Pinedorado Days

A parade down Main Street

Pinedorado Days begins on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend at 9:30 in the morning, when the parade steps off down Main Street in Cambria, a coastal town in San Luis Obispo County. Warbird planes fly over near the beginning. Behind them come local school groups, high school marching bands, horse groups, bicycle groups, the town’s service organizations, and many classic cars, all covering a route of a mile and a quarter. Every group can compete for prizes. In a photograph from the 2008 parade, Shriners’ clowns motor past while people sit and watch in front of the Veterans Memorial Building.

The Lions Club of Cambria sponsors the celebration. Its parade page says the parade has run every year since about 1949, “except for recent years when Covid got in the way.” The club’s history page says the Lions have kept the celebration going every year from 1949 until now. When KSBY covered the 75th annual edition, two visitors from Bakersfield spoke on camera. “I feel like there’s something for each of us individually. [We’re] ready to eat good food,” said Liz Sherwyn. Carlos Fierros, who had come with his son and family, said, “I have a lot of good memories here. So, like, this is my first experience at Pinedorado again, but it’s more memories to build upon.”

After the parade, the crowd moves to the Pinedorado Grounds at 940 Main Street, which the Lions also manage. Through the weekend the grounds fill with food, drinks, games, and music. The 2026 celebration ran from September 5 to September 7, and the town’s tourism listing announced that Pinedorado Days was “roaring back.”

Nate’s car show

On Sunday the grounds hold Nate’s Pinedorado Car Show. Its classes begin with pre-1931 cars, divided into modified and stock, and run in period brackets up through 2000 to the present. There are also classes for trucks, foreign and American sports cars, motorcycles, and electric vehicles, plus a special-interest class covering tractors, commercial vehicles, race cars, and the like. The show also gives Best of Show, People’s Choice, and a Founders Award. Chuck Rust makes the awards by hand every year.

The founder was Nate Fearonce. His show’s page says it has been held every year since 2007. Born in Los Angeles on June 4, 1934, he graduated from Dorsey High School and joined the Air Force as a radar technician. There he worked on the F-89 Scorpion and the F-104 Starfighter. He later worked in aerospace and electronics, including on the Orbiting Solar Observatory satellite. After that he studied at the Hollywood Art Institute, co-founded a custom lamp business, and refinished old-world furniture. He died on Mother’s Day, May 10, 2026, at 91, and the show was renamed in his honor.

His family traveled from Georgia for the 2026 show, held September 6, and presented the Founders Award. A woman named Debbie set up a memorial table for him. A car rode in Saturday’s parade in his memory and took first place. The Corvettes were parked together. Ed Dena of Borderline Classics took Best of Show with a 1959 Chevy Apache, and a 1971 Norton Commando was named best motorcycle. Class winners included Jerry Wood with a 1930 Model A five-window coupe, a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, Dan Lazzaro with a 1999 Pontiac Trans Am, and Edgar Palmer with a 2014 Shelby GT500 Super Snake. The club’s car show page closes with a line to its founder: “Your journey left tire tracks on our hearts, Nate.”

The Follies at the Vet’s Hall

The weekend’s theater comes earlier, in late August, at the Vet’s Hall in the West Village. The Follies is a local revue that parodies the town. One edition, called Cambria Night Live, followed the model of Saturday Night Live. It ran six shows over two weekends and included sketch routines, a local news segment, a rock band, pre-recorded television commercials, and popular songs with altered lyrics. Randy Schwalbe wrote and directed the two-hour show. Renee Linn produced it and also served as script consultant, casting director, and costume designer. The cast of twelve included Aaron Linn, Shar Silva, and Leonard Kohout. General seats cost $25. The $80 Angel Seats fill the first couple of rows, and each party gets a bottle of wine and refreshments served at its own table.

A theater from Camp San Luis Obispo

The Vet’s Hall is the building the celebration was invented to pay for. In 1949 the Lions decided Cambria’s young people needed a recreation center and took on the project of getting one. The Lions credit the Joe Fiscalini family with donating several acres in the center of town. A 2026 newspaper account names Lucy Fiscalini as the donor. More land came later from the Cambria Development Company and from purchases by the club. The members agreed to hold a community celebration over Labor Day weekend to raise building money.

That summer the Lions bought a war surplus building at Camp San Luis Obispo, 30 miles south. It had been a World War II movie theater, and the club paid $1,500 for it, according to the newspaper account. Members cut it into sections, and trucks hauled it north. The $6,000 hauling fee was paid with a loan from Corinne Kontz. Community work parties reassembled the building at 1000 Main Street and made it sound. When it opened, it was dedicated to the town’s children.

The first celebration was delayed several weeks. During it, a contest chose the name Pinedorado. The judges felt it expressed Cambria’s pine tree setting and the “early day influence” still present on that part of the coast. Over the next seven years the celebrations grew “bigger and better.” Their profits paid off the loans by 1953 and paid for improvements to the building.

In 1954 the Lions donated the Youth and Recreation Center to the County of San Luis Obispo. The county spent $50,000 enlarging and improving it as a Veterans Memorial, which was dedicated in 1955. From then on it served veterans, youth, and service and lodge groups. Later celebrations shared their proceeds with other local groups, but the largest share still went to the Pinedorado Fund for youth recreation, which the Lions administer.

The Cambria Community Services District now owns the hall. It holds art shows, exercise classes, health clinics, weddings, and the town’s Veterans Day and Memorial Day ceremonies, and the Friday farmers market sets up in its parking lot. In March 2026 workers finished refinishing the floors, repainting, and putting a new roof over the kitchen and the hall. The district’s general manager, Matt McElhenie, said the kitchen and windows still await funding, and the foundation is next on the drawing board.