Journey into America’s Industrial Legacy: The Best of the West Antique Equipment Show

Honor Veterans and Experience

Living History at Santa Margarita

Ranch This Memorial Weekend

By Camille DeVaul

Arguably the best show in the West, The Best of the West Antique Equipment Show, will be starting its engines on May 25 through May 28 at the Santa Margarita Ranch.

This Memorial Day weekend, guests are welcome to explore and enjoy the equipment that helped build America into the country it is today. More importantly, the weekend is dedicated to remembering and honoring veterans who have given their lives for our country.

The Best of the West Antique Equipment Show is a Paso Robles Pioneer Day Committee and Rossi Foundation event. Santa Margarita Ranch poses as the perfect location to enjoy a family gathering outside and teach the younger generations about the heritage of our area.

Best of the West coordinator Tara Tedeschi shares her favorite part of the weekend, “I love seeing the kids’ faces and even adults when they see these tractors and these big large pieces of equipment come to life ... they come back every single year because it is such a fun familyfriendly event to go [to] and hang out.”

At Best of the West, you can go back in time in more ways than one. The train holds plenty of history itself. It was featured in the TV show “Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman” and was one of the passenger coaches from Santa Fe and Disneyland Railroad from the 1950s. Pretend you are headed out west with a ride on the infamous Santa Margarita Ranch steam engine train. But watch out — word on the street is the Atascadero Trail Riders have plans for robbery!

With Best of the West landing on Memorial Weekend, Tara says it is essential that veterans are honored, “We want to make sure that it’s known that we do this to honor our Veterans and keep their memory alive as well.”

At noon each day, all operations will pause for a military salute and flyover courtesy of the Estrella Warbirds.

Many fan-favorite activities will be back at the ranch, including the Farm Bureau’s tri-tip dinners and other food vendors (including a bar), parades, and the Kid’s Corral.

“I think that farming and ranching and the equipment that has been used for hundreds of years is kind of a dying breed, so it’s important for us to showcase how our ancestors farmed and were able to live on the land,” Tara explained. “I think [its important], especially Paso Robles and the surrounding areas, is such a farming and ranching rich community. It brings all of us joy ... doing this to make sure generations to come can still soak up this rich heritage. I think it’s important for us to keep that memory alive.”

In the Kid’s Corral, youngsters can look forward to some unique activities, including gold panning with the Central Coast Gold Prospectors, vintage water pumps, butter making, model trains and tracks, grain buckets, and roping dummies, giant sand pile, and tire climbing gym.

Throughout the day, guests can enjoy a tractor parade, earthmoving demo, plowing demo, blacksmithing, and so much more.

“It’s not just equipment just sitting there. You will see all these old pieces moving and actually in action,” Tara adds that this year the show will be adding harvesting demonstrations with antique equipment.

Coming back to the show is the Antique Caterpillar Machinery Owner’s Club (AMOC). Founded in 1991, the AMOC has members all over the world. Several countries are planning to participate in AMOC’s showing at Best of the West in May. Locals from around the county and even folks from across the nation bring equipment and tractors from various decades. It ends up creating a timeline of the mechanized progress of 20th-century America. Of course, none of this would be possible without the help of JB Dewar, who donates fuel for the show.

The Santa Margarita Ranch is home to many landmarks serving as proof of its own rich history. Here, people can find the original El Camino Real, the Asistencia building, the Wells Fargo building dating back to the stagecoach days, and mission vineyards.

Tara and her team are excited for everyone to enjoy Best of the West in May, “Knowing that we can at least bring a little piece of the past back to life is neat to see in person.”

For more information on tickets, trailer camping, volunteering, and all the show has to offer, visit bestofthewestshow.com.

By Christianna Marks

It’s a tale as old as time: Boy meets girl. Girl introduces boy to her brother. The two men go on to become brothers-in-law and co-founders of the North County’s most famous brewery, Firestone Walker Brewing Company, and the creators of one of America’s biggest craft beer festivals — the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Fest, which returns to Paso Robles on June 3.

“Adam Firestone and I are brothersin-law,” said Firestone Walker co-owner and co-founder David Walker. “He likes to say his sister chose his partner, and I like to say my wife chose mine.”

Both Adam and David started out in the wine and grape industry on the Central Coast but then decided to start a brewery fueled by their shared love of beer in the early ’90s.

“Craft beer wasn’t a huge leap for us,” David added. “We started a brewery under the eaves of the Firestone vineyard in an old barrel room and literally just started brewing beer. It was incredibly difficult most days. I mean, people weren’t that engaged with craft beer at all, certainly not like they were with wine.”

