A blast from the past --- By the 1870s, the Fourth of July was the most important secular holiday on the calendar. Even far-flung communities on the western frontier managed to congregate on Independence Day. In an American Life Histories, 1936-1940 interview, Miss Nettie Spencer remembered the Fourth as the "big event of the year. Everyone in the countryside got together on that day for the only time in the year." She continued,
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There would be floats in the morning and the one that got the [girls?] eye was the Goddess of Liberty. She was supposed to be the most wholesome and prettiest girl in the countryside � if she wasn't she had friends who thought she was. But the rest of us weren't always in agreement on that�Following the float would be the Oregon Agricultural College cadets, and some kind of a band. Sometimes there would be political effigies. 
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