Festival for Tourism Has Low Turnout

A festival designed to celebrate local history made little history this weekend, drawing smaller-than-expected crowds to Santa Paula and Fillmore.

Despite its artificial snow sled run, live music and scores of local vendors, the first Heritage Valley Festival was a decidedly inauspicious kickoff for an ambitious campaign to attract more tourists to the region.

“In your first year, you’ve got to take a risk and build your reputation,” said festival organizer Pam Colvard, a Santa Paula resident. “We’ll try some different marketing strategies next year.”

Colvard estimated the weekend crowd at 6,000 to 7,000 people, although others said those estimates were generous.

But crowd counts mattered little to the scores of people who made their way to the two cities Sunday to take in the area’s history through farm equipment displays, vintage trains and a collection of handmade quilts.

“It’s an inviting town,” said Thousand Oaks resident Margie DiCesare as she waited in Santa Paula for one of the festival’s keynote events, a ride aboard a restored, steam-powered train linking the two cities. “It’s quaint, it’s peaceful.”

That quiet feel, while not exactly an ideal atmosphere for a festival, also attracted Rob Ross, also of Thousand Oaks. Ross and his wife, Donna, came with DiCesare and her husband to the fair.

“It makes a nice drive,” Ross said. “There’s not too much traffic.”

Fillmore resident Jesus Aguilar also ventured out to the festival’s activities. Wearing a white Stetson to ward off the midafternoon sun, Aguilar said the day gave his family a chance to relax.

“I think it’s pretty good,” he said. “You need some time to see something different in the city.”

Officials designed the festival to inaugurate a tourism campaign to rename the Santa Clara River Valley the “Heritage Valley,” a move they hope will draw thousands of tourists to this pair of rural towns that have spent millions polishing their small-town images.

Among the recent improvements: $2 million for a new Fillmore City Hall, a three-story building with ionic columns; the $1.2-million restoration of a classic Fillmore theater; a $3.5-million downtown and train station renovations in Santa Paula.

Thanks to a $30,000 marketing campaign, signs bearing the name “Heritage Valley” will soon appear on California 126, putting a face to what Colvard termed a “tourism promotional package” celebrating the area as a slice of small-town Americana.

“These two towns have been economically strapped, so this is a new way to pump life into these communities,” Colvard said, adding that “everything is coming together.”

Tried in Fillmore in each of the past three years under different names, the event was the first partnership between that city and Santa Paula, which combined have less than 40,000 in population. The Fillmore portion of the festival was supported by $7,000 from the city, which Colvard said would be repaid through vendor fees.

Organizers said the Santa Paula portion of the fair was bankrolled entirely by vendor fees.

Although “heritage” was the catchword of the festival, politics was also a mainstay of the weekend, with several booths dedicated to local candidates or causes.

One exception was a display of decades-old tractors put on by the Topa-Topa Flywheelers of Ventura County, a club of tractor enthusiasts. The tractors, some more than 50 years old, were a spinning, humming example of the area’s agricultural roots.

“We’re just trying to keep the agricultural memories alive,” said club president Mike Miller.

Santa Paula Mayor Pro-Tem Jim Garfield said the festival also was an opportunity for his city to show off its multimillion-dollar redevelopment effort.

“It brings people to town and lets them see what we spent $3.5 million on,” he said. “There’s a lot to see in this valley.”