The World’s Shortest Parade Has Come a Long Way

World’s Shortest Parade Has Come a Long Way!

Parade Founder: Lucile Aldrich

-by John Hibble

is America’s birthday and many communities have parades to celebrate that fact. The freedom to determine our own future was at the center of the founding of our country. The “World’s Shortest Parade” in Aptos is also about selfdetermination but it was not originally about America’s birthday. The Granite Rock Company, founded in 1900, has been an important part of the history of Santa Cruz County. The great construction boom in houses and highways in the late 1950s and ‘60s meant that Granite had to build new cement batching plants to supply the need for concrete throughout the region. Cement, sand, and aggregate are stored at the batching plant and mixed to order, then sent out in giant “cement mixer” trucks to the construction sites.

In 1959, the last remnants of the apple industry in Aptos Village closed down. Aptos was an industrial town with no industry. Granite Rock Company purchased land in the Village and applied to the county for a zoning change to build a batching plant. That is why the street across from the Post Office is named Granite Way. There is nothing wrong with a concrete plant but no one in Aptos

Village wanted it in their back yard. Locals rose up against the proposal. Concerned women formed the “Aptos Ladies Tuesday Evening Society” and organized themselves to defeat the zoning change. The group included Lucille Aldrich, Anne Isaacs, Babe Toney, Peggy Marceron, Jessie Elliott, Birdie Jacobs, Beverly Palmer, Nola Gales, Pat Thompson, Joyce West, Peggy Hunter, Mrs. Harrison Smith, Dee Small, Betty Jo Jensen, and Nita Jellison.

Their efforts were successful. To celebrate their victory, a barbecue was held on Memorial Day, 1961, in the field next to the railroad track. The event was so popular that a parade and pot

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luck were planned to follow on the fourth of July. Everyone turned out in old fashioned clothes and the Monterey Bay Antique Car Club brought 18 vintage cars. The parade route was from the Driftwood Gas Station at Trout Gulch Road (where Bay Federal Credit Union is now located) to the Pop Inn restaurant, (formerly Little OWL Italian Kitchen and now the Parish Publick House). The parade only lasted ten minutes and that is how the “World’s Shortest Parade” got its name. The second year, the “Sun Tan Special,” the train that once transported visitors from the San Francisco Peninsula to Santa Cruz, was in its final year of service. The Aptos Ladies had planted red, white and blue petunias along the railroad track from the Bay View Hotel to the Pop Inn. When the train reached Aptos on July 4th, the engineer stopped the train so that the passengers could get off and enjoy the festivities. “It was a happy coincidence that the parade coincided with the train passing through,” recalled Lucile Aldrich.

Games were also held in the field including sack races, a watermelon eating contest, horseshoes, kick the can, peanut runs, shoe kicking, and foot races. The third year, the American Legion post was the first to set up a food booth with chili, coffee and pies. The following year, the Pop Inn offered hot dogs and soft drinks. Santa Cruz Dairy Farms wanted to sell ice cream so Lucile asked them to bring a cow for a milking contest. They brought two cows for five or six years but eventually the herd was moved away which ended the contest. In the mid-1970s the games and food booths were moved to Aptos Village Park which had just been completed. The pancake breakfast was added in 1987, as a cooperative venture between the Aptos Chamber of Commerce and the Aptos Lions Club and is currently organized by the Chamber and the Search and Rescue Team.

In 1992, after thirty years of successful parade organization, the Aptos Ladies Tuesday Evening Society retired from the job and turned the parade over to the Aptos Chamber of Commerce. The once tiny parade has grown into a huge event for Aptos. The “World’s Shortest Parade” has gained national recognition as one of only seven Fourth of July parades recommended in 2013 as the “Best” by prestigious Condé Nast Traveler. Though there will be no parade this year, the history stays with us. Celebrate the Fourth of July this year by checking out the businesses that have decorated, and the cars. When you are driving through Aptos and see a decorated car, give them a wave!

2020 Aptos 4 th of July Parade 59 th Anniversary