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Crocker Park was vibrating Saturday night.
Despite temperatures that still reached into the 90s, hundreds of concertgoers and fireworks viewers packed the waterfront park on July Fourth, their numbers climbing almost exponentially as the sky darkened. Music from the Marblehead Festival of Arts Concert Series filled the night, threaded through with a general hum of laughter and conversation and punctuated only by the happy cries of old friends running into each other.
Peter Coleman, who grew up in Marblehead, said he had warned his wife it would not be unusual to run into people he knew from kindergarten, high school or nearly any other stage of his childhood.
"I haven't lived here for 40 years but every time I come home, I see someone I know," he said.
Coleman and his wife, Dana, live in Denver but were in town visiting family for the holiday. Asked whether the heat wave that had blanketed the area since July 1 had affected their visit, the reviews were mixed.
"Not really," said Peter Coleman.
"Yes," said Dana Coleman and Peter's sister, Cathy Cristo, in unison.
"It's been too hot to go out," added Cristo, a resident and local business owner. "We've spent a lot of time around the pool."
Yet despite the heat and the growing humidity, the overarching mood — with the Colemans, with Cristo and with the crowd in general — was joy. Peter Coleman said it had been some time since he and Dana had seen a live fireworks show. Colorado is in the midst of a severe drought, and more than 55 fireworks displays planned for the Fourth of July in and around Denver were canceled this year. Coleman said it is a familiar theme that has played out over several years because of the threat of wildfires.
The evening capped a day of festivities that coincided with both the 60th Marblehead Festival of Arts and the nation's 250th anniversary.
Parade, Declaration reading mark the 250th
The day began that morning with the Horribles Parade, the town's informal costume procession down through Old Town. The parade has no formal entries or judging; participants decorate wagons, bikes and themselves and join the route, tossing candy to children along the curb. Many of this year's costumes marked the country's 250th anniversary, including a hand-painted "1776–2026" banner, a boy in a tricorn hat beating a drum and children costumed as the figures in Archibald Willard's "The Spirit of '76."
Others played on the World Cup, set to come to North America this summer, with Scotland flags, kilts and a homemade trophy. Also in the mix were children dressed as NASA astronauts and as blue lobsters, a marcher in an Uncle Sam costume and a papier-mâché replica of Marblehead Light.
The anniversary theme carried onto the water, too. The annual Marblehead Harbor Patriotic Boat Parade took the 250th as its motif this year, with all boaters welcome and encouraged to decorate their vessels patriotically. The fleet mustered at 11:30 a.m. at the "1MH" buoy, then followed a marshal boat in a loop around the harbor, with skippers asked to monitor radio channel 71. The harbor loop stepped off at noon. The procession threaded the harbor at the same time the Declaration was being read ashore, part of a schedule that carried the holiday from land to water and back through the day.
At midday, Marblehead held a public reading of the Declaration of Independence at Abbot Hall, in the room that houses Willard's "The Spirit of '76." The reading, once a Fourth of July tradition in town, returned this year for the country's 250th.
State Rep. Jenny Armini presented the town with a replica of the Ezekiel Russell printing of the Declaration, produced on a Franklin-era press and distributed to every city and town in Massachusetts as part of the state's Revolution 250 commemoration. In 1776, Armini noted, Massachusetts was the only colony to order the document read from every pulpit and copied by hand into each town's records, and it is the only state repeating the practice this year.
Back at the waterfront as evening settled in, Di Jackson and her friends and family found a sweet spot along the railing overlooking Marblehead Harbor, set up low beach chairs around a small table adorned with fresh hydrangeas and settled in. Jackson lit a small candle as the sun began to set and the flares along the horseshoe-shaped harbor began to glow.
"Spectacular," Jackson said with gusto when asked how her holiday weekend was going.
She admitted the heat had slowed the group down a little, but not much.
"We went to every (Festival of Arts) exhibit, the marketplace twice and we've been swimming every day," she said.
Her favorite part of the festival was the Moth-inspired storytelling event held Thursday afternoon. Patterned after the popular National Public Radio show, the event invited audience members to share true stories told with no notes.
"It was hotter than I don't know what but it was so worth it," Jackson said. "It was so good."
Renee Westerfield and her daughter, Emily, were visiting Jackson from California, where Emily said it was not nearly as hot as it had been in Marblehead. They landed in town a day ahead of the heat wave and, despite the temperatures, had been having a good time.
"There is so much going on," Renee said.
"It's been great," Emily added.
Fireworks burst over Marblehead Harbor on July 4: a golden shell drifts toward the water as spectators wade in at left; a red burst opens over a beach packed with lawn chairs at center; and a multicolored finale lights the smoke at right. The show, marking the nation's 250th, sent up 500 to 600 shells from a barge offshore. INDEPENDENT PHOTOS / KATIE RING
Barge fireworks close out the Fourth
The fireworks that closed the night were launched from a barge anchored offshore, the same method the town uses each year.
By nightfall spectators had filled the beach and the exposed tidal flat left by the low tide, setting up folding chairs and blankets along the shore. Others walked out across the gravel toward the water's edge, and boats anchored near the barge to watch from the harbor.
As night settled in, the smell of sulfur from the flares mixed with sunscreen, sweat and something sweet that could have been illicit vapes or perhaps the incoming rain. It created a heady melange that hung in the humidity. When the fireworks finally burst into the dark sky, the crowd turned in unison toward the mouth of the harbor, phones held high to capture the spectacle.
The display ran several minutes, with bursts of green, red and gold reflecting off the water and smoke drifting from the barge between rounds. When, 20 minutes or so in, the finale lit up everything — reflecting off the water, illuminating the boats drifting lazily in the harbor and the crowds along the shore — a universal cheer of approval went up like a roar.
"That was amazing," Dana Coleman said. "So amazing."
While much of the crowd drifted into the night, a good portion moved back to center stage, where the concert series kicked back into high gear — for about 20 minutes, until the rain finally did come and organizers pulled the plug on the performances. Not to be outdone, the crowd broke into an a cappella version of the national anthem, the voices rising over the emptying park and the rain, seemingly capping off the long, hot holiday for everyone.
While the harbor smoke is still clearing, reader support keeps this kind of local reporting free to read — from the morning Horribles Parade and the noon Declaration reading at Abbot Hall to the last shell over the water. The fireworks are volunteer-run and funded entirely by donations, and the same is true of independent local news: neighbors make it possible for The Marblehead Independent to cover the traditions, the safety work and the people behind a 250th Fourth. 🟦 Become a member here.
