End of Days

More than 1,500 people lined the city’s main drag Saturday morning for the Conejo Valley Days parade, a decades-old tradition capping a week of events that celebrate the area’s pioneer roots.

Cowboy hats dotted the crowd and small children decked in suede fringe vests and bandannas cheered to waving girls on horseback, high school marching bands, dancing cloggers and truckloads of singing Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

Hazy sunshine warmed the hundreds of families that had gathered to watch 106 parade entries make their way down a two-mile stretch of Thousand Oaks Boulevard.

“It’s probably one of the last truly hometown parades,” said Chuck Rogers, a spokesman for the parade organizers at the Thousand Oaks Kiwanis Club.

The parade marked the 44th year of the festival, which originated with varied celebrations in the late 1940s and became known in 1956 as Conejo Valley Days.

The event starts in March with the grand marshal race, won this year by Sue “Sioux City” Gore who raised $38,000 for two local charities.

It ends with a weeklong carnival at Conejo Creek Park featuring a chili cook-off, rodeo and dozens of performances.

As a child, Thousand Oaks native Jayme Lockyear, 43, watched the parade pass her father’s gas station, which is now vacant and its windows boarded.

Every spring, her parents would take the family to a Western wear store where they would all get new cowboy outfits to wear all week, she said.

“When I was a kid, everybody would dress up,” said Lockyear, who wore a cowboy hat and boots to this year’s parade. “All the merchants would dress up. And we’d get the full regalia and went every day to the carnival.”

This year, she brought her 5-year-old daughter, Chloe, but Lockyear noted that fewer people show the same interest in the event’s theme. She nodded toward the couples in khaki shorts, baseball caps and T-shirts who stood chatting on cell phones as they waited for the parade to begin.

“It has definitely dropped off a bit,” she said. “But I hope they never give it up.”

Greg Geiger, 40, joined his 6-year-old daughter, Melissa, in the parade.

As she cheered from a truck bed with her fellow Conejo Valley YMCA Indian Scouts, he walked behind with the other dads.

It was an early morning for both father and daughter as they rushed to prepare their costumes and make it to the parade’s starting line by 7 a.m.

“My daughter was excited about it,” said Geiger, a computer consultant. “My problem was there was a long line at the Starbucks.”

Among the more enthusiastic parade-goers was Stuart Medal, a 54-year-old psychologist from Northridge who was decked out in Western regalia and wore a suede vest covered in buttons commemorating Conejo Valley Days of years past.

He chewed a piece of hay to further authenticate the costume.

“I think the Conejo Valley represents the place that everybody wants to be when they leave the [San Fernando] Valley,” he said.

“This is still the last frontier. It used to be you’d either have to move to Texas or Oklahoma or Wyoming to be a cowboy. Now you move to Ventura County.”

FYI

Today is the last day of Conejo Valley Days. The fairgrounds will be open from noon to 8 p.m. The rodeo will be held at 1 and 4 p.m. For information call 371-8730.