Southeast : CERRITOS CELEBRATION

If replacing cows is cause for celebration, then the citizens of “model city” Cerritos will be whooping it up until the cows come home.

Cerritos commemorates its 40th anniversary Saturday with a parade. The onetime cow town is milking the event for all its worth: 22 marching bands, 10 floats, equestrian units, novelty cars, even celebrities.

Dick Van Patten had to drop out at the last moment but the man who played the father of “Doogie Howser” stepped forward to save the day (James B. Sikking to us).

Yes, back in 1956 when cows outnumbered residents 30 to 1 and property values hadn’t yet jumped over the moon, Cerritos was still Dairy Valley, producing $80 million of dairy products each year.

Then the 1960s arrived and development in adjacent communities caused land prices to boom as much as 450%. Dairy Valley’s farmers, wise to a fatted and golden calf, voted to change agricultural zoning and cleared the fields for residential building. The cows, meanwhile, moved to Chino or Northern California.

To match the changing landscape, the Chamber of Commerce in 1967 “suggested a classier, more residential sounding name,” said city spokeswoman Annie Luger, and the citizens concurred. The new name bypassed the town’s dairy days, harking instead to the original Spanish land grant of the late 1800s.

“The festivities are a celebration of development, but there are a lot of things that make our city special,” Luger said. To wit, a library open seven days a week, 24 parks irrigated with reclaimed water, the first solar-heated City Hall in the nation, a performing arts center, two shopping malls for 53,000 residents and a financial boon of a car mall.

Ray Walston of “My Favorite Martian” will be grand marshal of the two-hour parade, which starts at 10 a.m. and ends at the Cerritos Towne Center, site of the city’s annual Home Maintenance Expo. Children’s activities include a Velcro wall.