Territorial Days

The Saturday of Territorial Days starts at six in the morning with the Lions Pancake Breakfast, $8 a person in 2026 and free for children five and under. Accounts of its location differ. Signals AZ put the 2026 breakfast in Memory Park. Jess Savoini, a Prescott real estate agent who wrote about the 2026 festival, placed it at the Senior Center, and so did Sheri Heiney of the Chino Valley Area Chamber of Commerce for 2025. At seven the 10K and two-mile walk/run sets off; Savoini writes that it benefits Chino Valley High School. Vendors open in Memory Park at eight and stay until half past noon. At nine the parade goes by.

Memory Park lies half a mile off Highway 89 on Palomino Road. Under a variety of trees are 2.4 acres of grass, a ramada, a 20-foot gazebo, four horseshoe pits, two bocce courts, a quarter-mile walking trail and a Veteran’s Memorial. The park borders the town library and Senior Center. Savoini writes that it anchors the parade route and most of Saturday’s program. After the parade, food, games and carnival activities run from ten until one. Heiney’s 2025 schedule also listed music and entertainment in the park.

The count on the parade

The town and Signals AZ billed the 2026 parade as the 39th annual. Heiney’s article a year earlier called the 2025 parade the 35th. Savoini notes that the festival began after the town’s incorporation and has run through most of its incorporated history. “The parade is not decoration for a real estate brochure,” Savoini wrote. “It is closer to a load-bearing wall.”

The 2026 theme was “Get Your Kicks on Route 66!”, tied to the highway’s 100th anniversary and the country’s 250th. The 2025 theme was “Turning through Time: From Wagon Wheels to Windmills.” The Town of Chino Valley’s Community Services staff runs the festival. In 2025 Heiney credited the Morning Lions Club, the Lioness Club, the Women’s Community Network, the Arizona Rangers and many volunteers.

The weekend opens on Friday. In 2026 a historical presentation was held at the Chino Valley Public Library at 2 p.m., and at 7:45 p.m. Memory Park showed Cars on its Movie in the Park screen. The 2025 film was Disney’s Home on the Range.

Corn at Del Rio, fireworks at Old Home Manor

The FFA Corn Dinner begins at three on Saturday afternoon at Del Rio Elementary School on North Road 1 West. Heiney gave its 2025 hours as 3 to 7 p.m. Next to the high school is the Cooper Ag Center, a 52-acre working farm with FFA and 4-H programs. “An FFA dinner only works in a town where enough kids are still raising animals and growing crops for it to be a real program instead of a nostalgia act,” Savoini wrote.

Sunday morning brings a car show from nine to one in the Aquatics Center parking lot on North Road 1 East. Heiney called the 2025 show the third annual. Savoini writes that the Chino Valley Memorial Foundation hosts it and that proceeds go to local first responder and military memorials. The pool is open for a free swim from three to nine. At 6:30 the gates open at Old Home Manor, at Perkinsville Road and North Old Home Manor Road, for a drive-in fireworks show. Food trucks park on the grounds, and the fireworks start after dark.

On Monday morning, Labor Day, an Intro to Pickleball runs at 8 a.m. at Community Center Park, according to Signals AZ. Savoini put pickleball on the Sunday and called it new for 2026, though Heiney listed a Monday pickleball event for 2025. Because the events are spread across town, Savoini advises allowing driving time between them.

The 2026 edition followed a hard month. A storm struck the town on Thursday, August 20. On August 24, Mayor Tom Armstrong declared a Local Emergency Proclamation, and Public Works scheduled storm cleanup days by appointment from August 31 through September 2 for downed tree branches and other debris. In Savoini’s account, the town handled storm cleanup and festival logistics in the same weeks.

Governor Goodwin at Del Rio Springs

The name is older than the territory. The Chamber writes that U.S. Army Cavalry Lt. Amiel W. Whipple passed through in 1854 and noted the plentiful gama grass, called “chino” in Mexican usage. Town Square Publications gives the Mexican term as “de china” and adds that the grass was cut as hay and served as the main feed for the cavalry in the area.

Del Rio Springs lies just north of town. The Chamber’s history places the first territorial capital of Arizona there from January to May 1864, with the capital moved to Prescott later that year. The town’s own Community page gives 1863 for the capital and 1864 for the move. The League of Arizona Cities and Towns credits the designation to Governor John Noble Goodwin in 1864. According to the Chino Valley Historical Society, military leaders chose the site for its “good water, firewood within 2 or 3 miles and building timber of the best quality. The neighborhood abounds in deer, antelope, turkeys and other varieties of game.” The springs fed “the river,” later called the Verde. A few months after Goodwin arrived, Fort Whipple was moved to Prescott to protect the gold miners there.

Jerome Junction and the farms

Settlers homesteaded and grew hay, corn and wheat, and Del Rio Springs became the largest ranch in central Arizona of its time. Prescott later bought the springs and piped their water 19 miles to the city. The railroad arrived in 1887. Jerome Junction station, just east of town, grew to include a coal and water depot, a Wells Fargo office, a post office, stockyards, a school, a hotel and a saloon. The Chamber dates Jerome Junction’s establishment to 1895 and says it was a center of activity from 1900 until 1925, when it was moved farther north. Most of its buildings were moved into Chino Valley. The hotel was renovated and taken to Knott’s Berry Farm. The site can still be seen from Perkinsville Road heading east, the same road that leads to the fireworks.

From 1909 until 1956, the Del Rio farm supplied milk, eggs, meat and vegetables to the Fred Harvey Houses along the Santa Fe line. From the 1920s to the late 1940s, most Chino Valley families farmed or ranched, and dairy farming became a large source of income in the 1950s and 1960s. The town incorporated in 1970.

For the 150th anniversary of the Del Rio Springs designation, the Chino Valley Historical Society staged “Governor Goodwin Arrives,” a reenactment of the first governor’s arrival at the site. It included an eighteen-gun salute, period costumes and a Dutch oven barbecue. An overflow crowd attended, and Channel 13, Prescott’s public access station, recorded the program for broadcast.