Independence Day in Ennis

By Greta Rybus, 7-10-09

	Sophia Lockton, 7, waves to a passing car during the 4th of July parade.

At my grandmother’s house in Ennis, Mont., old black-and-white photographs of how the town used to look hang on the walls. Wide, dusty streets bordered small buildings under the towering peaks that form the Madison River Valley. This Fourth of July, I visited family in Ennis, Mont., now known as a haven for fly fishermen and those who still like the rugged life.

When I visit Ennis, as I have done since I was a little girl, I know I am visiting old Montana history. The buildings don’t look as old as those in Virginia City in the next valley, but I know I am visiting an old past – my family’s own rich history.

Wiliam Ennis, my great-great-great-great grandfather, homesteaded in the Madison Valley with his wife Katherine in 1863 and built the first store there.  The town of Ennis bears his name.

My grandmother now lives in the home she was born in. She moved back to Ennis and the house 21 years ago. Sandwiched between the town bank and the public library, hers is the last house on Main Street.

Together, my family and I went to the top events of a Fourth of July in Ennis. We ate pancakes at the Fireman’s Pancake Breakfast fundraiser, watched the parade pass through Main Street, gorged ourselves at a barbeque and took in the Ennis Rodeo.

Initially started as a downtown bucking contest sponsored by saloons in 1912, the rodeo brought much needed income to the town in the form of visitors. In the 1930’s, Emmett Womack built corrals and eventually began a parade through downtown.

My grandmother remembers the Emmett Womack era of the Ennis rodeo. She fondly recalls children sitting on the corrals to watch the broncos and the special time her parents gave her a nickel to buy a grape soda.

Today, the rodeo—run entirely by volunteers—takes place just outside of town on grounds the Ennis Rodeo Association purchased in 1952 with money raised from the Ennis community. Like the rodeo, most everything connected with the town’s 4th of July Celebration—every float in the parade, every pancake flipped at the fireman’s fundraiser, every gate opened for a raging bull at the rodeo—depends on volunteers.

For all her knowledge, my grandmother - a charter member of the Madison Valley History Association- could be the town’s historian. She has a mind for dates and an uncanny knack for remembering who did what, when, and where. And, I suppose, if she is the history buff, I have become the family documentarian.

Click on the photo above to view the gallery of Fourth of July photographs taken by NewWest.Net photography intern Greta Rybus.

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