FULLERTON : Fireworks to Light Free July 4 Festival

A fireworks show will cap a free Independence Day festival scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. July 4 at Fullerton High School Stadium.

Besides game and food booths and several bands, the festival will include rides aboard a tethered hot-air balloon, hayrides and a children’s petting zoo. The festival will end with a fireworks display saluting American heroes, including Abraham Lincoln, the Apollo 11 moon-mission astronauts, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Wayne.

The festival is sponsored by the city to encourage residents to avoid setting off their own fireworks. Last year, the City Council considered banning fireworks because of the increasing number of fires and injuries caused by them. The council voted to keep them legal but to hold a citywide fireworks display to give residents an alternative.

The festival will include a steel band, a rock band, a saxophone group and a jazz ensemble. A clown, mime and stilt-walker will stroll through the crowd.

Festival parking will be available in the high school lot across campus at Fullerton College, at the North Orange County Municipal Court at 1275 N. Berkeley Ave., and at a public parking lot and parking structure on Wilshire Avenue between Harbor Boulevard and Pomona Avenue.

A free shuttle will operate from the outlying parking lots between 5:15 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. Shuttle stops will be at the courthouse parking lot, west of Berkeley on the north side of Chapman Avenue; at the Wilshire and Lawrence Avenue intersection, and on Wilshire between Pomona and Harbor.

For more information, call the city’s Community Services Department at (714) 738-6575.