In four short years the Portland Annual Rose Festival has taken its place in the foremost ranks of the most celebrated civic demonstrations of this character in America. It embraces features of amusement, entertainment and education distinctively its own as well as embodying in its full week of gaiety and pastime attractions that seem never to lose their charm. Its program is varied with shows and spectacles, pageantry and processions, carnivals on land and water an events that appeal to every lover of sports and display.

While the central motif of the annual fete is the enshrining of the rose, the "queen of flowers," at the same time the rose festival has taken such a hold upon the people of the city and, for that matter, upon the whole Pacific northwest, that its ramifications are manifold, reaching out each year in new and novel directions and each successive year drawing far greater crowds of pleasure-seekers from ever-expanding territory.

The rose festival is presided over by a merry old monarch who has been crowned "Rex Oregonus" —king of the Oregon country—and he holds sway throughout the week of revels. He presides over the magnificent electrically illuminated float parades and his unmasking occurs at the grand military ball, which is one of the important social functions of the year.

Each day’s list of events is replete with wonders of the carnival realm and there is a grand total of six gorgeously decorated and illuminated parades and spectacles.

The most dazzling and elaborate events of the week, perhaps, are the two electric parades at night. In these pageants historical, allegorical and mythological subjects are treated in the floats which appear, and the illumination of the parades requires more than 25,000 electric lights. These two processions are presided over by his majesty, Rex Oregonus; the former gives him royal welcome upon his arrival and the final one bids him a glorious adieu as he departs for the realm of mysteries.

Another gorgeous spectacle is the grand historical pageant and display on the Willamette river. This will depict faithfully the greatest events in the development of the whole northwestern empire from its conquest by the white race down through its evolution and growth to the present time. Life of the aborigines, wars with the red-skins, and other stirring events are included in this showy number. Several hundred characters in costumes of the times and customs depicted are used to give this spectacle.

The annual children’s parade, in which the boys and girls from the public schools to the number of ten thousand will appear in street drills, maneuvers, intricate formations and living picture poses, is one of the most beautiful of all the festival events.

Of a widely different character but fully as attractive and inspiring is the novel "shower of roses." This consists of a train of six street-cars loaded with millions of rosebuds, blooms and petals manned by one hundred young women and girls in white who pelt the thousands of spectators along the line of march with this fragrant and multi-colored ammunition. This shower covers more than fifty blocks in the central business section of the city and last year was viewed by fully 150,000 people. Its spectacular effect is heightened when the throngs along the street scoop up the flowers from the pavement and engage in a hand-to-hand bombardment with the fair young flower girls.

Two of the other parades are noteworthy for the enormous and almost inconceivable number of roses used in their decorative effects. One is the horse-and-carriage parade conducted under the united auspices of the Portland Hunt Club and the Riverside Driving Association. In this procession nearly four hundred fine-blooded and exquisitely trained steeds appear gaily garlanded with wreaths and festoons of rose and ridden by the men, women and children of the Hunt Club. The vehicle section contains several hundred of the smartest turn-outs and equipages in the whole northwest together with elaborate floats, and fully 3,000,000 roses cut from the Portland gardens are consumed in this one pageant. Its length is usually about five miles.

In the automobile parade more than one thousand cars are entered for the handsome cash prizes and trophies offered, and it is given by the Portland Automobile Club, the largest organization of its kind in the northwest. A year ago individual motor-cars were bedecked with as high as ten thousand roses and the whole line of march was a bewildering panorama of floral splendor. This year’s turn-out will be more lavish than ever.

One night of the week will be given over to the fraternal and secret organizations of the city for their big parade and carnival. They will be augmented by detachments from the Spanish war veterans and national guardsmen of Oregon and Washington, with details of regulars from the Vancouver post, with the naval militia and with the middies from the cruiser squadron which will be stationed in local waters during the celebration.

A Pan-Hellenic congress composed of all the alumni associations of Greek letter fraternities in the northwestern states will be formally launched during the week and a grand reunion will be held by the collegians.

The grand military ball will be under the auspices of the Oregon militia and all military and naval organizations in this vicinity will participate in this notable event at which the king of the carnival will make his identity known.

The annual exposition of roses in which thousands of dollars’ worth of prizes are offered for the finest displays of blooms has been credited by experts and visitors from all parts of the world with being the finest and most comprehensive exhibition of its kind in America. This show will be held for two days of the festival.

Portland’s festival of fragrant beauty will begin on June 5th and continue until the 10th, a glorious "reign of roses."

Flora Rexford