Butter & Egg Days is Petaluma's salute to its farm history, the dairies and egg ranches that built the town. On one Saturday in April, a parade winds through historic downtown at noon, led off by the Clover Kids' Parade, and a street festival fills the downtown blocks from morning to late afternoon with food, beverage gardens, crafts, live music and areas for kids.
Butter & Egg Days is Petaluma's salute to its farm history, the dairies and egg ranches that built the town. On one Saturday in April, a parade winds through historic downtown at noon, led off by the Clover Kids' Parade, and a street festival fills the downtown blocks from morning to late afternoon with food, beverage gardens, crafts, live music and areas for kids.
Few towns celebrate their agricultural past with this much good humor. The morning brings the Cutest Little Chick contest, where the youngest Petalumans dress the part, and each year the town names its Good Egg, a resident honored for what they have given to Petaluma.
Come early for a spot along the route, then give the afternoon to the festival and the historic downtown around it. It is the most cheerful way to meet Petaluma, a river town that has kept its old center and its sense of itself.
The Petaluma Downtown Association produces the Butter & Egg Days Parade & Festival and other events in Petaluma's historic downtown.
Visit organizer site →Petaluma's poultry boom began with an invention: in 1879 Lyman Byce introduced a successful chicken incubator, and the town's egg ranches multiplied. Promoter Bert Kerrigan helped sell Petaluma to the nation as the World's Egg Basket, and in 1918 the town staged its first National Egg Day, with a downtown parade led by an Egg Queen.
Those early celebrations faded within a decade. In the early 1980s Petaluma revived them and added butter, honoring the dairies alongside the hens.
