50 years ago, America celebrated the Bicentennial of the United States
On Dec. 23, 1975, the American Freedom Train rolled into Pomona, and with it arrived one of the first big Bicentennial events in Southern California.
The train had 26 cars, 10 of them filled with treasures of American history, on a tour of all 48 contiguous states after setting out from Delaware on April 1, 1975.
During its week at the Los Angeles Fairgrounds, thousands of people plunked down $2 for a ticket to see George Washington’s personal copy of the Constitution (with his notes in the margins), Benjamin Franklin’s draft of the Articles of Confederation, the original Louisiana Purchase, and an early draft of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
There were artifacts from the life and culture of the nation in the 200 years since its founding, including Judy Garland’s blue-and-white gingham dress from “The Wizard of Oz,” Dr. Martin Luther King’s pulpit and robes, Joe Frazier’s boxing gloves, Wilt Chamberlain’s basketball shoes, and much more.
Several cars featured display windows, so visitors could check out larger items, including the Freedom Bell, a replica of the Liberty Bell twice its size, and a lunar rover.
For Christmas, the Southern Pacific steam engine No. 4449, already painted red, white and blue for the journey, added a huge Santa Claus face to the front of the engine.
While in town, American Freedom Train employees were feted by politicians and schoolkids in Pomona and the surrounding cities, as well as offered tickets to tapings of popular TV series such as “The Jeffersons,” “Maude,” and “One Day At a Time.”
The American Freedom Train made its first stop in California in Sacramento on Nov. 28, 1975, and then traveled south, stopping in Stockton, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, and Fresno before concluding in Pomona as 1975 wound down.
As 1976 began, it headed up the coast to Santa Barbara, back down to Long Beach and Anaheim, then to San Diego and San Juan Capistrano before heading east in Arizona and beyond.
That might have been as high-minded an expression of the United States Bicentennial as most people got in 1976 and the years leading up to America’s 200th birthday. But the Bicentennial was a ubiquitous presence in the lives of the nation for a good chunk of the mid-’70s.
Through arts and commerce, politics and sports, television and fast-food restaurants, no corner of the country was without the red, white and blue, and accompanying patriotic spirit.
With the United States’ 250th birthday upon us – that’s the Semiquincentennial, for those of you who like your words big and complicated – we decided to look back at how the Bicentennial was celebrated in all its sincere, strange, fun, and entertaining ways.
All aboard the Bicentennial Express to 1976!
In the beginning
No, not that beginning in 1776. The Bicentennial was launched on July 4, 1966, when Congress created the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission for what at the time was expected to be a simple affair called the Spirit of ’76, focused around a single historic city.
Philadelphia thought it had a real shot, according to an Associated Press story from Philly in September 1969.
“This center of American independence and democracy hopes to revive the Spirit of ’76 with the nation’s most posh birthday party in 1976,” the story began. “Officials say it would be a real Yankee Doodle Dandy swinger.”
Alas, ’twas not to be. In December 1973, Congress took a mulligan, dissolving its first committee and creating the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration to coordinate events across the land.
The Bicentennial logo showed up first in 1971 on an 8-cent stamp. It was a pair of intertwined stars, one for each century of the nation’s history, one red, one blue, the corners curved to signal a friendlier look than the sharper points seen traditionally.
The logo was designed by Bruce N. Blackburn, who had created the minimalist NASA logo (known as “the worm”), and it would be affixed to almost everything imaginable as the Bicentennial got nearer.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Mint issued special Bicentennial quarters, half dollar and dollar coins.
The fronts were the same faces as usual – Washington, Kennedy and Eisenhower – but the dates read 1776-1976. The reverse sides were entirely different: a colonial drummer on the quarter, Independence Hall on the half dollar, and the Liberty Bell with the moon in the background on the dollar.
And if you were really lucky, you might have turned a few of those Bicentennial dollars into a winning ticket in New Jersey Bicentennial lottery held that year. It paid the winner $1,766 a week for 20 years for a total of $1,847,040.
What’s on tonight?
Those of a certain age will remember the Bicentennial Minutes, a total of 912 of which aired from July 4, 1974, to December 31, 1976. Created by CBS News, each began with the words, “Two hundred years ago today …” and described a historical event that happened on that day.”
They were informative little nuggets, but were ubiquitous to the point that parodies quickly arose. In a February 1976 episode of “All In The Family,” the character Mike Stivic (the late Rob Reiner) waited for his father-in-law Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) to finish his screed about immigration and the Statue of Liberty.
“I think we just heard Archie Bunker’s Bicentennial Minute,” he then sarcastically commented.
The country music variety show “Hee Haw” did its own spoof too as musician Grandpa Jones shared his so-called facts about historical figures from the Revolutionary Era before ending, “That’s the way it was, about 200 years ago … more or less.”
Meanwhile, “The Sonny and Cher Show” aired a sketch in which Jim Nabors, that’s right, Gomer Pyle himself, portrayed British King George III in another parody of the Bicentennial Minutes.
