Celebrating Flag, Tram Days
This coming week, folks in Wyoming will be celebrating Flag Day on Monday, June 14, along with many special events in most towns. Highlighting local activities for me will be the First Annual Tramway Days at the Grand Encampment Museum in Encampment June 5-12.
In the vast Bob Martin/Dick Perue historical preservation collection, I discovered the following information on a tattered yellow slip of paper.
Remember, every Flag Day, June 14, we need to “Celebrate Freedom of Religion.” Followed by this quote from Patrick Henry, “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions, but on gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity and freedom of worship here.”
History of Flag Day
In the United States, Flag Day is celebrated on June 14. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777, by resolution of the Second Continental Congress. The Flag Resolution, passed on June 14, 1777, stated, “Resolved, That the flag of the 13 United States be 13 stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be 13 stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation which officially established June 14 as Flag Day; on August 3, 1949, National Flag Day was established by an act of Congress. Flag Day is not an official holiday, but is observed by proclamation of the President of the United States.
Down the tramway comes the copper
Reads the five column headline on the front page of the June 9, 1903 issue of the Grand Encampment Herald.
In observance of this monumental feat, the Grand Encampment Museum (GEM) is staging the First Annual Tramway Days June 5-12, 2021, at its complex at 807 Barnett Ave. in Encampment.
The article continues, “At high noon to-day, Tuesday, June 9, 1903, the first bucket of ore carried over the aerial tramway was dumped into a bin at the big terminal at the North American Copper Co.’s reduction works in Grand Encampment. The arrival of the bucket and its progress through the town limits enroute from the Ferris-Haggarty mine was accompanied by the booming of giant power, the waving of flags, hats and handkerchiefs, and wild enthusiasm prevailed among a large crowd of interested people who had waited and watched for many minutes to witness the greatest event in the history of the state of Wyoming – the successful landing of ore over the longest aerial tramway in the world, the first to be built off a railroad, the first in Wyoming. The greatest on the face of the great green earth.”
The tramway was 16.5 miles long and carried copper ore from the west side of the Continental Divide to the smelter in Encampment on the east side. A scale model of the tram has been built and will be on display at the museum. Folks wishing additional information are invited to visit the GEM or view on their webpage or Facebook.
