In 1975, about 300 people, mostly gay men and lesbians, drank beer and enjoyed hot dogs in City Creek Canyon near downtown Salt Lake City. Local organizers called it "Gay Freedom Day," and the event was a chance for the gay community in Utah to gather - in public.

Ron Hunt, then 23, read a tiny ad about the event in his college newspaper in Logan. So he hitchhiked to the gathering because "I'd never been around other gay people in my entire life."

Hunt, now 55, recalls the picnic as " an extremely uplifting and energizing experience."

More than three decades later, the event now known as Utah Pride is expected to draw more than 25,000 people during its three-day weekend celebration, which starts today and features what has grown into the state's second-largest parade.

Still, as popular as the festival has become, and as ecstatic as they are that the event continues to grow, Pride veterans says they don't want the younger generations to forget the event's history and the years that it has taken for the gay community to be acknowledged in Utah.

"Pride is more than a party," said 57-year-old Ben Williams, the state's unofficial gay community historian. "It shows we want equality. We want rights. We're not second-class citizens."

When he moved here in 1963, Joe Redburn, a gay activist and businessman, said he remembers that men were not allowed to dance with each other at the city's only gay bar, Radio City Lounge.

Nikki Boyer, a 65 year-old lesbian who came to Utah in 1970, said the only places she could openly visit with gay men or other lesbians and feel safe were at a handful of bars, including the Sun Tavern that opened in 1972.

"It was the only place we could meet without getting the [expletive] beat out of us," Boyer said.

Pride originated in New York City in 1969 as a protest against discrimination and violence against gays, evolving into gay pride festivals that are now held worldwide.

At that first Utah event in '75, there was no stage, no entertainment. A crowd laughed over beer, burgers and dogs, then moved to the Sun Tavern to keep the party going.

In the ensuing years, the event was held at various parks around Salt Lake County and has steadily attracted more people, including national gay activists.

But Hunt, one of the inaugural participants, recalled that people were also terrified of rallying because they feared the repercussions of attending Pride if their boss, co-workers or neighbors saw them.

"We knew we were being discriminated against, and it was at least up to us to stop discriminating against ourselves," he said.

During a Pride celebration in the late '80s at a Murray park, Boyer remembered about a dozen men showed up chanting "queer" and "die fagot die." But, the crowd turned its back to them and the group finally left.

But beyond that incident and the occasional verbal insult, she says Pride has been a safe event.

"The more we are out and people see we are people too, it helps us gain acceptance," Boyer said. "We were definitely making inroads."

Williams moved to Utah in 1973 to attend Brigham Young University.

After marrying and later divorcing, he became openly gay on Feb. 4, 1986. A few months later Williams attended his first Pride celebration. His was one of just six booths at that festival, selling what he called "whole-wheat fagot cookies" to raise money for a gay Mormon support group.

"It [was] like a family reunion," he recalled. "You knew everybody."

This year, the Utah Pride Center, the nonprofit group that runs the festival, is expecting 160 vendors.

Williams says the event has become too big for his taste; he stopped going six years ago. But Boyer says she's proud of how much Utah Pride has grown.

There was a time when she couldn't have imagined that Salt Lake City would have a gay center with a coffee shop, or a place where lesbians could walk down the street holding hands. That's what she wants younger Utah gays to keep in mind.

"They're very fortunate," Boyer said. "It's important they know whose shoulders they stand on."

For Hunt, this weekend marks 33 consecutive years of going to Utah Pride.

"It's my Christmas and my New Year's," he said. "It's truly an experience where none of the vindictive and . . . dehumanizing things that have happened to me in my life have any power."

jsanchez@sltrib.com