WE HAVA-HISTORY
Excerpt from “Chain Saw Age” Magazine January 1972
This is an in-depth description of the First London Bridge Days October 10, 1971
 
       Lake Havasu City’s enthusiasm for it new landmark resulted in a 10-week celebration.  Hundreds of residents dressed for the occasion in trunk hose and doublets, knee breeches and silk stockings, top hats and frock coats, and the long sweeping gowns of a half-dozen different historical styles from Elizabethan to Victorian.  Store windows and shops were decorated with Union Jacks, Tudor half-timbering, antique signs, and cutouts of historical figures.
                For a dozen weekends Lake Havasu City and its neighboring towns in Mohave county and across the lake in California engaged in a series of games, tournaments and exhibitions.
                But the focal point of the whole festival was the opening event when official aircraft began touching down at Lake Havasu City Airport with Governor Williams and his party and 170 British guests led by the Lord Mayor and Lady Studd, with all their retinue of a visit-in-state.  By the next evening their 18th century ceremonial costumes had transformed the Lord Mayor and his attendants into splendid figures out of British history texts.  A bagpiper led them to their places at the head table of the gala banquet——a charity affair to help the Colorado River Indian tribes build a cultural heritage museum.
                The morning of the bridge opening dawned with a sunrise religious service on the bank of the Bridgewater conducted by Evangelist Carl S. Winters, with a 300-voice choir composed of Lake Havasu City citizens, residents of neighboring towns, and Colorado River Indians.
                Crowds started gathering in bleachers along the banks of the Bridgewater by 10:00 am, when a stunt flyer, Skip Volk, began an aerobatic circus.  The air show ended with 20 parachutists free-falling out of the desert sky, streamers of colored smoke trailing from the flares they held.  Two of  the men carried flags to be presented to the principals at the  ceremony for the Lord Mayor, a US flag that had flown over the Capitol in Washington, D.C., for the Governor, and a Union Jack that had flown over the Houses of Parliament in London.
                Shortly after 10:30 am, the University of Arizona band marched into position, and began playing as a 250-voice choir moved into place.  Actor  Lorne Greene called out the names, as limousines delivered Governor and Mrs. William, McCulloch, Wood and other dignitaries to the reviewing stand near the city end of London Bridge. 
A miniature paddlewheel boat named “Miller’s Folly”—recalling the 19th century steamers that used to pick up ore from the mining camps near Lake Havasu City,—-set out from the lakeside Nautical Inn with the
 
Lord Mayor and his retinue.  Approaching London Bridge by water as King William IV had done in 1831, the boat moved up the Bridgewater toward the long flight of stone stairs leading from the embankment to the road level of the bridge.
                As the band struck up again, the pageantry of the Lord Mayor’s office began to unfold.  The official party was escorted by a dozen 17th century pikemen, each with a sword and 12 ft. lance, wearing steel morions (pot helmets), breastplates, back and thigh armour over their brass-buttoned, scarlet-sashed red tunics and knee breeches.
                Side by side before the Lord Mayor came Brigadier Robert Home Stewart Popham—in silk embroidered robe and crown-shaped cap of Russian sable, bearing the 4-ft. 3-in. sword of office point upward in its red velvet scabbard. 
                Behind them  came the Lord Mayor.  Over silver-buttoned black tailcoat and knee breeches he wore the gold lace-trimmed robe of office and a plumed three-cornered hat.  His great jeweled chain of office (dating from 1535) was suspended from his shoulders, its diamond-circled London coat of arms over a fall of lace at his throat.  Behind him came the High Sheriff of London, Alderman Henry Murray Fox, in a scarlet robe, and the Chief Commoner, Deputy Leslie Barnett Prince, in a violet one.
                The exchange of greetings between the Lord Mayor and the Governor was the cue for a 19-gun salute, a long heraldic trumpet fanfare and the playing of “God Save the Queen” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” 
                Following an invocation, Governor Williams, the Lord Mayor and Robert P. McCulloch spoke briefly, the main theme of the remarks noting that London Bridge would serve not only as history preserved in a working span, but as an enduring monument (continued on next page)
 
to the friendship between the peoples of Great Britain and the United States.
                The speeches over, the Governor and the Lord Mayor jointly pulled a cord signaling the rise of the hot-air balloon, which in turn pulled the red drapery away from a plaque affixed to the pedestal opposite the cornerstone which was laid in 1968.
As the balloon lifted into the sky, it was joined by the thousands of pigeons and small balloons, and by the sound of the parade’s first band striking up a triumphant march.
                First came an honor guard of Indians, with costumed musicians and dancers, and then a contingent of 150 Boy Scouts carrying the flags of the 50 United States, floats depicting an open history book,  Roman soldiers, Vikings (who pulled down a London Bridge in 1014 and started the nursery rhyme), and builders of the first stone bridge followed, interspersed with Roman horse soldiers and brightly uniformed bands.
                Other floats portrayed a water spouting whale (one was stranded under London Bridge in 1252), 
 
 
jousting knights and other figures from fact and legend in the bridge’s history.  Costumed townspeople accompanied the floats appropriate to their dress.  The procession stretched nearly a mile and included buses, cyclists wobbling atop old-fashioned “penny-farting’ high wheelers, and pearl-encrusted Cockney street peddlers frisking along the line of  march. 
                And bringing up the rear came chain saw personality Robert P. McCulloch, seated with the Lord Mayor in a carriage escorted by 18 members of the Westminster, California High School Guardsmen Band, dressed in the “beefeater” costumes of the Tower of London’s Yeoman of the Guard.
                London Bridge, after three years of hard work and planning, was officially open in Lake Havasu City—-but the celebration was far from over.
                A huge barbecue, prepared by the Odessa Chuck Wagon Gang—-a group of Texas businessmen—awaited all comers following the parade’s conclusion.
                A water-ski show followed, at the end of which Australian skier Bill Bennett attempted to break the world ski kite flying altitude record of 2,890 feet.
                A carnival atmosphere pervaded the colony of tents a few hundred feet north of the grandstands. In one tent members of the Lake Havasu City Theatre Guild were rehearsing for a performance of a musical comedy, “Roar of the Greasepaint, Smell of the Crowd.”  An art fair and trade show occupied adjoining tents, and the Cisney Western Law Officers’ Band (led by the Sheriff of Mohave County) used one for their headquarters.
                At dusk, on Lake Havasu City’s day of triumph, nearly everybody in the town gathered at the London Bridge for a sunset religious service and rally, led by Dale Evans Rogers, wife of western movie star Roy Rogers, and Evangelist Winters. 
                A soap box derby, an invitational golf tournament, a square-dance festival, water-ski races, the Desert Air Classic, and the $60,000 Eight Annual Outboard World Championships—-richest race in boating—all became integral segments of the extended celebration period.