What it was like
The Ferris wheel hasn't changed. The Lions Club is still running it. The parade still rolls down the same stretch of road it's been rolling since before most of the crowd was born, and the corn dogs still cost what corn dogs cost at a carnival that folds up on Sunday night and leaves behind nothing but flattened grass and the particular satisfaction of a town that just spent three days remembering it's a town.
Tiller Days celebrates the agricultural roots of a city that paved over most of its farms but never paved over the tradition of gathering in the park to eat questionable food and watch a float built by someone's scout troop. The craft booths are the kind where someone's aunt has sold hand-poured candles at the same table for fifteen years. The crowd is the crowd that lives here: stroller families, teenagers who came for the rides, retirees who came for the pie.
Columbus Tustin Park becomes a midway, a food court and a live music venue for one weekend every October. Free entry to the grounds; rides ticketed separately. Saturday parade at 10 AM through Old Town Tustin.
October 2–4. Columbus Tustin Park, Tustin.