The first Goleta festival was a one day affair in late August dubbed the Magnolia Festival and held on Magnolia Street, between Hollister and Mandarin. It was in part a celebration of Magnolia being the first street in Goleta off the Old Coast Highway to be paved. The event got a lot of media hype beforehand and the community got excited for a new festival. If you read this article, you’ll notice it says they will be giving away a live baby? We’re hoping that’s an error…
Every business in town was excited about the event and wanted to advertise for the expected crowds. Created by the Goleta Valley Chamber of Commerce, the event was intended to “Encompass the business and social life of the entire valley”
Earlier they had a contest for the public to name the festival, so it was kind of a slam dunk for Mrs. Stanley Smith when she came up with the name “Magnolia Festival” for a festival that was going to be on Magnolia Street. Here she is, thrilled to be collecting her $10 prize.
It started at 6 PM, and after the kids had their fill of pony rides and special music and movies, they went home and made room for the adults. The crowd swelled at 8 PM as the festivities formally started with the singing of “America”, a flag salute followed by a brief prayer and then Supervisor William Hollister spoke briefly to say that with the completion of the Cachuma Dam project, Goleta will become, “The garden spot of the world.” Then a big shot from the Chamber got up and told everyone to plant a Magnolia tree in their yard, so that one day, Goleta will be known as “The city of magnolias!”
After the speeches, prizes like puppies, chickens and kitchen appliances were given out, with the highlight being a live pig awarded to the Superintendent of Schools. After all that, the Starlighters Orchestra kicked in and the street dance started, going late into the night. Meanwhile, Goleta Constable Steve Austin kept the traffic on the highway moving while sporting his “special uniform for the occasion”.
This article from the day after described the successful event. Goleta residents, ranchers from miles around and Santa Barbarans all came together to form a huge crowd of 3,000 people for the one night event. So successful in fact, they decided that night to make it an annual event and bump it up to two days!
The next day, the magnolia tree planting ceremony took place at the Goleta Union School with some very important looking dignitaries and a square shovel. One of them is Supervisor William Hollister.
The Girl Scouts were on the job, and one brave Girl Scout provided the entertainment with her very large accordion. Notice the huge vacant lot across the street from the Goleta Union School with a For Sale sign on it and all that open space behind that…
So, as of August 1949, Goleta was well on the way to becoming the city of magnolias. The Magnolia Festival continued on for over a decade, until 1962.
While it was officially the Magnolia Festival, it was sometimes just called the Goleta Valley Fair or the Goleta Festival.
And every year it was promised to be a bigger and better event than the year before. Some years, the local paper saw fit to run a special Souvenir Edition.
And local merchants were eager to be involved.
In the third Magnolia Festival, they decide to add the excitement of crowning a Magnolia Queen to “reign over the festival”. The contestants were required to sell tickets, which counted as votes, and who ever sold the most tickets was the queen.
This became a regular feature for future Magnolia Festivals.
Rusty Wolgamott ran for queen at least one year before she eventually was married to Chili Eckert of Rexall Goleta fame.
Most years, a parade was on the list of events and always a favorite.
They usually featured floats, marching bands, cool cars, horses and lots of kids.
The Goleta Boys Club had a great float in the 1954 parade.
And there were some creative youngsters that came up with their own original floats. Notice the forward diagonal parking in the background.
The parade participants lined up at the brand new Airport Drive-In and walked down Hollister to the Goleta Union School.
These photos of the 1953 parade were provided by Susan Muncaster, daughter of the Goleta Postman Bill Muncaster.
Little Susan got the hang of this parade thing real quick.
The Magnolia Festival got a little bigger every passing year, as did the population of Goleta.
Some years they set up big circus tents on Hollister for the exhibits to be on display for days on end.
The exhibits inside these tents were of “Agricultural, industrial and business interests”.
This exhibit about Goleta lemons from the early 1950s was a sign of things to come for the future lemon festivals.
There were games for kids of all ages and locals all pitched in to help run all these events.
The Magnolia Festival was a great community event for all ages. And where else could you get a Lu-Lu Pup?
Or hang out with Tootie the clown while your waiting for the parade to start!
The 1953 festival had a special appearance by a certified Hollywood star. Emma the elephant marched in the parade with a Goleta big shot riding on her back and then stuck around for a couple of hours afterwards to do some tricks for the kids.
Getting a big Hollywood star to appear was no easy task and of course the proper paperwork and fees had to be filed.
Just when you thought a celebrity elephant was amazing, the following year they pulled out all the stops with a local ventriloquist!
While the Magnolia Festival seemed to get bigger every year, for some reason the event lost money in 1954. In 1955, it was postponed and delayed due to the Refugio Fire, resulting in another deficit year.
