Community Corner
Novato History in Pictures: July 4 Parade, 1908 Style
The Novato Historical Guild shared photos of the former township's July 4 parade from the early 20th Century.
Visitors pouring onto Grant Avenue for Novato's July 4 parade on Thursday will be following a North Bay tradition that goes back at least 100 years, and possibly spans three centuries.
Novato historians say the parade probably started at around the turn of the 20th century and possibly goes back to the 1800s. The Novato Historical Guild shared photos with Patch of early some 20th Century July 4 parades. The photos show Novato's oldest documented Independence Day parade in 1908.
This year's July 4 parade is the 21st annual in its current form. It is one of the biggest Bay Area Independence Day parades, typically attracting up to 10,000 visitors.
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The spirit of the uniquely Americana event hasn't changed much since revelers celebrated their patriotism on the unpaved roads that today is Novato's downtown.
"It's a community (event)," Novato historian and former guild president Mike Read said. "That's what it was back then and what it is now."
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But the event has evolved.
The Novato township stopped holding the parade in the early 1920s, Read said, noting difficulties finding volunteers to put the weekend long event on. Today's parade organizers feel their pain, putting on the event with an all-volunteer staff of less than 20.
The event resumed in the 1950s as the Western Weekend, an annual festival was typically held after school let out in late June, Read said.
Western Weekend was cancelled in the late 1970s.
"Rumor has it they did until the motorcycle gangs started showing up and then they decided they better not do it anymore," Read said.
A 1963 Novato Advance article by Frances Bond McGlauflin paints a nostalgic portrait of the July 4 parades of the early 20th Century as "one of the most carefully planned celebrations in the whole year, and included the pre-Fourth dance, the queen contest, a parade committee, a huge barbecue, a baseball game, the greased pole and greased pig contests and the sack races."
"The day meant something," McGlauflin wrote. "The services in the old square were well attended, and there was entertainment galore."
