Fleming plans Fourth of July celebration with museum opening

Fleming is building its Fourth of July celebration around the museum, with the Fleming Fire Department, the Town of Fleming and the Fleming Historical Society inviting residents to a 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. museum opening. The town posted the notice on its home page on June 25, then repeated it in the live feed, turning the holiday announcement into a public event anchored in local history and civic service.

That structure fits a town that traces its roots to the 1880s, when Fleming was first settled, and to 1904, when the railroad arrived with a store and bank. The town says it was named for railroad official Henry Bascom Fleming, and its historical society has been preserving that story for decades. The Fleming Historical Society published local-history works in 1971 and 1980, including accounts from more than 60 Fleming families.

Heritage Museum Park, located off Route 6, gives the holiday program a fixed home base. Town materials describe the site as a museum with covered seating, history exhibits and tours by request. The Heritage Museum is open Sundays from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. throughout the summer, and town pages list Rick Unrein, Diane Unrein, Gay Anderson, Harold Davis, Eric Helland and Dan Helgoth as museum hosts.

The holiday observance also carries a larger civic marker this year. Fleming says 2026 marks the 250th birthday of the United States and the 150th birthday of Colorado, and the town plans to dedicate a new mural and bury a student-curated time capsule during the July 4 celebration. Fleming Middle and High School students contributed to the time capsule project, tying the town’s holiday programming to both its past and its next generation.

For a town of 428 people at the 2020 census, the celebration lands in a setting where public institutions overlap. The fire department is not just part of emergency coverage in a small community; it is also one of the hosts helping stage a holiday gathering that brings people into shared space. That role mirrors earlier July 4 events in Fleming, including a 2024 program with soda floats at the museum, open tours of the museum and historical house, a $8 hot dog meal at the fire hall and fireworks at dusk, as well as a 2022 fire-department event that featured a $5 hot dog meal, a motor blowout raffle and fireworks on July 4.