How does a city celebrating its 100th birthday throw a parade that's only turning 61?
That's the question waiting for anyone who pulls up the Placentia Heritage Festival's page this fall and notices the math doesn't line up. Placentia turns 100 on December 2, 2026, marking a full century since incorporation. But the Heritage Festival and Parade rolling down Kraemer Boulevard on Saturday, October 10, isn't the city's 100th anniversary event. City records show the 2025 festival was the 60th annual, which makes this year's the 61st, not the 100th. Do the subtraction and the first Heritage Festival lands somewhere around 1966, nearly four decades after Placentia existed as a city at all.
That gap matters if you're planning your Saturday around this thing. If you're expecting a festival that reinvents itself because the city hit a round number, you'll be disappointed. If you understand that the parade and the city are running on two separate clocks that happen to overlap this year, you'll know exactly what you're walking into: the same pancake breakfast, the same car show, the same stretch of Kraemer Boulevard that's hosted this event for six decades, just with a hundred-year milestone quietly humming in the background.
A Tradition Younger Than the Streets It Runs On
Placentia incorporated in 1926. The Heritage Festival didn't show up until the mid-1960s, roughly forty years later. That timing puts the festival's origin closer to the middle of the 20th century than to the city's founding, which means most of the buildings the parade passes were already standing well before anyone organized a parade to celebrate them.
One of those buildings sits at 230 and 240 S. Bradford Avenue in Old Town Placentia. The Kraemer Building went up in 1914, built by Samuel Kraemer as the first two-story structure in town, according to the historical marker placed there by the Placentia Historical Committee. That's twelve years before the city incorporated. Kraemer Boulevard, the street the parade travels every year, carries the same family name. The road the festival uses to celebrate Placentia's history is itself older than the festival, and the family it's named for was already shaping downtown before Placentia was legally a city.
None of that changes what happens on October 10. It just means the number on this year's festival program, 61, isn't a countdown to the city's Centennial. It's a separate tally that started later and runs on its own schedule. The city has been marking its actual 100th year through things like a Centennial Art Contest that asked residents of all ages to submit work built around the theme "100 Years of Placentia," with selected pieces displayed as part of the broader Centennial celebration. The parade and the Centennial are neighbors this year, not the same event wearing two numbers.
Saturday, October 10, Minute by Minute
The schedule hasn't drifted much from what long-time residents already know, but here's the shape of the morning if you're mapping out when to leave the house.
| Time | What's happening |
|---|---|
| 6:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | Pancake breakfast at Tri-City Park |
| 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. | Car show runs at Tri-City Park |
| 9:15 a.m. | Band review begins |
| 9:30 a.m. | Parade steps off at Bastanchury Road and Kraemer Boulevard |
| 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. | Festival grounds open at Tri-City Park |
Admission to the festival grounds is free. Food, games, and rides inside the park are fee-based, which is worth knowing if you're bringing kids who will want the slides.
Where to Actually Stand, Where to Actually Park
The parade route hasn't changed in the years the city has been publishing it: it starts at the intersection of Bastanchury Road and Kraemer Boulevard and heads north along Kraemer to Tri-City Park at 2301 N. Kraemer Boulevard. If you want a curb spot rather than a view over someone's shoulder, plan to be along that stretch by 8:30 a.m., about an hour before the parade steps off.
Parking is free at Tuffree Middle School, 2101 Tuffree Blvd., which puts you a short walk from both the parade route and the park entrance. If you've done this before, you already know the lot fills up faster than the festival's official start time suggests. If this is your first year, treat 8:30 as the real deadline, not 9:30.
The Morning, in Order
For anyone building out the day from scratch, here's roughly how residents who've done this before tend to sequence it:
- Eat the pancake breakfast early, before 8:00, so you're not rushing food and a parking spot at the same time.
- Park at Tuffree Middle School and walk over rather than circling for street parking near the route.
- Claim a spot along Kraemer between Bastanchury and the park entrance by 8:30.
- Watch the band review at 9:15, which is a good preview before the parade itself starts fifteen minutes later.
- Stay for the car show and festival grounds after the parade passes. Both run until 3:00 p.m., so there's no need to rush off once the last float clears Kraemer.
The Part That Doesn't Change, Even in a Centennial Year
It would be easy to assume that a city marking its 100th year would ask its longest-running public event to carry that weight, maybe with a bigger parade, a different route, some kind of formal tie-in. Based on everything the city has published about this year's Heritage Festival, that's not what's happening. The festival is running on its own 61-year cadence, the same pancake breakfast and car show format it's used for decades, while the Centennial gets marked through its own separate efforts like the art contest and business recognition program the city has been promoting throughout 2026.
That's worth knowing before you show up expecting a parade route that's somehow different this year because of the number attached to the city's birthday. It isn't. What you'll get on October 10 is the same morning Placentia has been running since around 1966, pancakes at dawn, a short walk down a street named for a family that built downtown before the city existed, and a parade that has nothing to prove about turning 100 because it was never trying to be that number in the first place.
If you've lived here long enough to have a favorite spot along Kraemer, nothing about this year should move you off it. If you're newer to town and this is your first Heritage Festival, you're walking into a tradition that predates most of the neighborhoods around it and outlasted plenty of the reasons anyone might have expected it to change.
Bald Brothers Team spends as much time paying attention to what makes Placentia feel like home as we do watching the local market. If a Saturday like this one ever gets you thinking about what your own piece of Old Town Placentia could be worth, Start the Two Week Selling System™ and get your free plan.
