1966 Pioneer Day Paso Robles | Photos from the Vault

1966 Pioneer Day

September 16, 2008 – 10:08 pm

The Lions Club and volunteer firefighters cooked the beans in City Park.

Drawing enthusiastic applause was the 10-mule team driven by Fred Healy of Paso Robles. The team pulled a train of grain wagons just as they might have in the early days when farmers brought their grain in from the Carrisa Plains.

October 8, 1966

Depending on how you look at it this post is about a month too early…or 42 years too late.

Pioneer Day 2008 will be here Saturday, October 11th (corrected date, thanks for the fix Wordy Dave, I read the wrong date on the poster.)

By the mid-1960’s Pioneer day was already a venerable institution.The first Pioneer Day was held in 1931 but I’ll bet conversations weren’t that different. There were plenty of bank failures to talk about back then too.

Looking at the 1966 photos you can see changes in the town but the parade and bean feed look much the same as they do today.

Volunteers and local business keep the event close to its roots, lunch is still free after the parade.As they say, “Leave your pocket book at home.”

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Another story on the front page was the beginning of a multi-part series on the health of San Luis Creek, the topic of the next post.

2 Responses to “1966 Pioneer Day”
Great pictures! They set up the bean feed on 12th Street now, but you can’t beat that vintage taste!

Pioneer Day will be October 11 this year. It’s always the Saturday before Columbus Day, which is on the 12th.

Hope to see you there!

If you’d like to see some vintage movies from the 30’s taken of the parade (and the one I took in 1970), visit YouTube.com and enter ‘Wordydave’ in the Search.

By Dave Skinner on Sep 17, 2008
It’s just so sad, that folks who moved here from the “big city” failed to absorb the tradition and fun that was Pioneer Day. No beer in public or the park during the parade? No better seat on the route, was found anywhere else but the Rodeo Bar….not to mention we were very close to the beans!

The “big city” attitude has also spoiled the wonderful Cruise Nights that centered on the park. Some of the most wonderful hot rods, and custom cars from around the state would gather in Paso. Well, they did until the Police informed the drivers that could no longer back into the parking slots around the park, then basically closed the park to Cruise Night’ers. That sure was a lot of revenue for the north county, tossed away because of the lack of small town attitude.

I suppose I can say that for a lot of SLO county towns.

By SSG David Medzyk on Sep 17, 2008