Novato Readies For July 4 Parade

NOVATO, CA — Novato is readying to hold its first July 4 parade in three years.

One of the Bay Area’s largest Independence Day parades typically attracting up to 10,000 visitors.

The parade, which will be held Monday at 10 a.m. on Grant Avenue, follows a tradition that goes back at least 100 years, possibly spanning three decades, a Novato historian said.

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, which was held in 1908.

"It's a community (event)," Novato historian and former guild president Mike Read told Patch in a 2013 interview.

"That's what it was back then and what it is now."

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 Western Weekend, an annual festival 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."