The weekend opens with a Saturday-morning parade down Main Street, a long procession of local entries that ends, by tradition, with fire trucks spraying the crowd. Then the party moves to Ives Park, where two music stages, food and drink booths and local craft vendors run through the weekend.
A free preview party on the Friday evening before warms up downtown.
The weekend opens with a Saturday-morning parade down Main Street, a long procession of local entries that ends, by tradition, with fire trucks spraying the crowd. Then the party moves to Ives Park, where two music stages, food and drink booths and local craft vendors run through the weekend.
A free preview party on the Friday evening before warms up downtown.
It is the Sebastopol Area Chamber of Commerce's main fundraiser and very much a hometown affair, staffed by volunteers, with local bands, local food vendors and a parade of neighbors cheered on by neighbors.
The timing is the point. The festival lands as West County's orchards come into blossom, so a drive along the back roads around town before or after the parade shows you exactly what Sebastopol is celebrating. Bring a chair for the curb on Saturday morning and plan an unhurried afternoon in the park.
The Sebastopol Area Chamber of Commerce produces the Apple Blossom Parade & Festival with volunteers as its main annual fundraiser.
Visit organizer site →Sebastopol was celebrating its apples long before the blossom festival. The first Gravenstein Apple Show opened in town in 1910, a harvest-season exhibition of the orchards' fruit. The spring festival followed in 1947, moving the party from picking season to the weeks when the orchards burst into flower.
Apple growing has since faded from the local economy, yet the Gravenstein heritage remains at the heart of the festival and of the town's sense of itself.
