AMNA NAWAZ: Well, this summer, many of the celebrations for America's 250th birthday will be grand in scope, an IndyCar race around Washington D.C., a Great American State Fair, and a mixed martial arts fight on the South lawn of the White House.

But in communities across the country, smaller celebrations are also taking place, hoping to use some of the year's patriotic energy to engage their neighbors and transcend political divisions that can overshadow so much of civic life today.

Judy Woodruff reports as part of her series America at a Crossroads.

JUDY WOODRUFF: On a picture-perfect spring morning, a group of British soldiers are preparing for battle.

Nearby, a camp of Patriots is doing the same before starting a mile-long march to meet their enemy.

But instead of a trek through lightly settled wilderness, these soldiers are navigating a modern-day New Jersey town, including traffic, narrow sidewalks and a march past a marijuana dispensary.

Waiting for the two sides to clash is a small crowd here to witness a reenactment of the Battle of Bound Brook.

Colonial soldiers trade fire with the Redcoats near the spot where, 249 years earlier, about 500 Patriots were attacked by nearly 4,000 British Crown troops.

Like that day in April of 1777, the Americans put up a spirited fight, only to eventually retreat from the British.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The local connection and spectacle was infectious.

CHILD: We've been to a lot of these and it's -- this was definitely the noisiest of them all.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Chen family came dressed in their own period costumes.

TERESA CHEN, Spectator: For all of us being able to appreciate beyond just the pages of a book what our history is as a nation and to see it come to life like this has really helped our own patriotism and our own appreciation of our nation.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David Valla lives in Bound Brook with his family.

DAVID VALLA, Spectator: To have this kind of history in our city, in our town, something to be really proud of.

I know the outcome already, unfortunately.

I know it's an L for the Patriots, but just excited to be a part of it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Rob Schulte and his son Jack came to portray loyalist militia.

ROB SCHULTE, Reenactor: Usually, we are our Patriot Continental line, but today we're filling in and helping out the Brits.

And I guess for the day it's God save the king.

JUDY WOODRUFF: This reenactment is an annual event, but as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, Schulte says celebrations like this have taken on greater importance.

ROB SCHULTE: There's a lot of division in our country, but if there's one thing that we all have in common, that we can all agree upon, it is the ideals of our founding, our ideas of liberty and equality and the fact that we fought together as a nation through all of our differences to achieve that.

I think there's no better reminder than the 250th anniversary of that for all Americans.

THEODORE R. JOHNSON, Us@250 Initiative, New America: I thought, coming into this, that it would be a moment where people would just for a minute put aside whatever their issues were with the other side of the political aisle.

It has not been that at all.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Theodore Johnson is a columnist at the Washington Post and a retired commander in the U.S.

Navy.

He's also a senior adviser at New America, a center left think tank in Washington, where he leads the Us@250 Initiative.

THEODORE R. JOHNSON: We wanted this to be a moment that Americans could take intense pride in the progress of the country.

We also wanted it to be a moment where Americans could reckon with the things the country has gotten and is still getting wrong.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Given the national mood, Us@250 is supporting local efforts around the themes of pride, reckoning and aspiration, a pivot after realizing that the 2024 election made a more national effort feel too tied up with politics and the polarization that comes with it.

THEODORE R. JOHNSON: The national celebration has its place, but instead of having a trickle-down patriotism from the sort of national celebration, this is a grassroots kind of patriotism I think that will bubble up hopefully and change the course of the country.

My view of it is, the best future of the country is in our communities and not here in D.C.

JUDY WOODRUFF: On the Southwest side of Denver, we attended one of the more eccentric examples of a grassroots civic effort.

Lucha libre wrestlers were only part of the draw for the Tax Day Carnival.

ADRIAN H. MOLINA, Warm Cookies of the Revolution: Maybe you're proud to pay.

Maybe you're like, what in the world is going on?

What's this money?

What's happening?

Either way, it's carnival.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Adrian Molina was an inaugural fellow with New America's Us@250 initiative and he's one of the forces behind the group memorably named Warm Cookies of the Revolution.

ADRIAN H. MOLINA: We are a civic health club.

And for us, it's all about bringing people together, people who may not normally come together, at the same place at the same time.

And our vehicles for doing that are arts, culture and fun.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Leading with fun meant face painting, circus performers and free food and carnival games that incorporate ideas around how society pays for what it needs.

AMANDA DONNELLY, Tax Day Carnival Attendee: I thought that we would be handing over our WTOs to somebody as we stood in line and maybe we would get a lemonade.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Amanda Donnelly brought her granddaughter.

It's the first Warm Cookies event she's attended.

AMANDA DONNELLY: Understand that we can come together and, even if we have differences, enjoy each other's company.

And be together in community is really important.

And I think that's what America was founded on, right?

It was some people with a shared vision enacting it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Warm Cookies also has programming focused on suburban communities and a project targeted to rural areas called Future Town, which reimagines what small towns could be.

The concept, like the Tax Day Carnival, is to lead with elements that will engage a cross-section of people.

ADRIAN H. MOLINA: We're thinking about civics in new ways, and we're thinking broadly.

And so, for example, if you bring a group of Democrats together to have a hard conversation with a group of Republicans, we know how that conversation is going to go.

We have seen that play out for generations.

We're trying to open up space for new connections to be made.

MARIA MONCLOVA, Tax Day Carnival Attendee: I didn't know that, like, the civic conversation was going to happen, but we came because we were drawn to it with the lucha libre, with the mariachi, with the food.

But then now, once the community is here, it's like a good way of attracting us.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Maria Monclova is an immigration attorney who's from this neighborhood.

MARIA MONCLOVA: Right now, with everything happening, I think it's very important for a community to celebrate what the country was based on, which is immigrants, which is diversity, which is getting involved.

And this is a great opportunity for our community to get together, especially right now that we're celebrating the 250th anniversary.

JUDY WOODRUFF: This is the semiquincentennial year.

It also happens to be Colorado's 150th.

Is that an opportunity, do you think, for the work that you're doing, a special opportunity?

ADRIAN H. MOLINA: It's a big opportunity.

We feel like, as people are thinking about this long history, and we're thinking about it as a history, but also a beginning, it's a bookmark.

We have experienced a lot of chapters.

There are more chapters ahead, and we can write this next 250 years any way that we wish.

JOHN DWYER, Reenactor: I have got nearly 80 buttons.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Back in Bound Brook, John Dwyer dons a Continental soldier uniform he first wore as a National Parks employee in New Jersey on the eve of the bicentennial in the 1970s.

JOHN DWYER: We held events that drew out tens of thousands of visitors.

That was more than a lot of parks will get in a year, and we were getting that in a weekend.

But it was the bicentennial.

Everybody was fired up for the bicentennial.

This 250th, it has revived a lot of that kind of feeling, but it's tough to get people to come out to stuff.

I mean, there's not a bad crowd here today, but it's not the thousands I might have remembered.

JUDY WOODRUFF: After portraying the British victory in the morning, the two sides reverse roles in the afternoon, making their way back through this central new Jersey town while exchanging volleys of gunfire, a reminder of the fight for our independence and a hope for a more peaceful future.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Judy Woodruff.