Ojai Independence Day Parade and Fireworks

On the evening of July 3 the Ojai Band plays under the open sky at Libbey Bowl in Libbey Park, and people spread blankets and picnic baskets on the lawn. The concert is free. For the 2026 edition, billed as the country’s 250th birthday, the band shared the 6 p.m. program with The Ojai Players, and veterans and active-duty military were invited on stage to be honored. In 2025 Jimmy Calire and his band played, the Vietnam Veterans of Ventura County presented the Colors, and the year’s grand marshals were introduced from the stage. Those who stay for the raffle can win prizes given by local businesses, more than 50 of them in 2025. Every ticket helps pay for the next day’s parade and fireworks. “It’s a great time to bring family and friends,” said Bonnie Patton, who chairs the Ojai Independence Day Committee.

Pancakes, a footrace, and Ojai Avenue

The Fourth begins with pancakes. The Ojai Valley Lions Club serves from 7 to 10 a.m. at Chaparral Auditorium on East Ojai Avenue. In 2025 a shuttle called the “Pancake Express” carried diners to the hall at no charge. At 9 a.m. the Rotary Club of Ojai starts children aged 2 through 12 on the Youth Freedom Run, and every runner receives a medal and an American flag. In 2025 the race started under a balloon arch at Ojai Avenue and Signal Street. Rotary’s Dr. Fred Fauvre and Dr. Bob Skankey founded the run. The Ojai Valley News, writing in 2025, put the founding 28 years back.

The parade steps off at 10 a.m. from Country Club Drive, where the staging ground has been busy for hours, and runs down Ojai Avenue to Park Road. The avenue is closed between El Paseo and Park Road from 7:30 a.m. Floats enter at El Paseo, and horses come in by way of Hermosa Road. The committee asks spectators to stay beyond Bristol Road and to keep chairs out of the lineup zone in front of Matilija Middle School. “We really need to have that clear,” Patton said in 2025.

In 2026 a Sea Cadets color guard led, followed by the Vietnam Veterans of Ventura County, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 11461, American Legion Post 482, grand marshals Gil and Carolyn Vondriska, and the Nordhoff Marching Band. Behind them came dozens of entries:

Ojai O’Daiko the Topa Topa Flywheeler Tractor Club Martin’s Ojai Locksmith Blues Band a 1935 Dodge truck and a 1968 Firebird named Lucy a trolley carrying the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution Rotary’s Living Treasures the Lake Casitas Rowing Club riders from Los Charros de Santa Paula and the Santa Paula Spurs

Other years have brought two bagpipers with Bonnie Dave’s and, weather permitting, a flyover of vintage aircraft by the 805 Navion Squadron, both in 2025. In 2024 Butch Bolton of the Flywheelers drove an old-fashioned tractor down the route.

The route ends where Charles Hawkins said in 2026 it always has: the left turn onto Park Road toward Sarzotti Park. The City of Ojai hosts a picnic there afterward with food, drinks, games, and live music, and the winners are announced at 1:30 p.m. Prizes go by category, from pre-1969 autos and horse groups to church floats. In 2026 Boccali’s Pizza and Pasta took Sweepstakes Best in Parade, and the Turtle Conservancy was judged closest to the theme, “Happy 250th Birthday USA.”

Lights out at Nordhoff Stadium

The fireworks are held at the stadium on Maricopa Highway, which the committee calls Nordhoff Stadium and the Ojai Valley News calls Ojai Valley Community Stadium. Gates open at 5:30 p.m. Sponsors’ banners hang on the chain-link fence, and ice chests and bags are checked at the gate. Pets, glass, alcohol, smoking, and personal fireworks are not allowed. Families put blankets on the grass, children weave through the crowd, food trucks line up, and the rock cover band Power On plays while people dance up front. Then, at 9:15 p.m. by the 2025 and 2026 schedules, the stadium lights go off and the show begins. Donors may also pay to dedicate a firework to a person of their choosing.

The Pattons and the bill

Volunteers run all of it, and none of it is paid for by the City of Ojai. In 2024 Patton put the budget at $52,000. The fireworks cost $32,000 of that, $6,000 more than the year before. The committee also pays to rent the field and buys a Caltrans permit, a city permit, and street barricades. Patton said ticket sales had covered the fireworks only once. In 2025 the cost was roughly $54,000, and donations and ticket sales fell short.

Patton has worked on the celebration for more than 50 years. As a child she stapled together the pages of the parade program. Her son Jeff has flown in from Hawaii to serve as pyro-technician, her daughter Tracy lines up the parade entries, and another daughter, Kristi Adejumo, chaired the committee for years. “We give our time because we want to create memories,” Patton said in 2024. “We want it to be memory-making for all ages.”

Ruth Melhorn’s parade and the floats that followed

Patton’s mother, Patricia Bushman, helped Ruth Melhorn organize the first Ojai Independence Day parade, and all of them were volunteers. Patton gives the year as 1963. An Ojai Valley timeline gives 1962 and names Melhorn alone.

Oak View families entered early. In the mid-1960s Mike Smith put his whole baseball team on a float, with a diamond laid out and a game in full swing. In 1967 Ojai saw hippies lounging along Ojai Avenue and three midsummer nights of violence that old-timers call “the Ojai riots.” That year’s parade featured a truce. Ben Barraza, a hippie leader, recalled borrowing a truck and making a float covered in flowers. In 1970 the Smiths’ daughter Wilma walked an Indian pony named Judo, ridden by its 11-year-old owner, the length of the route. The two girls also walked to and from their homes on Valley View, about eight miles each way.

On Sunday, July 4, 1976, the bicentennial flag flew above City Hall. Charles Hawkins, then 8, rode hanging off the back of a beige Ford pickup with his father and his brother’s baseball team. Lee Robison, newly arrived from Quebec, rode a unicycle in a clown suit his mother had made, matched by his girlfriend, Annette “Netty” Owens. “I thought I was at the Macy’s or the Rose Parade,” Robison said. He credited the valley’s Mormon community with raising the bar.

The Oak View Women’s Club float that year, “100 Years of Womanhood,” carried well over 1,000 tissue-paper flowers in red, white, and blue. Late on the night of July 3 the fog rolled in, and the dyed paper began to weep. Barbara Smith, the float’s chairman, remembered her family’s giant camping parachute, found it, and covered the float for the night. It won a prize. That same summer the Bicentennial Committee, chaired by Mary Lou Woodruff, buried a time capsule in Libbey Park, built by Taft Electric. It holds rosters of valley organizations, school yearbooks, a telephone directory, and newspapers, and it is not to be opened until 2076.

The money has always been raised locally. On January 19, 1985, the jazz musician Maynard Ferguson played a benefit for the celebration in the Nordhoff High gym, with tickets at $6.50. That summer’s grand marshal was Arlou Mashburn, director of the valley’s Youth Employment Service. She was barely five feet tall, and the Ojai Valley News expected she would “probably have to sit in a booster chair” so her fans could see her in the back seat of the convertible. The same paper recalled an earlier editor, Earl Reeves: “A boom and a sparkling burst in the night sky may not make a whole lot of fiscal sense, but it does wonders for one’s morale and sense of tradition.”