Then in 1956, it did not happen, due to a lack of support and funding. Businesses were tired of carrying the weight by providing the manpower needed to set up and take down everything needed to put on a big festival. It was a huge undertaking every year.
Several local surveys were taken and the large majority of citizens wanted the festival to continue, but getting people to commit to helping was a problem, as was the cost. Plans were made to have it in the spring to coincide with the Flower Festival, but that never happened. Sadly, the Magnolia Festival had run its course and Goleta wouldn’t have a festival for many years to come.
By 1969, the little agricultural town of Goleta had changed, a lot. With the onset of the Cold War, Camp Cooke in Lompoc was renamed Vandenberg Air Force Base and changed from an Army camp to a missile base in 1958. This brought a new demand for technological research and development to our area. By the 1960s, Goleta was now home to a major University, a growing airport, and R & D had replaced agriculture as the biggest industry in Goleta. As Supervisor Hollister had predicted, the completion of Lake Cachuma provided enough water for a new housing boom. Huge companies set up shop in Goleta, brought thousands of new people in from all around the nation and the ag lands were quickly covered with tract homes. Accordingly, a new festival was organized to celebrate these changes.
Research and Development Month was the brainchild of a recent Goleta transplant, Betty Rosness. Her husband had retired from the Air Force and they moved to Goleta in 1968. Betty quickly became very involved in the community, sitting on the boards of several local non-profits and starting her own advertising business. She said she started R&D Month because Goleta needed a theme. Santa Barbara had Fiesta, Solvang had a Danish flavor, “but Goleta was nothing but sprawling homes.” She took her idea to the Chamber of Commerce, but they had no money to help her, so she went to local banks and then door to door to get support for the idea.
Much like the Chamber had done with the Magnolia Festival, Betty wanted an event to highlight all the exciting work being done around the Goleta Valley and the new “smokeless industry”. The official slogan was, “Goleta, Research and Development Center, USA”. Events included lectures by local scientists, tours of facilities, a science fair, a Day in the Sky, seminars at UCSB and a grand banquet at the Timbers Restaurant.
The local paper had a special R&D edition with schedules of events and advertisements from research firms. Multiple banks had exhibits set up in their lobby featuring R&D firms in town.
If you thought magnolias and lemons were boring…..maybe a modular system was more your thing?
For whatever reason, the Orchid Bowl on Calle Real featured a huge model of a brand new B-1 bomber.
Just like the Magnolia Festival, R&D Month had a queen. But this time it was a straight vote and there were lots of great prizes for the queen.
Kathy Lemaster was the 1970 R&D Queen and she raked in the goods at a luncheon at the Holiday Inn on Calle Real. The plethora of prizes included a pizza from Petrinis, cologne and powder from Rexall Drug, a Sunbeam coffee pot, a year’s subscription to the Goleta Valley Sun, dinners from the Timbers, Horn O’ Plenty, Orchid Bowl, Bray’s, Sambos, gifts from Fairview Hobby Crafts, Valley Nutrition Center, Baroni Jewelers, Swingers Golf Center, the Record Rack, Peg’s Too, Tevis Togs, a shampoo and cut at Disco Beauty Salon, a picture from Decor Furniture, an oil change, a lube job, and the list just keeps going! Suffice it to say, the R&D Queen took in quite a haul!
With all those prizes at stake, it’s no wonder every year there were plenty of young ladies willing to be the R & D Queen.
Not to mention, you would get to be in the newspaper a lot! And you got to rub elbows with all the movers and shakers in the Goleta business world.
One year there was tie, making two ladies the R&D Co-Queens. Looking back through media coverage, this queen thing seemed to be the highlight of the festival.
In 1973, during the fifth annual R&D Month, merchants in downtown Goleta decided they wanted to do their own thing. They weren’t getting any of the limelight during R&D Month, it was all about the new industries and the newcomers. In fact, the Hollister business district was starting to be called Old Town. Business owners like Chili Eckert, Bill Leach and Jay Torrey wanted to remind the public that downtown Goleta was still alive and kicking with a festival more like the Magnolia Festival. So they formed the Downtown Business District and they decided to call their three day event Old Goleta Days, This event would focus on the history of Goleta and smaller locally owned businesses.
The Old Goleta Days event was all in downtown on Hollister and featured booths, a street dance, and of course, a parade. The President of the Chamber went above and beyond the call of duty to bring attention to the new event.
Old Goleta Days was a hit because it brought back the ever popular parade that R&D Month didn’t provide. It started at the Goleta Union School and ended down by Fed Mart, where Yardi Systems is today. Goleta merchant Bill Leach said, “To pull the merchants together as one unit was the reason” for a local festival. Talking about motivating people to participate, Bill said he had to “go to every merchant before every meeting” and remind them to attend.
