Mel Fillerup’s “The Long Trail” will be featured at the Western arts festival.

San Dimas is the city with the wood-slat sidewalks, the hitching posts and the carefully cultivated Western identity.

And every year about this time, the locals open the city to cowboy and Indian artists with a big, colorful art exhibit and a slew of Western-style cultural activities.

The 16th annual San Dimas Festival of Western Arts features 189 works of art--from Denny Haskew’s idealized bronze sculptures to Mel Fillerup and Kay Homan’s big-sky oil paintings, from a K. M. Hendrick’s still-life of cowboy artifacts to a nostalgic pool hall scene by Neil Boyle.

The exhibit is in Civic Center Plaza, 245 E. Bonita Ave., and

most of the works will be auctioned Sunday afternoon.

If looking at paintings isn’t your thing, there will be a dance at 5:30 today, featuring Broken Arrow, a Western dance band from Chino.

On Saturday, there will be a demonstration by the American Eagle Dance Troupe, doing the traditional dances of the Santa Clara Pueblo Indians, and some do-si-doin’ from San Dimas’ own Festival Country Dancers.

Rep. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (D-Colo.), the only American Indian in Congress, will be honored as the 1992 Spirit of the West, at a banquet on Saturday.

For further information, call (714) 599-5374.