<\/p>\n
Several thousand people showed up to enjoy the Fourth of July holiday Monday at City Park, Centennial Park and Parque de Vida in Cortez.<\/p>\n
The smell of barbecue filled the air as families from all over the region enjoyed picnics, played volleyball, and held pick-up football and basketball games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why we came \u2014 the huge park!\u201d said Ana Jones of Yellow Rock Point, Utah, as she flipped burgers on the grill. \u201cWe\u2019re celebrating our freedom, and a big thank you to our veterans who went out and fought for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under sunny skies, hundreds of kids swarmed the playground nonstop, squealing a crescendo of summertime fun. Nearby, the 57-member Southwest Civic Winds symphony set the soundtrack, playing a concert of the classics, including Shenandoah, Festival Prelude, Hail to the Fleet, Stars and Stripes, and America the Beautiful.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a perfect day for an outdoor summer concert, happy Fourth of July!\u201d said conductor Mark Walters.<\/p>\n
But it was the traditional firework show that caught the collective attention of the crowd as they cheered together, looking skyward at explosions of color, united in their community and country.<\/p>\n
\u201cEnjoying this day with family and celebrating our freedom is what it\u2019s all about,\u201d said Virgil Espinoza, of Cortez. \u201cThat, and the great fireworks show! It\u2019s my daughter\u2019s first Fourth of July, so this year is extra special.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thousands fill Cortez parks for July 4th festivities<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":104307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,4491,13,221,598],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-104306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-explosion","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-gas-and-oil","tag-public-holiday"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104306"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=104306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}