Raw States

Marina del Rey Holiday Boat Parade

Marina del Rey, CA · Holiday

When

December 12, 2026

Where

Burton Chace Park · Marina del Rey · CA

Cost

Not confirmed

Status

Confirmed from the organizer's published schedule

Dozens of boats strung with lights circle the largest small-craft harbor in the country while judges score them from the park, a December fixture since 1963. Fireworks open it; hot chocolate carries it.

The history within reach

• Marina del Rey Holiday Boat Paradesame spot

  Dozens of boats strung with lights circle the largest small-craft harbor in the country while judges score them from the park, a December fixture since 1963.

• Marina del Rey dredges the largest man made small craft harbor in North America0.3 mi

  Los Angeles County had eyed the Ballona marsh as a harbor site since the nineteenth century and finally funded one in 1953.

• The Los Angeles Motordrome builds the first board speedway in America0.8 mi

  Jack Prince had spent years building wooden velodromes for bicycle racing, and in 1910 he laid the same idea out at one mile across for cars and motorcycles on the bluff above Playa del Rey.

• Abbot Kinney digs the canals of Venice of America1.1 mi

  Abbot Kinney cut a network of canals into the coastal marsh and opened his Venice of America resort on 4 July 1905, drawing tens of thousands of visitors on the first day.

• Venice of America1.2 mi

  Abbot Kinney drained a marsh and dug canals with gondoliers imported from Italy, on the theory that Americans would take to a cultural resort.