A parade that began with a picnic
The year was 1919, and there was great excitement in the Williams Lake valley as the steel rails of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway inched closer and closer. As surveyors began laying out the streets for the new town, people came from all over to mark the historic event with an impromptu picnic and a day of cowboy sports in the big natural amphitheatre near the creek.
By the following year the first hotels, stores and homes had blossomed on the bare hills, and that casual get-together had been organized into the first official Williams Lake Stampede — including, of course, a parade of mounted cowboys eager to compete in racing, riding and calf-roping.
