The Academy Riders of the Roxborough Club made a proud picture as they paraded past the Valley Green Inn at Sunday’s Wissahickon Day. The Riders won first place for best turned out group.[/caption] …
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The Academy Riders of the Roxborough Club made a proud picture as they paraded past the Valley Green Inn at Sunday’s Wissahickon Day. The Riders won first place for best turned out group.[/caption] This is part of an ongoing series of reprints from the Local’s nearly 60 years of print archives. As the Wissahickon Day Parade was held this past weekend, we have decided to go all the way back to 1966 and print an article about the event, which since the 1920's has been a tradition for those who live in Northwest Philadelphia and beyond. Wissahickon Day was early this year, and spring was late. Sunday’s popular event saw spectators in parkas and sweaters instead of the customary sports shirts and bright spring dresses, but at least the rain desisted for the day and the annual parade drew its customary crowd of thousands, who lined the bridle paths from Northwestern Avenue all the way down to the ancient inn at Valley Green in order to witness the longest, gayest, gaudiest parade of horseflesh and equestrians in these parts.
The parade, led by Mr. John A. Ballard of Roxborough, mounted on Captain Koon’s big gray, has a lot of everything: beautiful horses, pretty girls, Indians, cowboys, rigs ranging from pony carts to carriages, and some fantastically decorated harnesses, such as the beaten silver rig owned and displayed by Mrs. “Ray” Rayburn each year to the dazzlement of the spectators, or that of Mr. Steve Byssher of Flourtown.
It has the excitement engendered by the music of the Police and the Firemen’s band, the splendor of the police color guard, the thrills delivered by the mounted police as they put their beautifully trained mounts through the paces, and the excitement of the performance by the Police Academy canine corps.
It has all these and the benefit of more than half a century of tradition behind and the crowd understandably loves it and what it stands for: the preservation of the Wissahickon Gorge as a natural area for the people (the parade began in 1911 to dramatize the need to keep automobiles out of the park) and a yearly outing with all the markings of a beloved festival, with its time worn and time tested customs.
