Old-fashioned fun at Bronc Day delights all generations
Courtesy of Bronc Day Festival
The power of nostalgia brings a small mountain town together each year.
The Green Mountain Falls community has enjoyed family fun at the Bronc Day Festival for generations. The celebration began 80 years ago to honor the vertical-mile marathon racers staying in the town to train for the race up Pikes Peak.
This year’s festival is Saturday at Lake Park.
Bronc Day chairwoman Vickie McKnight said she and her grandson were captivated by the small-town feel of the festivities at their first Bronc Day seven years ago.
“It’s one of the things that, when you go to it, you just go, ‘Wow, I didn’t know this was still happening anywhere,’” McKnight said.
But old-fashioned fun persists in this town, with clowns, horses and Native American dancers featured for the past 80 years.
“It is like a little time capsule away from the sophistication that society has on these kind of things lately,” McKnight said.
Nancy Brittain, who has spent summers in Green Mountain Falls since 1948, is this year’s Bronc Day grand marshal. As a kid, she said, she would muck stalls to ensure that she could book a horse for the Bronc Day parade.
“It’s been a lot of great memories, and I’m still coming,” Brittain said. “It’s old-fashioned and unique, back to the old days.”
The day kicks off with a pancake breakfast from 7 to 11 a.m. at the Green Mountain Falls/Chipita Park Fire Department, 10380 Ute Pass Ave. Firefighters will serve breakfast and collect donations.
The parade runs from 10 to 11 a.m. The theme this year is “The Circus Comes to Town” because P.T. Barnum reportedly used to regularly visit Green Mountain Falls. Fun and games follow until 3 p.m. Newer additions to the Bronc Day festivities include a rubber-duckie race, panning for gold, inflatable bouncers, model boat races and a pie-baking contest. Food will be sold, with activities led by the Victorian Society and country-western music performed by Ted Newman.
The free Bronc Day Festival is supported by donations to the Ute Pass Triangle Chamber of Commerce.
“There’s that one thing that you did when you were a kid, and you were like, ‘Oh, I want to do that for the rest of my life,’” McKnight said. “For some people, it’s roller coasters. And for others, it’s little festivals that are held in their community.”
HALEY WITT, The Gazette,
