Topanga Days

On Memorial Day weekend the shuttles work Topanga Canyon Boulevard between Old Town Center and Viewridge Estates. They stop at the bridge on Topanga School Road, at the Topanga Market lot by Endless Color Pizza, at Froggy’s Fish Restaurant, at the old site of The Corral by Santa Maria Road, and at a turnout on the east side of the boulevard where riders are told to look for a flying pig. Every route ends at the Topanga Community Center, 1440 N. Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Topanga Days runs there each day from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The 2026 festival, billed as the 51st annual, fell on May 23, 24 and 25.

Cars parked across the white line on the boulevard are towed. So are cars that block fire-truck access on Cheney, Canyon Trail, Happy Trail and Summit. The festival’s notes warn that “fire danger is real” and say patrols work the canyon to keep the roads clear. Smoking and vaping are banned on the grounds, glass is held at security, and every attendee must have a ticket, including children five and under, who get in free.

Two stages and a ballfield

Music starts on the Main Stage at 11 in the morning, and each day closes with a headliner. In 2026 Cyril Neville played Saturday evening; the Topanga New Times called him a New Orleans funk, soul and jazz legend and a Grammy winner. Long Beach Dub Allstars closed Sunday, and Canned Heat played from 5:45 to 7 on Monday. Earlier sets included Golden Dawn Arkestra, Ny Oh and Will Worden. There were also two tribute acts: Wall of Sound for the Grateful Dead and David Brighton’s Space Oddity for David Bowie. Deb Ryder and Jimmy Z opened Monday’s bill at 11.

James Webber, the board member who books the bands, said of the Monday headliner: “Bringing Canned Heat back to where it all began will be extra special.” In its own announcement the community center pointed to a passage in Neil Young’s book Waging Heavy Peace, in which Young reflects on Topanga Days and Canned Heat. The center billed the set “From Truck to Stage.”

Indoors, the Corral Stage runs shorter sets of americana, bluegrass, rock, funk and blues. In 2026 the Greenhorn Brothers, Old Jitters, Kelp Dwellers, the Super 88s and Murphy’s Flaw were among the acts.

Out on the ballfield the games come four times a day. Saturday has bubble gum blowing and “Yeehaw Yodeling,” sack races, a three-legged race and musical chairs. Sunday has water balloon basketball, cherry seed spitting and an egg toss, and in 2026 a new tug-o-war. Monday has an animal imitation contest, limbo, a dance contest, and at 5 p.m. what the schedule calls the “Infamous Pie Eating Contest.” The board’s members take part. Crystal June Storey is a science teacher at Pali High and the interim vice president of membership. She competes in the limbo and, by the center’s account, holds the title of bubble gum blowing champion.

Children get a Fun Zone with a giant slide and a bounce house, sold as a separate add-on. Terri Moriarty, the center’s president, referees it. Elsewhere on the grounds there are face painting, balloon making, local artists and craft vendors, food trucks and dessert stands. Beer and wine are sold to anyone 21 or older wearing a wristband. The head bartender is Rick Provisor, the vice president of maintenance, who has been at the center more than three decades. Bridget Cook, the volunteer chair, pours alongside him.

Monday on the boulevard

The Memorial Day parade starts at 8:30 Monday morning at Pine Tree Circle and runs up the boulevard to the entrance of the community center. The parade page gives the timetable: entries begin lining up at 7, judging starts at 7:45, and winners are announced at 8:20, before anyone has moved. Floats, cars, children and fire trucks make up the line. In 2025 the OneTopanga site also counted vintage cars, costumed children and dancers. Paid entries are capped at fifty.

The California Highway Patrol rides last, and the boulevard reopens behind it. The festival shuttle resumes when the road clears, at about 10:30.

