings and friends. “We always rode up to see the flags.” That marked the beginning of an exciting and busy weekend.
Annual traditions are common among Manassa families. Helms, recalls getting new clothes each year. “My mom sewed, and I remember picking out the fabric.”
The parade was and remains central to the celebration. “There are so many memories riding and working on floats. They had one that was the three little pigs.”
Helms’ childhood memories of Pioneer Days are happy ones, “We’d be dirty, sunburned It was a great great time, for so many years. It brings a lot of excitement.”
Today, the Manassa Saddle Club and Celebration Committee work in tandem to keep those memories coming back each July. In order for those traditions to survive, however, some things have had to change. “The one thing that’s constant is change.” said Helms. She remembers stories from her parents and grandparents of the earliest Pioneer Days Celebrations in which they would be “waiting for the men to get done with the hay wagons so they could build floats.”
Another major change has been the involvement of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Originally, the Pioneer Days Celebration was facilitated entirely by the church. The event initially was established to commemorate the arrival of the Latter-Day Saint pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, and for many years the celebration was commonly referred to as “Mormon Pioneer Days.” The church has moved away from such close involvement in local events, and responsibilities have shifted to other organizations.
The results of this shift are nuanced. On one hand, more volunteer work has been required. Helms remembers the years before the church stepped back. “It was an assignment from the church, it was part of your calling. Now it’s harder because it’s truly volunteer.”
Voluntary participation largely makes for less of it, and the exact path forward is still somewhat uncertain.
“It’s a pro and con kind of thing,” said Helms.“There’s a lot of mixed feelings. I really do fear for the parade. There were automatically eight floats from the church.”
Preparation and organization for the parade and other events is painstaking and time-consuming. It offers community members a chance to come together and bond, but it also can make for long evenings. “There were some really great days, and some awful days,” Helms remembered with a chuckle.
On the other hand, the doors have been opened to the community more broadly.
“While you worry about less participation, it does afford the chance for broader participation,” Helms said.
That has proven to be the case over the years. Vendors from all across the Valley and even the state come to set up shop. Locals from every part of the Valley and elsewhere come to compete in the rodeos and demolition derby. For years, the St Therese of the Child Jesus Catholic Church in Manassa has had an enchilada dinner during the Celebration. With fewer floats being made by the church, more local businesses from other towns have begun to participate in the parade.
Helms describes Pioneer Days as an opportunity to unite people in the San Luis Valley, now that past perception of it being a “Mormon” or Latter-Day Saint holiday has changed. “It’s grown to be more than that. People plan high school reunions around it. It’s genuinely a gathering.” Indeed it is a gathering, with the town’s population growing to 10,000 for those few days.
Not only are present generations brought together, but links are forged with the past. The 2024 Pioneer Days will be the 144th celebration, the first taking place in 1879.
Helms remembers stories from her grandfather and great-grandfather. “Luther Bagwell (her great grandfather), they interviewed him in 1984. He was born in 1890. The fact that my great-grandpa looked forward to it as a kid, and then my grandpa did, and my dad, and then me and my family, it’s so special.”
In the earliest Pioneer Days celebrations the parade was referred to aptly as a “procession.” Looking back through the generations that have worked to put on the event, toward the generations that are and will continue to do so, a procession – not down Manassa’s Main Street, but through the community’s history –works its way forward.
For many, as Helms describes it, the Manassa Pioneer Days celebration is “the highlight of the summer. It’s a reason for people to come home.”
Schedule
JULY 18
6 p.m.- Auction and crowning of Miss Pioneer, Manassa Elementary Gym
7 p.m.- Carnival
JULY 19
10 a.m.- Parade
6 p.m.- Rodeo, Adults $15, Youth 5-15 $10, Kids under 5 FREE, Fairgrounds at East Manassa
10 a.m.-11:59 p.m.- Carnival
JULY 20
10 a.m.- Rodeo Slack Events, Fairgrounds at East Manassa
12:30 p.m.- Rodeo, Adults $15, Youth 5-15 $10, Kids under 5 FREE, Fairgrounds at East Manassa
6 p.m.- Demolition Derby, Adults $15, Youth 5-15 $10, Kids under 5 FREE, Fairgrounds at East Manassa
9 p.m.- Lighting of “M” Mountain and Fireworks