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On New Year’s Day 1890, Pasadena residents gathered to celebrate the mild winter weather by parading in their rose-covered carriages. As they repeated the “Tournament of Roses” in following years, they began inviting friends in neighboring cities to parade with them.

As early as 1897, several of Glendale’s civic organizations and some private citizens joined the parade. The city’s first official float was entered in 1911, according to documents in the Special Collections Room, which contains stacks of newspaper articles dating back to the very beginnings of Glendale’s parade participation.

The 1911 float was a flower-covered reproduction of Glendale’s new high school, which had opened just two years before. It was pulled by six horses (all blanketed with flowers), with more than two dozen Grecian-clad young women on board. They were escorted by 11 young men dressed as Roman soldiers. The float took a first prize — a silver cup and $150 in prize money.

Three years later, in 1914, the city graduated from a horse-drawn conveyance to a city light service truck carrying a large globe with a white dove of peace affixed to the globe.

In 1918, residents delivered ferns, smilax and poinsettias to the firehouse where volunteers were decorating the float. Others scoured the town for more white flowers needed to finish the design, a large red cross sitting on a bed of white flowers. At a cost of only $150, the float took a second place and earned the applause of viewers along the 2-mile parade route.

In 1920, Glendale’s float again took a first prize, the first of a consecutive string of awards that continued well into the 1980s. The float, a California bungalow with a view of snow-capped mountains, was designed by city employee L. W. Chobe with the help of many volunteers. The men of Fire Station No. 1 prepared the foundation of lumber, wire and moss while women, young and old, put the flowers on toothpicks and men placed the flowers on the float. Mr. McGrew of the Broadway Garage donated the use of a truck. The cost of about $300, mostly for flowers, was funded by the Board of Trustees, the city’s governing body at the time.

A couple of weeks before New Year’s 1921, the Glendale Evening News called for donations to fund a float for the parade. The Board of Trustees had decided there weren’t enough funds in the city’s advertising and promotion fund and called on residents to finance the float.