Mariposa Butterfly Festival

Just inside the entrance to the Mariposa County Fairgrounds, behind the information booth, is the Butterfly Pavilion. At 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on both days of the Mariposa Butterfly Festival, children come to the pavilion and are each given a live butterfly resting on a fresh orange slice. The butterfly feeds from the fruit while the child looks at the wings and the small legs. When it has finished, it flies off by itself. Volunteers keep handing out butterflies until they run out, and the releases cost nothing.

The butterflies come from Insect Lore, a mail-order supplier that calls itself “the Original Butterflies-By-Mail Company.” The festival’s own page says many of them are monarchs. Sierra News Online, describing the 2014 festival, called them Painted Lady releases. ABC30 put the 2015 count at nearly 4,000, Sierra News Online counted about 5,000 in 2017, and a 2024 story from the Yosemite Mariposa County Tourism Bureau gave “some 4,000.”

The festival takes place on the first weekend in May, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is $10 per adult per day, and children 12 and under get in free. Parking in the official lots costs $5, which goes to Rotary International. Visitors who would rather walk can park free along the highway. The festival describes itself as Mariposa’s second-largest annual event and lists the fairgrounds at 5007 Fairgrounds Road as sixty minutes’ drive from Yosemite Valley.

Dinosaurs in Building B, a caterpillar on Habitat Row

Jurassic Mariposa fills Building B with lifelike animatronic dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. Visitors walk through it. Greg Little, editor of the Mariposa Gazette, called it in 2025 one of the most popular parts of the festival. Habitat Row opens at the same hour. Along it, community organizations and enthusiasts give out information on butterfly habitats, native plants and conservation, and a 40-foot caterpillar stands over the row.

The children’s area is called Monarch Grove. It has crafts, face painting and balloon art. Several times a day there is a reading called StoryTime with Mari the Monarch, and Southland Industries has donated copies of Mari the Monarch: Legacy of the Wings so that 250 children can take one home. The schedule also lists Nature Songs with Gail and a Claire & Family Sing Song. In the Fairy Village a forest fairy poses for photographs, children build fairy houses, and tickets for the fairy tea parties are sold on the spot. An electric train runs in the upper fairway near the pony rides, and the festival calls it its newest attraction.

The monster trucks, The Big Show and Great Dane, come on Saturday only. The Mariposa Butterfly Car Show opens on the front lawn at 11 a.m. Saturday. On the schedule posted for the May 3–4 weekend, which the Gazette gives as the dates of the 2025 edition, the car show award ceremony on the Front Lawn Stage was followed directly by Little Miss Butterfly & Mr. Monarch. On Sunday morning the same lawn held the 4-H spring small animal exhibition, with bunnies and chicks, and 4-H sold cotton candy alongside it as a fundraiser. The festival’s about page counts 100 vendors and artisans along the fairway, on the lawn and inside the buildings. The tourism bureau’s 2024 story counted more than 75 local vendors selling handmade crafts, apparel, vintage and antique goods, jewelry and food.

Music ran on three stages that weekend: the Amigo Stage, the Front Lawn Stage, and the Monarch Music Bar & Lounge. Yard Dogs held the Front Lawn Stage from 11 to 5 on Saturday. UPS Sue & Line Dancers took the Amigo Stage at noon, followed later by the Mariposa Ukes Ensemble, Inky’s Basement Band and Southern Comfort. The Jespersons closed the lounge at 4:30. On Sunday UPS Sue gave dance lessons, the West Coast Jazz & Ernie Bucio Little Big Band played the front lawn at noon, and Soul Galaxy played the last set at 3. For the 2026 festival the Sunday was billed as International Jazz Day, with the West Coast Jazz Ensemble playing from noon to 2.

“Saturday night is all about dancing,” according to the festival’s about page. It describes people eating on the lawn from blankets in front of the Amigo Stage, with transportation running between the fairgrounds and town for anyone who wants dinner downtown.

Friday downtown, Saturday on Main Street

The weekend starts in town on Friday. A scavenger hunt runs through downtown Mariposa from 3 to 7 p.m., and the first stop is Twisted Cedar, where players pick up the map. At 10 a.m. Saturday the Mariposa Chamber of Commerce Butterfly Parade comes down Main Street, with help from the Lions Club. The tourism bureau’s 2024 account lists rolling bands, equestrians, animals, floats, classic cars, skydivers, “and even a giant butterfly or two.” In 2017 Sierra News Online described the route as coming down Highway 140 in the center of town. Members of SCOPE, the Sheriff’s Community Oriented Policing Effort, founded in 1994, handle traffic and crowd control. The festival says SCOPE has supported it since the start. The tourism bureau also notes that tours of the Mariposa County Courthouse are offered during festival weekend, and it describes the courthouse as the oldest in continuous operation west of the Mississippi.

