The City of Morgan Hill marked a milestone this July 4, celebrating the 150th anniversary of one of the oldest continuously run parades in the western United States. Thousands of residents and visitors poured into the downtown area to see the annual Independence Day parade organized by the Morgan Hill Freedom Fest nonprofit.
“The joke is always, ‘Everyone in town is either watching the parade or in the parade,’” said Matthew Stein, Freedom Fest Board President and Fourth of July Parade Chair. “It has gone through two pandemics, it has gone through multiple wars, depressions—and has never missed a year.”
The parade featured 120 entries spanning 5,300 linear feet along a 1.6-mile route, and included multiple marching bands and equestrian groups, more than a dozen floats, and to cap it all off, free popsicles for the thousands of onlookers who endured the summer sun to celebrate the birth of the nation.
“Many of the floats were actually put together by neighborhoods,” Stein said. “These are neighbors who do not have the same political ideals, but they come together to build a float to march on July 4, because we can all agree on this.”
Planning for the annual event begins early, starting in December, with organizers required to file permits with the city, fire department and police six months in advance. The complex logistics include coordinating water barrier placement for safety, managing amplified music restrictions, and ensuring proper spacing between horses and loud bands.
“This anniversary is an accomplishment that has spanned generations of individuals who have selflessly given up their time to put this on,” Stein said, highlighting the service of prior parade organizers Bob and Maureen Hunt. “They passed the reins off in 2019, but for 30 years they guided this parade with a small team. And before them, there were others. This only works because every generation, people are stepping up and offering to help.”
Independence Day gives the whole community an opportunity to come together, in spite of political or socioeconomic differences, to celebrate the common good, Stein said.
“We’ve realized that the reason this is so important is that we need to keep a community together,” he said. “We need people to remember that as much as we have different opinions and are different people, if we remember that ‘we’ comes before ‘me,’ then as a community we will always thrive.”
Like all of Freedom Fest’s events, the parade was free to attend for all, funded by community support and sponsorship by local businesses including Meriwest Credit Union, Commonwealth Credit Union, Johnson Lumber And Ace Hardware, Toray Advanced Composites, and others.
“We have as our main tenet that regardless of your economic status, everyone should be able to celebrate the birth of the United States,” Stein said.
Calvin Nuttall is a Morgan Hill-based freelance reporter.
