Days of ‘47 parade 2023: Being a pioneer ‘means everything’

Thousands of people gathered in downtown Salt Lake City to celebrate the 2023 Days of ’47 parade on a warm and sunny Monday morning on July 24. Colorful floats, decorated with things such as hand-crafted doves or intricately designed mini-temples, were created to represent this years’ theme — “Pioneer Stories ... Values to Build On.”

Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints served as the grand marshal of the Days of ‘47 Pioneer Day parade. In an interview with KSL Television, Elder Christofferson spoke of the rich history and lasting heritage of the Days of ‘47 parade.

“It is getting to be a long legacy, isn’t it?” he said. “Which I’m glad to see. It is important that we have some things that continue on through generations.”

He called celebrating that pioneer heritage important.

“It’s the stories that teach us,” said Elder Christofferson. “It’s the stories where we learn. … You learn a lot from the sacrifice, the persistence, the family support and community support in difficult times. That’s always an important lesson because there’s always difficult times.”

When people gather together they provide support and strength to one another, he said. Caring for others is a characteristic of being a pioneer and Salt Lake was a “refuge for people fleeing persecution.”

Elder Christofferson called the early pioneering efforts in the Salt Lake Valley “a visionary beginning. As you look at it now, one thing that strikes me is people didn’t just survive, they thrived — and they thrive here today.”

He continued, “It became and has become, according to that vision really, a wonderful gathering place for a wide variety of people.”

Latter-day Saints who participated in the parade by creating floats that celebrate their ancestors feel similarly to Elder Christofferson.

When asked what it means to be a pioneer, Cordie Weed, a volunteer and member of the Farmington Utah Oakridge Stake, said, “It means people who have traveled and have sacrificed a lot in their life to come here. And I am so grateful for my ancestor pioneers ... so I can have a good life now.”

One of the highlights of the parade for Weed was getting to help out with her stake float. “My friend, Catherine, had me feel the float — to feel the letters — so I could tell what it was saying. And that means a lot to me as a blind person,” she said.

Nicole Heder, of the West Jordan Utah Park Stake, talked about how their float’s theme was to focus on building on the rock of Jesus Christ. Their float incorporates a large molding of the Savior’s hand holding a re-creation of the Salt Lake Valley — including a large replica of the Salt Lake Temple.

The West Jordan Utah Park Stake representatives gathered 400 family history stories from members of their stake and transcribed them onto 400 paper flowers that now decorate their float.

And the rhinestones on the tips of their hand-crafted Salt Lake Temple also have a story. “We also asked the youth to be involved. So they participated in the rhinestones at the top of the temple,” Heder said. “Each rhinestone represents a person we did temple work for.”

The youth’s goal was to do enough work for 2,500 rhinestones for the temple. In the end, these Latter-day Saint youth from the West Jordan Utah Park Stake had been involved in enough temple work, such as indexing or attending the temple, to put 25,000 rhinestones on the hand-crafted temple.

The Salt Lake Utah West Stake (Tongan) also participated in the Days of ‘47 parade this year. Leaaetohi Halaufia, the float director, described the layers of meaning that went into creating their canoe-shaped float. The idea wasn’t meant to be just artistic, she said. The inspiration behind their float came from the desire to stay true to their Tongan culture.

The canoe has deep meaning for them and their gospel culture. “The gospel was brought to us in a canoe,” said Halaufia. “This is our story.”

Standing at the front of the canoe are two missionaries representing the gospel coming to their island. Also on their float is a design of the Book of Mormon as well as the Nuku’alofa Tonga Temple, first dedicated in 1983.

“My favorite part of this experience was the unifying of the stake members,” Halaufia said. When she thinks about pioneers she says that it “brings back memories of my ancestors and how they sacrificed to get the gospel to us.”

To her, being a pioneer “means everything.”