Habitats in the classrooms

The festival is produced by Mariposa Butterfly Festival, Inc., a volunteer-run 501(c)(3). The same group puts on the Taste of Mariposa, and the money from both pays for a butterfly education program in local schools and at Valley Children’s Hospital. Volunteers led by Terry Rozelle order, prepare, deliver and later collect butterfly habitats, larvae and teaching materials. They serve public classrooms, daycares and homeschool families across the county. According to organizers quoted in 2017, the habitats arrive about a month before the festival. Students measure the caterpillars, keep journals, and follow each one through egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly. When the last butterfly has left its chrysalis, the class releases them all. Kimberly Vaughan, president of the board, told the Gazette in 2025: “It is year-long planning.”

One butterfly and a yard sale on 7th Street

In April 2014 Sierra News Online wrote that the festival had begun nine years earlier with “one butterfly and a yard sale on 7th Street,” quoting co-founder Jeanetta Phillips. She started it with Dell Knell, who had since retired. The two women wanted to bring people into town and help the merchants. At the time, the article noted, the tourist bureau consisted of one person. By 2013 the festival drew more than 7,000 visitors, and organizers expected between 7,000 and 10,000 for the three days in 2014.

The 2014 festival charged no admission and spread across the fairgrounds, the main street, the Art Park and businesses around town. It opened Friday evening at the fairgrounds with the Taste of Mariposa, where for $5 visitors could sample food from county restaurants and see the entries in the Butterfly Hat Competition. On Saturday, anyone in a butterfly costume could fall in at the rear of the parade from 12th Street, across from Happy Burger, and judging took place between 5th and 7th Streets. Sidewalk chalk art went on all weekend, and on Sunday there were free breakfast burritos while they lasted. Phillips described the releases this way: “At the festival, we give the kids an orange slice and they reach into a temporary pavilion, a butterfly house, and the butterfly can’t resist that orange slice.” That year, she said, more than 1,200 children in area schools were raising butterflies. “It really has morphed into something wonderful,” she said. The reporter added: “Wings are not mandatory, though strongly encouraged.”

ABC30 called the 2015 edition the 10th annual festival. That Friday, young students opened the weekend by releasing butterflies, and volunteers set up the Taste of Mariposa at the fairgrounds, with dishes from ribs to ahi nachos. “I’m on an adrenaline high right now,” said Karen Cutter, chairperson of the Commerce Board. Hanna Wackerman of 1850 Restaurant said visitors “get to go to one place and taste all that Mariposa has to offer in one spot.” Mana Fire of Mariposa performed fire dancing at the Arts Park on Saturday evening. “No matter where you go in Mariposa, you’re going to have a butterfly experience,” said Damian Riley, CEO of the Mariposa County Chamber of Commerce.

By 2017 the Taste was for adults only, and that year it fell on Cinco de Mayo with margaritas on offer. On Saturday morning the Paseo de Mariposa held a 5K family run through town and a 12K trail run through Stockton Creek Preserve. UPS Sue and her line dancers performed at the Art Park that year along with Beth Healy, Ronnie Sweeting, Good Medicine and Danny Milsap.

In 2020 the festival and the Taste were both canceled. Board chairman Bill Lowe said the committee had voted to hold the festival on May 1–2, 2021. “The committee is excited for the future,” Lowe said. Lowe also made a documentary about ranching in Mariposa and mule packing in Yosemite, and the festival announced that the full film would be shown at the Taste of Mariposa. In 2026 the organization co-hosted the July 4 celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday with Mariposa County in downtown Mariposa, and it announced a 200-drone show to end the night. The 2027 festival is set for May 1–2 at the fairgrounds.

Las Mariposas

The festival’s page says the region was named in the 1800s after early explorers saw great numbers of butterflies there. In 2015 Riley spoke of “a huge discovery of monarchs here.” The tourism bureau gives a fuller version. In 1806 a Spanish expedition under Gabriel Moraga camped beside an almost dry riverbed near present-day Mariposa, and clouds of butterflies swarmed the party so thickly that they nearly blocked out the sun. Moraga named the place Las Mariposas, and the name was later taken by the town and the county. The bureau adds that the same expedition named the River of Our Lady of Mercy, which is today’s Merced River.