It was a sight to behold: elephants marching through the streets of New York City, thousands of spectators crowding the sidewalks in fours and fives hoping to catch a glimpse of the creatures.

It was Thanksgiving Day 1924, and the elephants—accompanied by bears, monkeys, tigers, camels, donkeys, and lions—were residents of the Central Park Zoo, marching in a brand new parade sponsored by Macy’s department store.

The parade, which also included clowns, festive nursery rhyme floats and Santa Claus himself, was such a spectacular success that the store decided to hold the parade annually. This is how the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, now often referred to as “America’s Parade,” began 100 years ago.

But the parade wasn’t just a publicity or marketing stunt. The parade was created by store employees, many of whom were first-generation immigrants.

“Most of them were European immigrants who wanted to celebrate American Thanksgiving with a European parade tradition,” said Valerie Paley, senior vice president of the New-York Historical Society. “The first parade…it just had a sort of festive but very local Macy’s aspect to it.”

Will Coss, the current executive producer of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, told the Guardian that he sees the parade as “a gift from Macy’s colleagues to America.”

It was originally called the Macy’s Christmas Parade to mark the start of the season. But it was also much longer than today’s route of 2.5 miles (4 km). In the early years, the animals, employees and clowns marched from 145th Street to 34th Street.

After just three years, “they decided to give up on the zoo animal idea because the tigers and lions obviously scared the children!” Paley told the Guardian with a laugh.

Instead, they were replaced with animal-shaped “upside-down puppets inflated with air and carried on sticks,” Coss described. “It wasn’t until 1929, at the sixth parade, that helium-filled balloons were introduced for the first time.”

Then a new tradition began: After the parade ended, organizers simply released balloons into the sky with a return label from Macy’s sewn into them. Anyone intrepid enough to find and return one would win a prize.

But the plan had consequences. In 1932, a 22-year-old pilot nearly died and killed a passenger while trying to catch a cat-shaped balloon at 5,000 feet after the parade.

“The desire to decapitate one of the giant, helium-filled ‘beasts’ released … caused Miss Annette Gibson to crash her plane onto the grotesquely shaped balloon,” a UP Wire report published shortly thereafter reported. “The balloon rotated under the impact and wrapped around the wing of the aircraft. The ship went into a tailspin and hit the ground.”

The passenger, their flight instructor, managed to take control of the plane, avoid a crash and save both their lives. This was the last year Macy’s offered a reward for collected balloons.

The parade was held annually until it was canceled in 1942 out of respect for World War II.

“Macy’s president Jack Straus announced in 1942 that the parade would be canceled during the war,” Paley said. “The mayor was at his side and Straus deflated the parade’s Green Dragon balloon and donated the rubber to the U.S. military. In all, Macy’s donated approximately 650 pounds of balloon gum to the fight, and that was only appropriate in wartime.”

The parade resumed in 1945. But those lost years meant that while this year marks the 100th anniversary of the parade, it will only be the 98th parade.

Other less pleasant moments in the parade’s 100-year history included the 1963 parade, which took place just four days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Despite national mourning, the parade continued.

“Macy’s decided the cancellation would be a disappointment to millions of children,” The New York Times reported.

However, Paley noted that “the parade floats this year were clad only in black to honor the president’s death.”

This year, an estimated 3.5 million people will watch the parade in person and an impressive 30 million are expected to watch on television, turning a once small, immigrant-founded parade into a national sensation.

“Everyone tunes in,” Paley said. “It has a kind of universal quality…It becomes kind of a national symbol for the beginning of the holiday.”