Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade and Rose Bowl Game
Commonly known as the Rose Parade, The Pasadena Tournament of Roses is a celebration event that is in Pasadena CA each New Year’s Day. Like all parades, it has lots of floats, music, a carnival-like atmosphere and at the end, there is the Rose Bowl game. Hundreds of thousands of people attend it every year and millions more watch it on screens in America and abroad. The parade started, according to one website, as a salute to the community spirit and love of pageantry that have thrived in Pasadena for more than 100 years.
Rose Parade History
The first Pasadena Tournament of Roses parade was in 1890. A few years later, the parade organizers started a rule that the parade could never be held on a Sunday. If New Year’s day happens to be a Sunday then the parade moves to the next day. The then town’s leaders did not want the parade to spook horses hitched outside of churches. And the rule stands to this day.
Members of the Valley Hunt Club who had immigrated from the East and Midwest organized the initial parade. They did it as a celebration of the fair weather they were enjoying in their new home. One member, Charles F. Holder, remarked to a club gathering, in New York, people are buried in the snow. Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise. As one might guess, the first parade was far more simple as compared to modern parades. It consisted of carriages covered in flowers followed by several games. And after seeing all the displayed flowers, the club members decided to call it the Tournament of Roses.
Modern Rose Parade
The 935 members of the non-profit Tournament of Roses Association prepare the Rose Parade. The team puts in thousands of hours every year to make sure that they get every detail right. The day before the parade, the City of Pasadena seals off Colorado Boulevard to facilitate the various groups to bring in of all the floats, bands, and horses. The parade itself starts at 8 am and members of the parade march on South Orange Grove Boulevard and then onto Sierra Madre Boulevard. It ends at Paloma Street and the whole thing takes about 2 hours, covering an area of 5.5 miles.
Rose Bowl Football Game
This is also known as the Granddaddy of Them All because it is the oldest bowl game in America. More than 10 years after the parade itself first started, the football games began. The initial purpose of the rose bowl game was a way to raise funds to support the parade. The teams play the game in the Rose Bowl Stadium which has a sitting capacity of more than 92,000 people. Although the game didn’t take on sponsorship for many years, it started to in 1999 and that first time it was sponsored by AT&T. Since 1999, the Rose Bowl game has had sponsors like Playstation 2, Sony, Citi, Vizio, and Northwestern Mutual. ESPN currently owns the broadcasting rights.
If you want to get information on how you can be part of the parade you can visit its website There, you will get information on tickets, what you can expect in the parade, safety tips, events before and after, places to stay and so on.
In all, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade is an event that you should make a point of attending if you are in the city at the beginning of the year.
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