History of the Aptos 4th of July Parade and the Aptos Ladies
By Kevin Newhouse
The 4th of July is upon us once again. It’s a day to remember the battles that were fought and lives that were sacrificed in order for the United States to gain its independence from Great Britain 239 years ago. It’s also one of the busiest days in Aptos! There will be parties to attend, BBQ to fill our bellies, and of course fireworks to light up the sky (please be sure to keep it safe and sane though)!
The celebration in Aptos will begin the same way it has for the past 54 years…with the World’s Shortest Parade!
If you were to step back in time to Aptos Village in 1960, you would see an empty shell of what was once a booming town. The Southern Pacific railroad yard and depot, dating back to the 1880s, as well as the vinegar works and apple dryers, dating back to the early 1900s, all served as major industries of Aptos. However, by 1960, these industries were dead and their memories lingered as nothing more than a concrete slab surrounded by overgrown weeds behind today’s Aptos Station.
Aptos was about to enter its next boom though. The plans to build Rancho Del Mar shopping center were approved in 1960 and the center had its grand opening in June 1961. Also in 1961, the construction of the Cabrillo College Aptos campus began. All of a sudden there was a spark of life in Aptos again! In addition to these new developments, news had come across that a construction supplies company had plans on building a cement-batching plant on the 2-acres of land they owned right behind the Bay View Hotel. At the time, the land was part of an unclassified zoning area and there were no restrictions on a proposal of this size.
The idea of a cement-batching plant, right in the heart of Aptos Village, did not sit well with the citizens of Aptos. Lucille Aldrich, who ran the weekly Central County News, was one of those citizens. Although she was new to Aptos, she knew this wasn’t a good fit for the old-town spirit. “This would have made Aptos Village the Davenport of the south,” said Aldrich.
After holding a meeting on a “memorable Tuesday night,” Lucille Aldrich, along with Anne Isaacs, Babe Toney, and a few other friends, formed the Aptos Ladies Tuesday Evening Society and organized to protest the cement-batching plant.
The ladies donned their finest Victorian costumes and made such an impactful argument to the Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors that the proposal to build the plant was defeated in a 5-0 decision! Aptos Village was then zoned for light commercial use only.
To celebrate their victory, a parade was planned on the fourth of July. Everyone turned out in old-fashioned clothing and the Monterey Bay Antique Car Club brought 18 vintage cars. A number of visitors stopped to view the parade when the “Sun Tan Special”, the train that once transported visitors from the San Francisco peninsula to Santa Cruz, passed through Aptos Village. “It was a happy coincidence that the parade coincided with the train passing through,” recalled Lucille Aldrich.
And so the parade was born. Originally, the parade route was from the Driftwood Gas Station at Soquel and Trout Gulch Road (the location of today’s Bay Federal Credit Union), to the Pop Inn restaurant (the location of today’s Kaoboi restaurant), and back to the Bay View Hotel. The parade lasted less than ten minutes and the only food available were the lunches brought by some of the celebrants! Everyone showed up and everyone had a good time. “Nobody in the village saw the parade that year, because everybody was in it,” claimed Lucille.
There was, however, a small bit of drama when Arne Jensen, a former Aptos Village merchant, dressed up as a turn-of-the-century police officer and directed traffic around the parade. Aldrich remembers “a terrible crisis came up when a California Highway Patrol officer came up and was going to arrest Arne for impersonating an officer. But when the rest of us showed up in costume, the cop became convinced that we weren’t impersonating anything … just having fun.”
The parade has grown leaps and bounds since its humble beginning. The pancake breakfast was added in 1987, and is a cooperative venture between the Aptos Chamber of Commerce and other volunteers including the Cabrillo Host Lions Club and Santa Cruz County Sheriff Search and Rescue Team. In 1992, after thirty years of successful organization, the Aptos Ladies’ Tuesday Evening Society retired from the job and turned the parade over to the Aptos Chamber of Commerce.
The route today starts at the opposite end of the original route at the intersection of Soquel Drive and State Park Drive and ends at the Bay View Hotel.
Although the parade lasts much longer than the original 10-minute event, it is in no danger of losing its title as the “World’s Shortest Parade,” as it is named after its short distance (approximately 0.6 miles), rather than its duration.
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For more information about the Aptos History Museum, upcoming events, or becoming a member of the museum, please visit www.aptoshistory.org and follow us on Instagram @aptos_history_museum.
Photos: Lucile Aldrich
World’s Shortest Parade in the 60s