This is What’s Real: A Not-Quite-Forgotten Community Marches For The 4th

Gilboa’s Flat Creek Fourth of July Parade celebrates community, patriotism, and rural life like no one else. You should have been there.

Bedazzled bikes. Fire trucks. Hay wagons and flat-bed trailers filled with women in calico bonnets and kids in sparkly sunglasses. Gators, four-wheelers, and marchers. American flags and American flag bunting. Uncle Sam. Everyone in red, white, and blue.

This is what's real.

Not a Fourth of July parade 30 or 40 years ago, but the Flat Creek Fourth of July Parade, an around-the-block celebration of community, patriotism, and rural life in 2026 as the nation gathered to mark 250 years.

Afterwards?

Hot dogs, chocolate chip cookies, fruit salad, and chips under a tent on the front lawn of the Flat Creek Baptist Church.

Cars and marchers line up in front of the Flat Creek Baptist Church for an old-fashioned July 4th parade and celebration. — The line-up begins at the Flat Creek Baptist Church, where since 2003, Gilboa residents have been celebrating the 4th of July the old-fashioned way.

Gilboa residents decorate a wagon in bunting and American flags. — Hay wagons, tractors, fire trucks, four-wheelers, and bikes were all dressed in the colors of the 4th.

You could have been there. You could have even been a part of it. 2027 maybe?

Where’s Flat Creek?

Well…mostly now it’s a road at the southern end of Schoharie County.

Getting there can be a little confusing: landslides and damage from winter weather and spring flooding have closed the lower portion of it (again).

But if you can find your way around the backroads of Gilboa, you’ll get there eventually.

On the 4th it’s hard to miss.

Dottie Pickett dressed as Uncle Sam. — For years, Dottie Pickett has led the parade as Uncle (Aunt?) Sam.

The Flat Creek Fourth of July Parade’s been celebrating rural life and good neighbors since 2003, when 9-year-old William Terry asked “Why not?” and got a few of his friends—with their calves–to march. Walk. Whatever. Because in Flat Creek, Gilboa, Schoharie County, Upstate New York, anything is possible.

William died in 2008.

His parade is still bringing his community together. Those who knew him (two of his best friends marched this July 4th) and those who’ve discovered Gilboa in the years since.

Cars, floats, and kids were already gathering at the rural-perfect church (inside, patriotic music spilled from the open windows) at 10:30. By noon, when the church bells rang 12 times and it was time to go, Flat Creek Road was narrowed to less than a single lane of traffic.

Those who couldn’t walk sat along the road in their lawn chairs, applauding and cheering those who could; William’s mom, Alicia, Town Supervisor, collected donations for the fire department.

A woman uses her phone to film fire trucks before Gilboa's July 4th parade on Flat Creek Road. — A parade-goer films the line-up of fire trucks from Conesville, Grand Gorge, and Prattsville.

Afterwards, we ate.

There’s an irony here in that Gilboa shouldn’t really exist. In 1927 the town was burned, then flooded, not by Tories (ironically, no Revolutionary battles took place in Gilboa), but by New York City, thirsty for water.

Some 350 Gilboans were displaced; homes, churches and businesses were moved uphill. (Used to be, when the water was low, you could still see the old paved streets. Video from the village’s final days? The Gilboa Historical Society has recovered it.)

And 99 years later, Gilboa still knows what matters.