History
"Mule Day" has been a popular Columbia tradition for nearly 170 years, since the 1840s. It began as "Breeder's Day", a single day livestock show and mule market event held on the first Monday in May. Over time, "Mule Day" evolved from a single day event into a multi-day festival, attracting thousands of attendees, lasting almost a week. According to its official website, the heavy involvement of Maury County in the mule industry caused the event to grow for a time into "one of the largest livestock markets in the world."
In 1933 Thomas Marion Brown had the idea for a Mule Day Parade and Celebration as a way to bring in money to the community. He approached W.D. Hastings of the Daily Herald & J.J. Johnson to bring this event to life. They went to the Chamber of Commerce and in 1934 the First Mule Day Parade was a reality. Tom designed the Mule Day Crown which is on display in the Maury County Public Library. He was the first Grand Marshall and led the parade for about 7 years.
Mule Day suddenly gained wider notice in 2006 when the Mule Day Parade listing in the National Asset Database, a Department of Homeland Security(DHS) list of potential terrorism targets, was featured in a New York Times article.
Read more about this topic: Mule Day
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)