122nd Tournament Of Roses Parade

When hearing an advertisement for the 122nd Tournament of Roses Parade it made me begin to wonder as I did the math. This distinguished event goes all the way back to 1890? My curiosity got the better of me as I went time traveling to a day and age when something that started out so simple became this grand event known as America's New Years Celebration. Take the trip with me.

It was a time of the alliterative Mansions of the Midwestern Magnates. Much of what we enjoy today is the result of the spirited vision of titans and kings of industry who brought their science and ingenuity with them when they put down roots here in California. The Tournament House itself is the refurbished Wrigley Mansion, of chewing gum fame. This stately Italian Renaissance-style mansion alone is enough to stop and want to divert the tour but we'll save it for now as a footnote, we'll plan a trip down "Millionaires' Row" for another day.

We continue our time travel to the private Pasadena Valley Hunt Club where in the winter of 1890, the idea was born to try to bring attention to sunny Southern California, a "Mediterranean of the West" presented for the purpose of inviting former east coast neighbors to a respite from the cold. This visual was romantic to me; horse and carriage and street cars, putting on games such as chariot races and jousting, foot races, polo, and tug-of-war all enjoyed under the warm California sun.

Bloom where you are planted was more than a motto for the trademark blossoms that gave birth to the notion that Professor Charles F. Holder announced in the effort to convince, "In New York, people are buried in snow. Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let's hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise."

Well, there was the Wrigley Mansion to serve as the barn, the abundance of fresh flowers to showcase Pasadena's charm as the cast; why not put on a parade where the carriages can be decorated with those blooms as the show to precede the games...and the tournament was born!

In just five years the Tournament of Roses Association was established. By 1890, only ten years from it's beginnings the games expanded to include ostrich races, bronco busting demonstrations and a race between a camel and a triumphant elephant. Knowing you can't keep a good social event down, the festival continued to expand to include marching bands and motorized floats. Stands were erected along the parade route and soon it was a media event which had grown too large for the Valley Hunt Club to handle.

The town lot famous for being the site of the first Rose Bowl Game in 1902 had officially been renamed Tournament Park the year before. A private park maintained by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, it served as the venue for Caltech's football team with a capacity of 43,000.

The very first
Rose Bowl Game




As we traverse the years and return to the present day, 2011 marks the 122nd Rose Parade and 97th Rose Bowl Game. The Pasadena Tournament Of Roses Association founded by the efforts of Charles Frederick Holder and Francis F. Rowland, is a non-profit organization comprised of nearly 1,000 community volunteers. These members all live or work within 15 miles of Pasadena City Hall and range in age from 21 to 64. According to the Association, they must have "a reputation for integrity, reliability, dependability, commitment and dedication." This labor of love's combined 80,000 man-power hours to stage the event is a testament to this type of social bonding and is what produces "a festival of flowers, music and equestrians and sports unequaled anywhere in the world."

The Tournament of Roses has come a long way since those early days. From what the times have available for us to play with, the Rose Parade’s submissions start with a simple sketch and develop in the magical place of imagination and the high-tech computerization of animation. I wonder what the folks of bygone days would think of today's elaborate floats going beyond the roses and including exotic natural materials from around the world.

Festivities in Tournament
Park, 1893.
Courtesy of the
Los Angeles Public Library.









The advancement of science and technology have most of the floats being built by professional float building companies these days and take as much as a year to construct while there are still a few floats built exclusively by volunteers from their sponsoring communities. Either way, the effort has become world renowned and culminates with millions of viewers tuning in on New Year's morning to enjoy this simple celebration of blossoms and bounty identifying a sunny land with the communal spirit of social gathering known as the Tournament of Roses Parade.

Happy New Year!