The History of the Rose Parade

The Gilded Age Origins

Real Estate was the original purpose behind the parade’s creation (Pasadena Weekly):

Known as “America’s New Year Celebration,” the annual Rose Parade stands as a visual and cultural spectacle that draws hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of Pasadena. While recent years have showcased elaborate floral displays outfitted with modern technologies that tower above thousands of musicians, the parade’s roots can be traced back to long before its animatronics and marching bands, to before the first hammer struck the foundation of the Rose Bowl.

The first rose parade was held on New Year’s Day in 1890, when horse-drawn carriages adorned in orange blossoms rode before a crowd of 3,000 spectators. The event’s founding fathers, led by Charles Frederick Holder, created the parade as a way to attract people from across the country to buy land in Pasadena.

“The Indiana colony came out looking for land, and they settled in this area and bought 5,000 acres to start their community,” says Alex Aghajanian, president of the 2024 Tournament of Roses. “They then decided that they wanted to bring more people out, so in 1890 they went back to … the Chicago Tribune and they showed pictures of the Rose Parade with the carriages decorated with the roses and the flowers. They were basically saying, ‘Look, you’re buried under 10 feet of snow. We have sunshine and roses.’

It became so popular and attracted such large audiences that they had to develop creative ways to pay for the infrastructure, like racing Ostriches:

“It started out as a way to promote land sale, then the parade got so big that within five years after the Valley Hunt Club started it, the Tournament of Roses Association took it over and we were incorporated.”

To help pay for the parade each year, the association held sporting competitions like ostrich racing, chariot racing and picnic games. Aghajanian says that the games, which eventually included the Tournament East-West football game in 1902, took place on a racetrack purchased from general George Patton’s family before the events outgrew the venue, which was eventually sold to the city. This move inspired the construction of the Rose Bowl.