Festival of Trees raises $48,000 in what may be final year

Sunday saw what was possibly the final Festival of Trees in Carpinteria. The festival raised $48,000 dollars, with the proceeds going toward the construction of the Carpinteria Skate Park. 

This year’s festival raffled off  25 trees donated by the Big Red Crane Company, owned by Mike Dawson, who donated all the trees and marketing for the festival.

Each tree is fully decorated with lights and ornaments and comes with thousands of dollars worth of prizes which were donated by the tree’s sponsor.

Of those in the audience for the raffle, six were winners.

One of the significant winners was Dan Campos, who has won five times in the last ten years. This year, Mr. Campos won the man’s dream garage tree, which was sponsored by the Carpinteria Valley Lumber Company, owned by Jason and Marilyn Minteer. The tree included more than $7,000 worth of power tools and garden supplies.

“This is the last bit of Americana downhere, everyone came together from the folks who donated the trees to the folks who bought the raffle tickets,” Mike Dawson, festival chairman, told the News-Press. 

The Lions Club was unable to sponsor the Festival of Trees last year due to the pandemic. As a result, the Carpinteria Valley Lumber company sponsored and raffled off their own tree in 2020, which was fully decorated with prizes included. They called it the “Festival of Tree.”

“Went out with a bang At the end of the day, when we put everything away, we all looked at each other like we were still coming back next year. We’re hoping something magically shows up. We aren’t ready to give up, we are hoping for a Christmas miracle next year,” said Mr. Dawson.

email: kzehnder@newspress.com