By Rocky Mountain Voice Editorial Board
The Declaration of Independence opens by taking something apart. Before it reaches life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it lays out why one people must “dissolve the political bands” that tie them to another. The founding act is a break.
The signers put a tie of their own in its place. The last line is a pledge they made to each other, “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Two hundred fifty years later, that pledge still holds.
We asked readers on the Fourth to show us how they were marking America’s 250th birthday and Colorado’s 150th. The answers came from Washington, the California coast, a Delta County parade, festivities in Thornton, family fun in a backyard, a Castle Rock-to-Westminster flag drive and a smoke-dimmed sky over Palisade.
Delta County Republicans turn out for the Fourth. Photos courtesy of Shirley Bauer
A promise carried to Washington
Rahna Autrey texted from the capital between long waits in the heat. Security had the National Mall sectioned off, and the lines ran, by her account, through afternoons of “105 heat and no shade.” Her 3-year-old grandson watched the flyovers and was, she wrote, “in heaven.”
When storms cleared the crowd, she sat in the rain outside the venue, then went back through security to get in. As they waited, she wrote, people around her broke into patriotic songs, the national anthem and “God Bless America” among them. “And it was loud.” The night ran long. She and her family did not board the metro until after 2 a.m., or reach the hotel until close to 4.
The Autrey family’s Fourth in Washington, from the Freedom 250 grounds to the fireworks finale. Photos courtesy of Rahna Autrey
Autrey had waited 50 years for the trip. She was 12, a seventh-grader in Dallas, when she started wearing a POW/MIA bracelet stamped with one name: Staff Sgt. William “Sandy” Sanderlin, lost over South Vietnam on Dec. 2, 1969. She never met him. She wore it until it broke her senior year and kept the pieces in a jewelry box. For years she watched the lists of returning prisoners for his name and never found it. Only later did she learn how he died: a helicopter crash, in the same model that now sits at the Fruita memorial near her home. This year she carried his name to Washington.
“After so many years I believe the Lord is allowing this opportunity to bring closure for me for the young man I have carried in my heart for over 50 years since I was 12 years old,” Autrey said.
Citizens by birth or choice
Alexandria Cullen, communications director for Rep. Gabe Evans, spent the day in Washington with her parents.
Alexandria Cullen, left, with her parents in D.C. Photo courtesy of Alexandria Cullen
Evans marked it back home at the Greeley Stampede parade and wrote an op-ed for RMV about his great-grandfather, born in Mexico, who earned his citizenship serving in the U.S. Army in World War II.
George Washington named that tie in his Farewell Address in 1796, when the country was younger than most of the flags on display this weekend.
“Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections,” Washington wrote.
Vice President JD Vance made the same case from the deck of the USS Kearsarge in New York Harbor, where more than 50 naval vessels and 30 tall ships from allied nations passed in review. He reminded the crowd that Washington read the Declaration aloud to his troops in this harbor in 1776, so they would know what they were fighting for.
“We are bound to one another not only by bloodline nor creed alone but by a common character, a shared fate and a shared future,” Vance said.
The coast, the parade, the drive
The map filled in as the day went on.
Erik Holt celebrated on the coast in Monterey, California. Readers here know him as the Florissant fire chief who reviewed polling footage from his own fire station, reported what he believed were election violations and lost his job weeks later. An Army veteran and single father of two, Holt has carried his case to the Tenth Circuit. Asked once whether he would do it again knowing the cost, he did not hedge: “Unequivocally, it’s the right thing to do.”
Erik Holt’s holiday on the Monterey coast, from the waterfront to the otters offshore. Photos courtesy of Erik Holt
Leslie Parker and Shirley Bauer sent parade photos from Delta County. “Happy 4th from Delta County GOP,” Parker wrote.
A Delta County float rolls past under 250th bunting. Photo courtesy of Leslie Parker
Scott Shamblin, who is running for House District 61, joined a flag wave from Castle Rock to Westminster.
In Douglas County, Russ Minary, a veteran and 50-year Coloradan, sent photos from the parade: a flag-draped Humvee and a truck of kids waving flags, one done up as Uncle Sam. “America is still worth fighting for,” Minary wrote recently.
The Douglas County parade on the Fourth. Photo courtesy of Russ Minary
Not everyone marked it with a parade. Mark Cook, who travels the country pressing for hand counts and local control of elections, spent the Fourth the way he spends most days. “I’m just working, no celebrations here,” he said.
At Thornfest in Thornton, another reader put the crowd in the tens of thousands and called it the best place to spend the country’s 250th.
A flag hangs over the stage at Thornfest in Thornton. Photo courtesy of @G_MA786 on X
On Facebook, one kept it to a few words: family, barbecue and patriotic corn hole.
A backyard game to close out the Fourth. Photo courtesy of Shawn Ma
On two decks, one storm
The celebrations were not tidy. Record heat sat over the East Coast, with roughly 150 million Americans under heat alerts. On the National Mall, storms forced the Salute to America crowd into museums and federal buildings, and the Secret Service had to rescreen everyone who returned.
“Rain or shine, the American people deserve a celebration worthy of our nation’s historic 250th birthday,” Freedom 250 spokesperson Danielle Alvarez said as the gates reopened.
President Donald Trump did not reach the podium until close to 11 p.m., hours behind schedule. He recited the lines from the Declaration that Washington read to his soldiers 250 years earlier. Then he thanked the crowd for waiting out the storm.
“We love each other. That showed tonight,” Trump said. “You heard it was over. And what happened? You came back.”
Then came the fireworks. Organizers had promised the largest show in history and said they delivered it, some 850,000 shells against a standing record of 810,904. Autrey watched with her family. “Most spectacular fireworks show ever,” she wrote.
The cost close to home
The Fourth was not only fireworks and flyovers. On the Western Slope, a local veteran spent it at his keyboard, closing his America 250 series with In Irons, on what the founders’ pledge cost the men who signed it.
While the capital celebrated, the Western Slope burned. The Snyder Fire was running in Mesa County next to Fruita, Autrey’s own town, with two more burning to the south near Ouray and Cortez. The smoke off them turned Palisade’s sky orange.
A burnover on that fire on June 27 killed three federal wildland firefighters: Emily Barker, 38; Nick Hutcherson, 27; and Sydney Watson, 27. Their memorial is being held July 5 in Grand Junction.
Vance and Trump each spent much of their remarks on people who gave everything, from the soldiers who marched ahead of Washington to the veterans who stood on both stages. Autrey carries a name for the same reason. She has one hope left for the Fruita memorial that first led her to Sanderlin: it adds names to its wall once or twice a year, and she wants his there too.
Blue skies
Shawn, in Palisade, put the week in a single line when he sent his photos. It had gone, he wrote, “from the end is here to blue skies.”
Wildfire smoke, then blue skies and the wildlife back in Palisade. Photos courtesy of @Shawn6500645761 on X
Happy 250th, America. Happy 150th, Colorado.