Founder's Day Parade and Sawdust Festival

At eleven o’clock on a Saturday in August, the parade comes down Alpine Meadow Road in Shingletown. It brings floats, antique cars, motorcycles, local dignitaries, fire fighters, and townspeople. Children along the route carry bags, as the organizers advise, for the candy thrown from the entries. The parade opens the Founder’s Day Parade and Sawdust Festival, which runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the grounds of the Shingletown Library, at the corner of Highway 44 and Wilson Hill Road. The 2026 festival fell on Saturday, August 8. The 2025 edition, which the library listed simply as Founder’s Day, was held August 9 and opened an hour earlier, at 9 a.m.

The library describes the day as a celebration of “Shingletown’s beginnings as a lumbering and shingle manufacturing community.” The library and Visit Shingletown both call it one of the town’s biggest events of the year. Kari Chilson, writing in Shasta Unfiltered in July 2026, called it the biggest.

The library grounds on festival day

After the parade the crowd spreads over the library grounds. Food vendors and craft vendors cover the grounds, along with booths and activities run by local not-for-profits. Shasta Unfiltered counted more than 65 vendors for 2026. A band plays through the day for listening and dancing. There is cotton candy, and there are cold drinks, adult ones among them. Children have games with prizes, a Pokémon-themed lollipop pull, and a Living History Area. The library keeps a bake sale going and runs duck races in the creek. Its 2025 notice was less certain and promised “probably a duck race.”

The day also brings the drawing for what the library calls the Scratcher Tree Raffle and Visit Shingletown calls the Lottery Tree Raffle. Tickets for the “Lotto Scratcher tree” were already on sale at the library’s Book Faire in June.

A library with no county behind it

The festival belongs to the library, and the library belongs to no government. By its own account, the idea for it was born in the fall of 1988, and the doors of the present building opened in June 1994. Volunteers conceived it, donations and volunteer labor built it, and volunteers staff it entirely today. It has no connection to any city, county, or governmental agency and takes none of its funding from them. The shelves hold more than 13,500 books. Patrons can also borrow DVDs, audio books, and cake pans. Used books not kept for the shelves go to sale on Amazon or in the Book Shed on the grounds.

In September 2026 the library put its operating costs at approximately $2,700 a month. It named the work still waiting: the wheelchair ramp needs repair, several areas need paint, and the outside of the building needs maintenance. Founder’s Day is the largest of the gatherings on the same ground that help cover those costs. The library holds a used book sale and vendor fair in June. It held a luau in July 2025. Tacos and Talent comes in September, with Shingletown’s own Bear Creek Band. A farmers market runs on Tuesday afternoons through September, and a flea market fills the meadow in October. On a summer Tuesday, children picnic under the trees by the stream and read to Miss Midnight, a reading-program dog, and her handler, Shari Meier.

In December the Clampers flip the switch on the big evergreen on the library grounds. At the 2025 lighting, Santa arrived on a fire truck.