Those couple of warm days at the beginning of this week got us excited for summertime in Ashland! Let’s close our eyes and imagine it here…
For this Throwback Thursday, we’re pulling out Fourth of July parade photos not only from our personal archives, but also older photos from pre-Paddington days of yore!
In 1976, Judy Patterson (the original owner of Paddington Station) had matching stars and stripes pants made for her staff to wear in the bicentennial parade! These pants made their debut at the store for a whole month preceding the parade and can be seen here making their way down Main Street! Would you believe that 52 years later, a pair of these pants found a new life, with Judy’s granddaughter?! Paddington Bear also made an appearance wearing a festive hat.
The fourth photo depicts another Fourth of July parade, decades earlier. In it, we can see the Dodge building (that is now Paddington Station with its original awning) and two way traffic on East Main Street! We found this photo in the archives at the library but there isn’t a date listed, so we’d love some help figuring it out using clues from the automobiles and stores that you see. Anybody have any ideas?
The last picture takes us back to a Fourth of July celebration that took place in 1898. This was clearly an advertisement for the city of Ashland, which was, apparently at the time, marketed as “Noted for Lady Equestrians” with a population of 5,000 residents!
