City Answers Oxnard With Orange Festival

With the sweet taste of Oxnard’s California Strawberry Festival still lingering, it’s time for the next fruit-themed fete, the Fillmore Orange Festival.

Indeed, the inaugural two-day event that officially begins Saturday--although the carnival opens at 3:30 p.m. today as a sneak peak for local residents--was created as Fillmore’s answer to Oxnard’s own fruit frolic.

After 84 years, Fillmore decided to rename its annual May Festival, move it back one week, shorten it from four days and add more events in the hope of doubling the estimated attendance to 20,000, said Kevin McSweeney, a town planner and one of the festival organizers.

“We could not compete with the Strawberry Festival and people from Fillmore started going to the Strawberry Festival instead of our festival,” he said. “We want to go from a small-town event to a regional event like the Strawberry Festival, like the Garlic Festival.”

Given the miles of orange groves in the picturesque Santa Clara Valley that surround the town, the festival’s moniker was a natural choice.

Several attractions from the festival’s previous incarnation remain: the parade at 10 a.m. Saturday, hot air balloon rides from 6 to 9 a.m. both days and the carnival that runs from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in Central Park.

New are 42 arts and crafts vendors; children’s games that include orange tossing, peeling and seed tossing at Central Park; and continuous music at Masonic Park. In addition, bicycle races will go from noon to 6 p.m.--including a professional division--through city streets.

New too are train rides to a nearby orange grove with trips at 10:30 a.m., 12:45 p.m. and 3:10 p.m. both days departing from Central Park.