Five years later, they had outgrown the tiny barrel room and started building a brewery location in Buellton.

“Before we could finish that location, a purpose-built, brand new, ready-to-go brewery had been built in Paso Robles,” David said. “The ownership of that brewery had gone into liquidation, so we bought the facility off the bank, and that brought us to Paso Robles. It was huge serendipity for us. Turned out to be the right community at the right time.”

That was back in 2000, and 23 years later, Firestone Walker Brewing Company has become a staple in California, San Luis Obispo County, The North County, and Paso Robles. The business also employs close to 450 locals from the area, who have become a part of the company’s family and community.

“We have a bias towards working locally. Because that’s how we can make a real impact. And ultimately, craft beer is a local thing. Brewers since the beginning of time thrived in their regions,” stated David.

“Craft beer wasn’t a huge leap for us. We started a brewery under the eaves of the Firestone vineyard in an old barrel room and literally just started brewing beer. It was incredibly difficult most days. I mean, people weren’t that engaged with craft beer at all, certainly not like they were with wine.”

Last fall, Firestone Walker teamed up with Cal Poly to produce Cal Poly Gold Lager. They also funded the Enjoy Paso mural downtown that Studios on the Park created, and continue to sponsor Paso’s Concerts in the Park and other community efforts.

Firestone Walker is also passionate about sustainability and conserving natural resources. For example, the brewery’s on-site solar plant offsets the majority of the brewery’s energy needs. Process water is treated on site and returned to the local aquifer. A new CO2 recovery system is in the works, and spent grains are fed to local livestock.

All of these community efforts include working with Paso Robles Pioneer Day to stage the annual beer fest.

“We’ve worked really, really well with the Pioneer Day folks in Paso Robles, and that’s such a well-run, good-hearted organization. Together, us and them, we’ve created probably the best beer festival in America,” continued David.

The Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Fest officially launched in 2012 and was the brainchild of Brewmaster Matt Brynildson and current Pioneer Day board member Tom Madden. Though Matt wasn’t super interested in putting on a fest at first, that all changed, and to this day, proceeds from the event go to Pioneer Day.

“He [Tom] said, ‘Wait a second, if you could put together the ultimate event, don’t worry about cost, don’t worry, just dream big. What would it be?’” Matt recalled. “I thought about it for a while, and I said, ‘I would want to fly brewers in from around the world and have the very best beer available poured by the makers or by the owner of the brewery.’ I thought I had him there because that was never going to happen, and I added that I would be really specific about the types of beer we pour.”

Matt also told Tom that the fest would need good food and excellent music. He added that he just kept listing off everything he thought would detour Tom, but Tom gave him the green light on everything that came out of his mouth. And in another turn of serendipity, the Firestone Walker team was ready to take on the task of starting one of the premiere craft beer fests in America.

“A lot of really good smart people, well-connected people, got together, and they put all their skills together and just really meshed well,” said Matt.

This year’s Invitational will be the brewing company’s 10th, and just like all previous years, it sold out within minutes. This year

The Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Fest is launching a brand new event that will take place on Thursday, June 1, called the Firestone Walker Invitational Kickoff, with live music and beer samples for the community at the City Park. The fest itself will take place on Saturday, June 3.

David added that getting ready for the Invitational is an all-year thing and that it’s similar to preparing for the Super Bowl.

“The whole idea of this is to bring in international, national and local brewers alike,” David said. “So we spend a lot of time bringing beer into the country, which needs to be licensed, it needs to be physically moved, it needs to be posted in the county and the state, so it’s a huge compliance issue getting the beer here and getting it here express mail. They can’t just put it on a slow boat.”

“For the two weeks leading into the festival, we’ve got a quarter of our warehouse dedicated to assembling all this beer, and like David said, it has to be brought in through a variety of different mechanisms,” added David’s nephew and Adam’s son, COO Nick Firestone.

Though the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Fest brings participants in from all over and boosts Paso’s economy, it also maintains a focus on being a fest for the brewers, bringing in big craft beer hitters from all over the world for one weekend every year and making it all about the beer and the people who make it.

“I think it was one of the smartest things that we did just compared to other big beer festivals in America is we focused on the brewer experience. A lot of them have come out each and every year,” added Nick.

The beer fest is ultimately another indication of how Firestone Walker combines world-class beers and experiences with a passion for local heritage and community.

“Paso Robles is as integral to our story as Mr. Firestone and Mr. Walker,” David concluded. “I mean, this is not something like Tesla that we can pick up and move to Austin. Our roots are deep here. It’s almost hard for me to articulate how important it is to us. It would be a totally different enterprise if it were somewhere else. We hope to be part of the Paso Robles landscape for a long, long time.”