Some Say This Year’s Redding Rodeo Parade Was The Best Ever

If you’ve been around for a long time (multi decades!), maybe even born and raised in the North State,  attending that very first Redding Rodeo Parade on a Saturday morning in the late 1940s, when you were “knee-high-to-a-grasshopper,”  you might say that this year’s Redding Rodeo Parade, held on a splendid May 16, 2026, Saturday morning……”was the best ever.”

The late 1940s was when the Redding Rodeo Parade started, 1949 to be exact, and it debuted as the Shasta County Sheriff’s Posse Parade, with almost 200 entries, just about a year after the Redding Rodeo Association formed in 1948. In1953, the Asphalt Cowboys came into being and they took over organizing the Redding Rodeo Parade in 1958.

Evolving into a rich, historical event, this year’s Redding Rodeo Parade theme was “From Revolution To Rodeo: 250 Years Of Freedom” and it featured roughly 250 entries, including floats, marching bands, horse riders, car clubs, vehicles and dignitaries, as it proceeded proudly on California, Sacramento and East streets in downtown Redding.  Positioned on each of the three streets was an announcer describing each entry as it approached—and passed by. This year’s Grand Marshall was Mark Baird, of Etna, California.