Festivities have wild, wild history
By Julia
Priest
News-Sentinel staff writer
A mustachioed hooligan clad only in his
underwear and crowned with a busted window screen hotfooted it
down Elm Street with a shotgun-toting homeowner in hot pursuit.
It was only a float in a parade, but according to Lodi historians,
this was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back,
and marked the end of the “wild, wild” portion of the
Grape Festival’s western past.
Bob Handel of Lodi is now retired, but
he served for many years as the dispatcher for the festival parades,
including the infamous “Parade of Horribles.”
“They were all up in arms about that float,” said Handel,
adding that the city fathers “put an end to the shenanigans
in a hurry.”
The Kiddie Parade was born a short time later— a kinder,
gentler celebration of the festivities.
In the early days, men from the town would dress up in immodest
costume, often in drag, and amble down the street on Saturday
night to open the festival.
“It got kinda raunchy, to say the
least,” Handel said.
Most record-keepers agree that the “wild, wild” west
started somewhere around the time of the Gold Rush and ended just
before the Great Depression, at least in California
Throughout the west, the “wild” period meant different
things in different regions. In the plains states, the days of
the great cattle drives with their wealthy barons brought about
the excesses of the era. For California, it was the lure of gold
in nearby hills that brought on the debauchery.
“There were lots of young men here seeking their fortune,”
San Joaquin County Historical Society Director Mike Bennett said.
“They were separated from their wives, parents and families,
and from their churches — the kinds of influences that might
have altered their lifestyle choices, had they been closer.”
Until the 1850s, Lodi was nothing but a wind-blown expanse of
sagebrush and valley oaks, but the gold rush of 1849 brought men
seeking riches, and they all needed to eat.
Ross Sargent, for whom Sargent Road is named, originally came
to make his fortune in precious metals, but soon discovered that
greater gold was to be had in the soil.
The area’s high water table allowed for abundant wheat, which
allowed for the feeding of abundant cattle, and Sargent grew food
to supply the goldrushers in the area near what is Woodbridge
today.
The railroads came in 1869, choosing to lay tracks in Lodi rather
than what is now Woodbridge, because of the risk of flooding in
the lower regions of Woodbridge. The town was then called Mokelumne
Station, later changed to Lodi.
From the 1870s to the 1900s, there were many saloons and racetracks,
and Lodi was known as a wild and woolly town, according to local
historians. Main Street, just east of Sacramento Street, was host
to saloons and gambling joints. The lot than now holds Kmart was
the site of a full-sized race track, complete with gambling. Cowboys
from the Delta would ride into town to bet on horse and dog races,
and whoop it up in local saloons.
With the influx of God-fearing, church-going, family-centered
folks from the Dakotas and the Midwest, the complexion of the
town began to change. Over the next several years, the number
of saloons declined, and the number of churches increased. The
Midwesterners, most of German extraction, were hard-working types
and “weren’t about to sit around drinking and betting
on horses and dog all day,” local historians say.
Last call for the “wild, wild” west in Lodi came around
1906, when the move to incorporate the city was finally successful
over the objections of saloon owners.
Country cowboys grew into city fathers, and a new, quieter, calmer
Lodi was born.
Christy Kennedy, who writes the Vintage
Lodi historical column for the News-Sentinel, contributed to this
story.
