What began in Sunol in 2008 as the Cowboy Culture Extravaganza has since expanded to celebrate other cultures as well. By 2012, the event had broadened its historical focus to include local pioneer and ranching culture, under names like the Pioneer Folk Festival, the Cowboy Hootenanny Folk Festival and Sunol’s Old Timey Hootenanny. It featured music, old-fashioned games and community storytelling.
During the pandemic there was a pause and time to reflect. The festival returned in 2021 as Sunol Stories with a renewed mission: to celebrate the people and cultures who have called Sunol home. This annual gathering has grown beyond its cowboy roots to honor the cultures that have shaped the central California valley, including the Indigenous people, Mexicans and pioneers who have ranched in the area since the 1860s.
This year’s festival was held on Saturday, Oct. 18, transforming the area around the Sunol Regional Wilderness Park visitor center into a tribute to yesteryear. It was a fitting pastoral setting for the event that offered several ways to experience the history of Central California. Visitors danced to the music of the Polka Cowboys, a lively western folk music band, and enjoyed the vibrant Ensamble Folclórico Colibrí, a Mexican dance and singing group that advocates for the LGBTQ+ community.
Festival guests learned that tule—a large grass-like plant that grows abundantly in marshes—was used extensively by Native Americans to make a variety of things including boats, baskets, sandals and clothing. Then they learned how to weave tule to make their own tule boats.
There were other creative activities, like decorating bandanas with brands from the local ranches to make “brandanas” and making bracelets with pine nuts. If all this activity made attendees thirsty on the warm October day, they could quench their thirst by squeezing lemons to make lemonade.
Kids and the young-at-heart enjoyed old-fashioned pastimes and ranch activities like sack races, walking on stilts, learning to lasso and milking Poppy the wooden milking cow. If the kids wanted a break they could relax and read in a prairie “reading” wagon placed under the oak trees.
Ohlone storytellers shared their traditional stories with the audience, offering an intimate connection to the past. The Medina family displayed beautiful and well-preserved baskets woven by Native Americans in central California tribes over 100 years ago. A vintage phone was available for guests to leave voice messages about their impressions and ideas for future festivals.
According to a Regional in Nature article, visitors who come to Sunol for the festival commonly remark on the connection they feel to the land itself, one of the last open spans of wilderness in the Bay Area. It’s a welcome respite from our high-tech lives and an annual invitation to experience, learn and celebrate the history, culture and activities that formed Central California.
