City of Ketchum Announces Wagon Days Grand Marshals
Mayor Neil Bradshaw selects Diane Josephy Peavey and John Peavey as the Grand Marshals for Wagon Days 2021.
Diane and John Peavey have made significant and lasting contributions to Ketchum’s culture and educational landscape. Together, they created the annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival, which is held each October in Ketchum. This year the event will celebrate its 25th anniversary.
“I am delighted to have Diane and John as this year’s Grand Marshals,” said Mayor Neil Bradshaw. “A celebration of their positive impacts on this community is long overdue. I hope everyone can join us at Wagon Days to honor them.”
Third-generation rancher John Peavey spent 21 years as an Idaho State Senator. During that time, he launched an initiative to create Idaho’s Sunshine Laws and protected water rights on the Snake River.
Locally, Peavey supported the proposal for a paved bike bath on the Union Pacific Railroad right of way to connect Blaine County and encouraged the shared use of the right of way, which had been used for decades as a sheep “driveway.”
Complaints over sheep on the bike path motivated Peavey to invite the public to help with the annual sheep drive. Participation grew from twenty people the first year to holding the first annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival in 1997.
Peavey’s wife, Diane Josephy Peavey, is an author best known for her writings about her life on a sheep and cattle ranch in south-central Idaho – its people, history, and the American West's changing landscape. Her own story is one of an evolution from a city girl to a rancher and writer. Her writings aired weekly on Idaho Public Radio for 15 years, and many are collected in her book Bitterbrush Country: Living on the Edge of the Land.
In addition to founding the Trailing of the Sheep Festival, Josephy Peavey has been an invited poet at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, was the first director of the Idaho Rural Council and the Literature Director for the Idaho Commission on the Arts.
Wagon Days takes place over Labor Day Weekend. The Peavey’s will be honored at the Grand Marshals’ Ceremony on Friday, Sept. 3, at Ketchum Town Square. The Grand Marshals’ Ceremony is the official kick-off of Wagon Days Weekend culminating with the Big Hitch Parade on Saturday, Sept. 4.
