One of my early visits to the Magic Kingdom was during the Bicentennial celebrations of the nation. During that time, the park replaced the Main Street Electrical Parade with the America on Parade. As you can tell from the shot above, there has been a lot of changes to the park, but this view leading into Adventureland looks pretty much the same today as it did back in the 1970s.
The parade ran once during the day and once at night, right before the fireworks.
These are some shots from our very own wayback machine.
As we were writing Elements of Magic: The Interactive Guidebook for Disney’s Magic Kingdom, we came across a lot of reference material and archival footage from our many trips to the parks. These were some of our favorites that didn’t make it into the book. You can check out all of the photos and interactive features that did make it into the book on the iBookstore here.