Sports fans also got plenty of exposure to the Bicentennial when they settled into with a can of Bud or a bottle of Coors to watch the big games on TV.
The halftime show for Super Bowl X in Miami in 1976 kicked off a year of sports tie-ins to the Bicentennial, with the toothy smiles of the Up With People singing group delivering a show titled “200 Years and Just a Baby: A Tribute to America’s Bicentennial.”
Philadelphia, which didn’t get to be the sole Bicentennial city, did scoop up most of the other big sports events of 1976, hosting the NCAA Final Four, as well as the National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, and Major League all-star games that year.
And when we finally got to the Fourth of July weekend, the Big 3 networks, ABC, NBC and CBS, all of which featured special programming throughout the year, really went all out.
Were people inside watching? Anchorman Walter Cronkite said it was OK if you didn’t, in one print advertisement he appeared to promote “In Celebration of US,” a 16-hour CBS broadcast he hosted.
“Now, don’t feel that this is something heavy that you have a duty to watch all day long,” Uncle Walter advised. “It’s a party. Drop in any time to see how it’s going.”
Over on ABC, which had the least amount of Fourth of July programming that weekend, anchor Harry Reasoner didn’t sound entirely happy to be there himself.
“My inclination was to open each of the three hour-long programs we have scheduled by setting off a 4-inch firecracker,” Reasoner reasoned at the start of “The Great American Birthday Party.” “Cooler heads prevailed. It’s not only illegal, but we couldn’t figure out what union would have jurisdiction.”
On NBC, the night of the Fourth featured an entertainment special taped at the Los Angeles Coliseum a month earlier, with what the New York Times TV critic sniffed was “a rather extraordinary collection of second-echelon ‘names.’”
Eight thousand Los Angeles schoolkids sang at the event, which included host Paul Anka, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, KC and the Sunshine Band, motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel and Olympic swimming star Mark Spitz.
It also included actress Sandy Duncan, “Laugh-In” star Arte Johnson, Meredith Willson, creator of “The Music Man,” “Gilligan’s Island” star Jim Backus, astronauts Gordon Cooper and Jim Irwin, and Robbie Rist, also known as cousin Oliver in “The Brady Bunch.”
Paint your wagons
Around the same time that the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys were prepping for their clash in Super Bowl X, the Asmus family of Azusa was setting out on a 183-day journey from Southern California to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
By wagon train.
The Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage was organized to have wagon trains travel in reverse from west to east along historic trails such as the Oregon Trail, the Appalachian Trail, and the Santa Fe Trail, with everyone arriving in Valley Forge on July 4, 1976.
Pauline and Larry “Gabbie” Asmus and three of their four children decided that sounded like a lot of fun. The Asmus family went eastward on the Santa Fe Trail after appearing in the Rose Parade on Jan. 1, 1976, following a night camping out at Arroyo Seco Park in South Pasadena.
Wagon trains are not the fastest form of transport. On the evening of Jan. 1, they made camp at the fairgrounds in Pomona. Nights 2 through 13 were spent in Riverside, Moreno Camp, Beaumont-Banning, Palm Springs, Indio, North Shores Park, a day of rest, Bombay Park, Niland, Brawley, before finally, 14 days in, making it to Yuma, Arizona.
The Asmus family didn’t giddy-up the 91 Freeway on their way to Valley Forge, but if they had, they might have seen the Bicentennial mural taking shape on the Prado Dam just off the 91 highway.
If you’ve driven that way, you’ve surely seen. It reads “200 Years of Freedom” on the left side, a Liberty Bell in the middle, and then the dates 1776-1976. At a massive 80,000 square feet – can’t miss it, though you might not know its origins.
Corona High School student Terri Smith had the idea to do a monumental mural on the dam, and with help from Corona High’s activities director Dave DiPaolo, organized a contest for its design.
Students Ron Kammeyer and Perry Schaefer came up with the winning design, and with 30 fellow students, spent a few weeks painting the mural on the sloping cement face of the dam.
Years passed, the dam faded. At one point more than a decade ago, the Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains the dam, announced plans to remove the faded, vandalized mural.
The community fought those plans for years, and in 2023, the mural was restored to its original splendor.
“Our country is not perfect, just like the Liberty Bell,” Perry Schaefer told a KNBC-4 TV news reporter as the restoration neared completion. “We have maybe a long way to go, but there’s a goal and there’s a symbol that we all want to work toward, and we’re all in this together.”
We love a parade
Disneyland and Disney World got in the Bicentennial biz with America On Parade, a special Bicentennial-themed parade down Main Street twice a day.
The float at the front of the line featured Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy with Mickey waving the flag, Goofy banging a drum, and Donald on flute, a giant eagle looming over them from behind.
