The first Tournament of Roses was staged in 1890 by members of Pasadena's Valley Hunt Club, former residents of the East and Midwest eager to showcase their new home's mild winter weather.
Nicknamed “The Granddaddy of Them All” the Tournament of Roses has come a long way since its early days. The Rose Parade’s elaborate floats now feature high-tech computerized animation and exotic natural materials from around the world. Although a few floats are still built exclusively by volunteers from their sponsoring communities, most are built by professional float building companies and take nearly a year to construct. The year-long effort pays off on New Year’s morning, when millions of viewers around the world enjoy the Rose Parade.
The first marching band to appear in the Rose Parade was the Monrovia Town Band in 1891. Top marching bands from all over the world are invited. Many of the nation's top high school marching bands, along with college and organizational marching bands participate. Musical groups compete for 16 openings every year.
Bands are selected approximately 14 months in advance to give the chosen groups time to raise the money needed for the trip to Pasadena
The Tournament of Roses Parade, better known as the Rose Parade, is the "America's New Year Celebration", a festival of flowers, music and equestrians and a college football game on New Year's Day, produced by the non-profit Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association.
The annual parade was first held January 1, 1890 in Pasadena, California. Today, the Rose Parade is watched in person by hundreds of thousands of spectators on the parade route, and is broadcast on multiple television networks in the United States.[1] It is seen by millions more on television worldwide in more than 200 international territories and countries.[2] The Rose Bowl college football game was added in 1902 to help fund the cost of staging the parade.
The Tournament of Roses Parade has followed the same route on Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena's main thoroughfare and a segment of the former US 66, for many decades. The day before the parade, the entire environs of the neighborhood streets are sealed off and reserved for the massive parade marshalling of the dozens of floats, bands, equestrian units and other elements. This staging area is referred to as the "formation area" and managed by the formation area committee.
On parade morning, the various elements are merged and dispatched in front of Tournament House. It starts by going north on South Orange Grove Boulevard, beginning at Ellis Street. At Colorado Boulevard it passes the grandstands, and the main television and media stands, and proceeds east on Colorado Boulevard. The parade then turns north on Sierra Madre Boulevard. The floats then must travel under the Sierra Madre Boulevard/I-210 freeway overpass, requiring the over-height floats to collapse to prevent crashing into the overpass. The parade ends at the "post parade" area when it crosses Paloma Street, by Victory Park and Pasadena High School.
In total, this route is 5½ miles (9 km) long; the assembled bands, horse units, and floats take approximately 2.5 hours to pass by. The 2009 Parade was broadcast to 217 countries (79 countries live) in over 20 languages
