Creating floats is labor of love for builders

Deseret News

It started out as a welded structure covered with plywood and wafer board. But next week it will dazzle the crowd as a colorful, animated depiction of the meeting of the transcontinental railroad.

The “Pioneer Courage Linked a Nation” float is one of several floats that will appear in the Bountiful Handcart Days Parade July 20. The evening parade will be the float’s second of three parade performances this year.

“You build a float and the more you can show it off the better it is,” said Mark Zaugg, chairman of the float’s building committee. “You put so much work into these that it’s good to show them off more than once.”

The float was built mainly for the Days of ‘47 Parade in Salt Lake City, but was part of the Centerville July Fourth Parade and will be in the Handcart Days Parade as well. It was designed by Lester Lee, an art teacher at Woods Cross High School.

The float carries two animated trains: one coming out of a mountain and the other crossing a desert. The cartoon-like trains meet in the middle and shake hands.

Zaugg said they are equipped with a lot of mechanical workings that help their wheels, headlights, hands and faces come to life. The float builders used several different items to piece the float together, including Styrofoam, waferboard, glue, PVC pipe and more.

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