Other floats portrayed different moments in American history, including Ben Franklin getting zapped by lightning-induced electricity, Betsy Ross sewing the flag, the first Thanksgiving, and – proof that kids back then were made of tougher stuff – a pair of supposed witches about to be executed after the Salem Witch Trials.
The Sherman Brothers, Robert and Richard, were brought to Disney, where in earlier years they done the music and songs for such films as “Mary Poppins,” “The Jungle Book,” and “The Aristocats,” to write a new song for the parade.
“It’s our historical, proudly uproarical, Fourth, the Fourth of July,” their song, “The Glorious Fourth,” included at one point.
Other Bicentennial parades were held all across the country on Saturday, July 3, or Sunday, July 4, 1976. The biggest took place in Washington, D.C. on July 3, with country legend Johnny Cash, a man who probably actually could fire a musket, as its grand marshal.
President Gerald Ford wasn’t there – he was playing golf at a Maryland country club that day – so Vice President Nelson Rockefeller ranked highest of the political leaders there for the marching bands, military personnel in historic garb, floats and more.
Oh, and Telly Savalas, star of TV’s “Kojak,” was there, occasionally jumping out of his convertible to sign autographs. Who loves ya, baby? America, that’s who!
The only disruption witnessed by the New York Times that day came when 69 members of the American Nationalist Socialist White People’s Party – or more simply, Nazis – showed up to protest in Lafayette Square across from the White House, and got in a scrap with a college kid carrying a sign that read, “Nazis are pigs.”
President Ford did get back to Washington a day or so later to host a state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. Under a large white tent in the Rose Garden – RIP the Rose Garden – violins played as guests entered and the moon shone, First Lady Betty Ford wrote in a memoir.
“The Queen was easy to deal with,” Ford wrote. “She was very definite about what she wanted and what she didn’t want. She loves Bob Hope and Telly Savalas, so we invited Bob Hope and Telly Savalas [and] both came.”
You want it, we sell it
For the Centennial in 1876, the artist Archibald M. Willard had painted “The Spirit of ’76,” a picture of two Revolutionary War drummers and a fifer with the American flag behind them as they lead the troops to battle.
For the Bicentennial, American corporations did their own variations of that iconic image for the 1976 calendars they released.
Marvel’s calendar portrayed Spider-Man and the Hulk playing the drums and Captain America playing the fife.
Sesame Street’s calendar had Bert and Ernie on the drums and Grover on the fife.
McDonald’s coopted another classic image, Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” with Ronald McDonald as Washington bravely looking o’er the frigid Delaware, and soldiers including Grimace and Mayor McCheese alongside him.
Even the Hamburglar was there to help battle the British, and OK, burgle their burgers, the spoils of war.
The American Revolution Bicentennial Administration controlled the rights to the Bicentennial logo, and the document that lists most of those licensees runs 30-some pages.
It includes simple bumper stickers with slogans such as “Get Into America” and “A Past To Remember, a Future To Mold” alongside Blackburn’s red-and-blue double-star logo. It also included paperweights and belt buckles, tricornered denim hats – for the weekend casual minuteman? – and coordinated blazers and slacks manufactured by the Mr. Mark clothing company in Vernon.
“In 1975, when you bought deodorant, it was deodorant,” said Gene Gleeson, a reporter for KCBS News 8 in a report in mid-1976. “But this year, it’s Bicentennial deodorant. Last year, a toilet seat was a toilet seat. This year, sporting red, white and blue trim, it’s a Bicentennial toilet seat.”
That sums up the attitude of American businesspeople in 1976. Slap a flag on it, maybe some stars and stripes, call it the Bicentennial edition, and see what happens.
McDonald’s marketed red, white and blue milkshakes made out of strawberry, vanilla and blueberry flavors.
The pesticide d-CON gave away American flag decals with purchases. “Get a little American history free from d-CON, the people who are helping free America from bugs,” their ad copy read.
A company manufactured red and blue Bicentennial condoms – “One More Time For Old Glory,” the package declared, though the small print warned, “For novelty use only.”
There were commemorative plates of every kind, Zippo lighters, bicycles. The soft drink 7-Up issues commemorative cans for all 50 states with instructions on how to stack the states to reveal a picture of the Statue of Liberty on one side of the cans.
The Poulan chainsaw arrived in a red, white and blue “76” limited edition, because why not? “With the Poulan 76, you’ll have a lot easier time than George had with his,” the advertisement read next to a drawing of George Washington struggling with his old-timey hatchet.
“Some have called it the “buy-centennial,” a New York Times article on the commercialization of the anniversary opened.
“I don’t know how many clients have called and said, ‘OK, come up with a Bicentennial promotion,’ when they have nothing to do with the Bicentennial and are just trying to sell more,” a Madison Avenue ad executive told Time magazine.
But what’s more American than doing business, Robert Williams of the New York chapter of Sons of the Revolution told the magazine.
“I see no harm in these Bicentennial products,” he told Time. “There’s nothing wrong with making a buck. Free enterprise is the thing that has made this country go zowie.”