Skip to main content

South Valley Riverton Journal

City celebrates heritage with annual Fort Herriman Days

Jul 26, 2017 12:19PM ● By Kelly Cannon

Two boys watch the merry-go-round during Fort Herriman Days. (Kelly Cannon/City Journals)

By Kelly Cannon | [email protected]
 
With three days jam-packed with activities, attractions, rides, food and fun, the annual Fort Herriman Days helped residents celebrate their heritage. Held June 22–24 at W&M Butterfield Park, the celebration brought out droves of families and community partners.
 
Though Herriman was only incorporated in 1999, residents have been celebrating the settlement of Herriman for decades with parades and festivals. This year, the official celebration was changed to incorporate more family-friendly attractions.
 
“On Thursday, we held a family night,” said Director of Communications and Herriman Public Information Officer Tami Moody. “We had a lot of free activities for the kids. The inflatables were free that night, and there were just a lot of games and things that brought families out and made it a lower cost for them.”
 
Friday night was water night with a giant foam party on the baseball fields and with water slides and games where people could shoot water at each other.
 
“All of that was fun as well,” Moody said. “We’ve tried to incorporate a lot of free activities for the kids, as well as when you have to buy the carnival wristbands or for the inflatables.”
 
Friday concluded with the traditional movie night on the field with the movie “Sing.”
 
“It was packed,” Moody said. “It was great.”
 
Saturday started with the parade that wound around Herriman, concluding at Butterfield Park. Saturday also had the general carnival and the car show, and it finished with a special concert featuring “Groove Merchants.”
 
The decision to incorporate more activities geared toward budget-minded families came from an internal discussion at the city.
 
“We’ve had some staffing changes, and with that comes new and bigger ideas. It was something we decided to incorporate,” Moody said. “We’re a city of families. We have so many young families here that we want to make sure they have a night they can come and participate. We were able to keep the costs down so that they were able to enjoy a lot of the activities.”
 
All throughout the three days, volunteers and city employees asked participants to complete a survey to see how they were enjoying the festival.
 
“We’re asking people to rate the changes,” Moody said. “We’ve had a lot of good and positive feedback. It’s been great. We’re also going to put up a little survey on our Facebook page to invite people to rate their experience and offer any suggestions they have on how we can make it even better next year.”
 
Based on feedback from last year, the number of carnival rides was increased this year.
 
“It’s in a much bigger area, and we’ve had really good feedback on that,” Moody said. “The parade route—it wasn’t necessarily extended, but it used to cause a lot of congestion when it came into the parking lot right here so we had it go around. It lessened the congestion. It did impact neighbors, but we did send out a flier so they knew.”
 
Though there were events and activities centered on families, Moody said the city tried to make Fort Herriman days appealing to everyone.
 
“It’s a good time for families and people of all ages,” she said. “We’ve really tried to incorporate something for everyone. We now have entertainment going all three days. A lot of it is local entertainers, local dance studios. We have a lot more local participants in our entertainment, which has been fun.”
 
Sponsors for the 2017 Fort Herriman Days include CenturyLink, Herriman City, Staker Parson Companies, Herriman Towne Center, Intermountain Riverton Hospital, Rio Tinto, Rocky Mountain Power, Arthur J. Gallgher & Co, Shearology, Select Health, Simply White, GSBS Architects and Awaken City Church.