LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – What began as a welcome-home celebration for troops returning from Desert Storm has grown into the largest free festival in Texas, drawing roughly 100,000 people to downtown Lubbock each Fourth of July.<\/p>\n
The first Fourth on Broadway<\/a> was held in 1991.<\/p>\n \u201cThe troops were coming back from Desert Storm, and the Downtown Council of Churches wanted to do some kind of an event to celebrate that,\u201d said longtime volunteer Leslie Cranford. \u201cAnd so they concocted this big idea of having the celebration down Broadway.\u201d<\/p>\n Organizers expected around 5,000 attendees at the parade. Cranford says 14,000 showed up.<\/p>\n Creators David Langston and Don Caldwell had a second goal beyond the homecoming celebration.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was sort of built to rejuvenate downtown,\u201d Cranford said. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s done that.\u201d<\/p>\n Caldwell eventually founded the nonprofit Broadway Festivals Incorporated, shifting the parade route further east and moving festival events to Mackenzie Park.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere there was more shade, trees,\u201d Cranford said. \u201cThey added all of those daytime things, the fishing, just the daytime concert stages.\u201d<\/p>\n Cranford recalled earlier years when vendors lined the street and a street dance drew crowds.<\/p>\n \u201cMy kids were little. They\u2019re in their 30s now, dancing on the bricks over here, just west of the courthouse,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n After he passed in 2024, Caldwell\u2019s absence has been felt in recent years.<\/p>\n \u201c\u201825 was a little different, a lot different, because our leadership was gone,\u201d Cranford said. \u201cDon wasn\u2019t with us. And he was such a big driver of the continuity of the event and the creativity of the event. And I cannot say that enough.\u201d<\/p>\n