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Museum preserves the festival’s history

By Layla Bohm
News-Sentinel Staff Writer

Outside a former storage room at the Grape Festival grounds, two vintage dresses are draped on faceless models, standing on either side of the double doors.

Inside, six glass cases hold countless items, ranging from a 66-year-old bottle of Lodi wine to a tiara worn by past Grape Festival queens.

This is the Festival Museum, and here people can gather to reminisce and tell stories about the annual fair that is considered by many to be the biggest event in Lodi.

The museum is open several times during the year, and will be open free of charge throughout the Grape Festival, said the festival’s General Manager Mark Armstrong.

Each year, he said, the museum gets a little bigger, — just as it has been doing since its creation.

“About five or six years ago, Donn Thompson came to me and said somebody ought to be documenting everything we have,” Armstrong said.

Thompson, who has also been involved with the Grape Festival for years, currently serves on the festival board.

Together, he and Armstrong cleared out a storage room in the Grape Pavilion at the festival grounds on Lockeford Street and installed carpeting, air conditioning and lights.

Near the ceiling, black and white photos depict festival queens of years past. Beneath them, fancy dresses that rival wedding gowns are displayed on wine barrels.

Though the festival queen tradition ended in 1980, many people still remember the event for which people spared no expense, Armstrong said.

“The queens used to be a big thing,” he said. “They would go on publicity trips to San Francisco and Sacramento. ... They went all out.”

The glass cases hold various items from past queens, ranging from earrings worn by a reigning queen to a pair of shoes worn by a queen in the 1940s.

A yellowed newspaper article from Sept. 11, 1947, depicts a large photo of a woman being crowned, with a headline reading, “Yes . . . The Crown Fits.”

In a case to the right of the entrance, a large key to the city bears the name of every Festival queen from 1934 to 1980.

“I watch people come in, and they really enjoy it,” Armstrong said. “Kids will come in and say, ‘That’s my grandma.’”

In addition to queen memorabilia, fading Festival programs, old directors’ badges and yellowed certificates of grape weights are carefully arranged in the glass cases.

One case is designated to each decade between the 1930s and 1960s, and another case holds a variety of items, including an unopened 1907 bottle of wine from that year’s Tokay Carnival.

In a corner, a director’s suit made of gray slacks and a yellow sash and matching vest is reminiscent of the 1930s.

Each year, Thompson and his two daughters work on and expand the museum, and it even spills out into the Pavilion, Armstrong said.

When people hold garage sales and clean out old storage spaces, they find more items, and some of the relics continue to make their way into Thompson’s hands.