And as usual, everybody loved the parade. Recognize the building in the background?
So right smack dab in the middle of R&D Month, folks were encouraged to dress up like the old west for the “Goleta Olden Days Parade”.
The Dos Pueblos Chargers Drill Team strutting their stuff and Santa Cruz Market proudly displaying all their hot deals.
Chili Eckert from the Goleta Rexall rode in the parade as the Grand Marshal with his family and some friends.
Awards were given out for parade participants and the winner of solo equestrian award went to Robin Hill, who is today a local historian and one of the saviors of the historic Beck House.
In 1974, Old Goleta Days was expanded to four days and R&D Month was changed to R&D week. Both events continued to happen on different days in October for a couple of more years.
But Old Goleta Days seemed to be the more popular event and it got more media coverage.
Old Goleta Days had a fun parade that featured long time members of the community, like the Kunzes, and food booths and it had a street dance on Nectarine Street! R&D Week had symposiums at UCSB and displays in banks….
But 1976 was the last year for both Old Goleta Days and Research and Development Week. Something new was in the works.
A new, bigger and better event was planned for 1977 that would combine all the former events into one. “Goleta Valley Days” would have the R&D displays, the historic aspects of the Old Goleta Days and the always popular Day In The Sky event all within one festival. And to recognize both the old and the new of Goleta, the parade would start on Calle Real, go over the Fairview overpass into downtown Goleta and end at the Goleta Union School.
The history of Goleta was highlighted and the theme of the event was, “Goleta, the Good Land”. It would have modern exhibits, historic aspects, a parade and of course, a queen. A Grand Slam of festival favorites.
Appropriately, they made historian Walker Tompkins the Grand Marshal of the parade!
The new event was a huge success that included all of the Goleta Valley.
And all of the events were well attended.
Goleta Valley Days was a highly anticipated event year after year.
And just to keep it fresh, every year the parade changed direction, starting at Goleta Union School one year, then starting on Calle Real the next.
Who remembers Sambos and Heidi’s Pies on Calle Real?
Goleta Valley Days was such a popular festival it lasted from 1977 all the way until 1991 and then a change was made…
For 1992, the powers that be decided to make the festival a one day event.
The new event would be called the “Goleta Valley Days Lemon Festival” and it would be a one day event held at one location, the Stow House. No more research and development displays, no more parade. Just food booths, arts and crafts, live entertainment, a petting zoo, magicians and classic cars. And instead of a queen, they would have both a male and female Outstanding Teen of the Year. The idea was to get more people to come to a one day event at one location.
And so it was, for many years to come. A one day event that was well attended and appropriately held at the home of the man that brought the lemon industry to Goleta, Sherman Stow.
Around 2000, they moved the Lemon Festival to the brand new Girsh Park in the Camino Real Shopping Center and changed the name to the California Lemon Festival in Goleta.
And it continues every fall, usually in October, just like the first Magnolia Festival back in 1949.
While the Magnolia Festival and Goleta Valley Days were put on by local businessmen trying to bring attention to their town, today’s California Lemon Festival is more of a corporate driven event, seemingly aimed more at tourists than the locals.
For 30 years it has been a well attended event, making the Lemon Festival the longest running Goleta festival of them all. A family event with lots of rides, live bands, a classic car show, a pie eating contest and lemon beer, the Lemon Festival continues to draw a crowd year after year.
Sources: Goleta Valley Historical Society, Goleta Valley Sun, Santa Barbara News Press, Hope Muncaster, Goleta Valley Times, Dennis Williams, Butch Eckert
We’re back to diagonal parking, perhaps Goleta government will mandate 1950 prices & beliefs next?
So typical of the irrational fallacious childish intellectually dishonest arguments we see here, That something was common in the 1950s doesn’t alone make it a bad thing. And this is one of the most ridiculous slippery slope fallacies I’ve ever seen … creating diagonal parking spaces of course has no connection with and won’t lead to mandating prices or beliefs, neither of which is legal or feasible.
Also, the diagonal parking of the 1950’s was primarily head-in, not back-in. Here are some other things that have been brought back from the past, with modifications: instant cameras, record players, clothing and furniture styles, sneakers, electric cars, streetcars, artisanal soda pop, tiny and pre-fab homes. …
If you’re going to argue intelligently and honestly about diagonal parking, do it on the merits, not like this.
Such a fun read – thanks Tom for posting this. Amazing to see the background of the GV foothills in that photo of the Girl Scouts. Wow, what a difference. Look at all that land.