The 2026 grand marshal was Rosi Dagit, senior biologist of the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains. She has lived and worked in Topanga for almost 40 years. She founded the Topanga Creek Watershed Committee in 1998 and leads the Topanga Stream Team’s creek cleanups and frog and fish counts. After the Palisades Fire she led the rescue of the creek’s endangered steelhead trout and tidewater gobies.

At the community center the festival goes on with a flag raising honoring members of the military, and Evan Hyatt, described as “Topanga’s own,” sings the national anthem. The New Times put the anthem at noon, and the parade page at 12:15. On that Monday, called Military Monday, active-duty service members with a military ID get in free.

The parade has grown harder to pay for. According to the parade page, the cost of putting on Topanga Days had “almost doubled in many areas,” and the center asked local businesses for $500 each to “Maintain the Parade.” Sophie Zeiler, vice president of fundraising, told the New Times, “We are grateful to everyone for helping to sponsor our fundraiser this year, as this event has become very expensive to host.”

A nickel a brick

The money goes to a building that has never drawn on public funds. The center takes no county or state tax money and runs on membership dues, donations and fundraising. Topanga Days is the largest of those fundraisers.

The account in the Topanga New Times, drawn from the Topanga Historical Society’s book The Topanga Story, starts in November 1948. That month the women of the canyon met to organize a club that could buy land and sponsor a community house. The idea was a safe place for the canyon’s young people to gather and play. There were seven founders, all women. They began raising money right away with bake sales, card parties and dances.

On June 23, 1949, California recognized the Topanga Community Woman’s Club as a not-for-profit corporation, and the members started looking for land. They settled on a 12-acre parcel owned by Mr. and Mrs. E. R. Julian, on a bluff east of Topanga Canyon Boulevard across from the Julians’ creekside ranch. The land was listed at $12,000, and the Julians offered it to the club for $6,000. The club paid $500 down and agreed to $50 a month. The money came from sales of the “Memory Cook Book,” and, according to the club’s history, from donated livestock as well.

In 1952 the club organized the “A Nickel a Brick” drive, which paid for every brick in the walls. Local contractors gave materials and labor, and volunteers worked on the site. It took years. Some residents took out second mortgages on their homes so the roof could be finished. About a decade after the land was offered, the shell of the house stood and the mortgage was paid. The building is now one of four Red Cross shelters in Topanga Canyon.

A Christmas party with no roof

Lee Kelly was a single mother who had just moved to the canyon in 1964. Neighbors told her about a yearly children’s Christmas party at the Community House, and she walked up the hill with her two children. She found a brick building with a dirt floor and no roof. A big fire burned in a big fireplace, there were presents and toys, and Santa came. “What is this place?” she wondered.

Kelly and her late husband, Richard Kelly, later looked after the house for almost 20 years. Some visitors assumed the grounds were public. Kelly recalled people who “paid taxes and had a right to be there, they said, as they fired up the BBQ they’d brought with them.” The Kellys had to explain that taxes had not built the place and that no fire of any kind was safe there.

A ball field was planned in 1984. In 1985 volunteers revived the old well and set a tank above the horseshoe pits to water the grass. They laid sprinklers, dug post holes and raised fencing. For a backstop they sewed together torn golf-course netting that had been donated. Kelly counts keeping that ball field committee going as her greatest contribution. A new playground followed in October 2013. Kelly Rockwell, Nonie Shore and Karla Morrison raised the money, and its design began with sketches by children at Topanga Elementary.

The festival itself grew out of the house. According to the center’s history, the original Strawberry Festival of the 1960s began at the Community House and over time became Topanga Days. Topanga Days 2025 marked the festival’s 50th anniversary, with the Allah-Las, the English Beat and Chevy Metal at the top of the bill. Nonie Shore has produced the festival since 2014, and the center credits her with building it into a successful fundraiser.

Sophie Zeiler moved to the canyon at age five. She counts the Topanga Days weekends at the community center among her best childhood memories. The festival’s site gives the next Memorial Day weekend as May 29, 30 and 31.