Experience the magic of the season at Hanford Winter Wonderland Ice Skating, your holiday destination for family fun and festive memories! Step into the magic of the season as Civic Park transforms into a sparkling Winter Wonderland! Enjoy a festive escape filled with twinkling lights, cheerful music, and the joy of holiday celebration.
Children skating on an ice rink
Hanford's Winter Wonderland isn't just a seasonal delight but a powerful catalyst for economic growth and community connection. This event plays a transformative role in the region, drawing over 107,000 visitors and capturing attention far beyond our city limits.
Dates: November 22, 2025 - January 11, 2026Location: 400 N Douty St.
Bring your family and friends to glide across the ice rink, savor holiday treats, and festive environment.
Read also: Winter Fun at Hamilton Ice Arena
Behind the Scenes: The Team That Makes It Happen
Peek behind the curtain of Hanford's winter festivities and meet the dedicated team making it all possible. Ice rink managers Nikki Tovar and Maya Gomez, along with their hard working crew, are key players in creating magical experiences like Santa’s Christmas Eve reading and Freddie the fire truck’s light tours.
Discover how last year’s financial success is allowing us to reinvest in infrastructure and equipment, ensuring even more exciting opportunities for community engagement. The future looks bright for our city's cultural landscape as we gear up for the Hanford Civic Auditorium's 100th anniversary in 2025.
Winter Wonderland Success
This was our fourth year hosting Winter Wonderland. It's an event that has grown, you know, over time. This year we actually had 92,000 visits within the seven-week period. We had over 19,000 skaters. Local vendor, food vendors, of course, were there. The average stay was 81 minutes.
We made some big investments. We bought the ice rink you know ice skates and made a lot of investments we had been renting in the past. The park now will undergo kind of a restoration to get it ready in time for Thursday Night Marketplace.
Community Initiatives and Events
Don't miss out on the festive happenings and community initiatives that make Hanford a special place to call home. From the Slipper Sock Drive for seniors to the Hanford Fire Department's toy drive, there's no shortage of ways to get involved this holiday season. Here's some things coming up on our community calendar.
Read also: Ice Skating in Great Neck
- Ghost of a Chance is now showing at the Temple Theater in Hanford. For tickets and information, visit kingsplayersorg the Main Street.
- Hanford Beer Tasting Event Everybody's Irish in Downtown Hanford will be held on Friday March 14th at 6 pm.
- On Saturday, March 15th, Frontier Elementary School will be holding their carnival from 11 am to 3 pm.
- Also on Saturday, the Children's Storybook Garden will be holding their Victorian Tea. Visit childrenstorybookgardenorg for more details.
- On the evening of Saturday, March 15th, the Rotary Club is holding their annual stakeout dinner at the Hanford Civic Auditorium at 5.30 pm.
- Also that evening at the Hanford Fox Theater will be silent comedies with Dave Moreno on the organ at 7.30 pm.
- The King's Symphony Orchestra is presenting their annual Young Artists Spring Concert on Sunday, March 16th at 4 pm in the Hanford Fox Theater.
If you have an event coming up and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together.
Hanford Civic Auditorium Centennial Celebration
The iconic Hanford Civic Auditorium building was built in 1924, and we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the dedication, which actually took place in 1925 this year. We named the event 100 Years of Memories. For a lot of folks in Hanford and surrounding areas that is such an iconic landmark within our city.
The Hanford Civic Auditorium Turns 100: A Century of Memories
So over the last few years we've been doing some renovation, both externally, with new air conditioners. Last year we replaced the oak wood flooring paint. On June 7th we're going to have the official birthday party of the Civic Auditorium and we've decided to coincide it with the Carnegie Car Show and I think there's some great synergy there.
We plan to have 100-year-old cars in the Civic, partly as decoration but just also to signify what automobiles looked like 100 years ago. We will have historic photos, historic artifacts and really the whole event is really just telling the story of the building. Folks will be able to come into the Civic at no cost and to see the automobiles, to see the memorabilia.
The afternoon of the 7th we have a very special community band that will be performing. At our planning meeting Someone mentioned if the walls could talk, and I like that concept, like if the walls could talk, what story would they tell?
Read also: Ice Skating at AZ Ice Gilbert
The meetings easily get derailed when we have stories to tell about the building that we've either we've experienced or, in preparation for this, people I've shared with us and on my history page, just countless stories of dances. One person mentioned polio vaccinations with the Carnegie Museum of Kings County.
At our recent exhibition we talk about how the Japanese met there before they were relocated to other areas of our country World War II. So definitely an iconic building. And the car show downtown is on Saturday, June 7th. It starts at 9 am and continues on until about one o'clock and there'll be awards and it will be close to 200 cars this year will be displayed and it will be on Dowdy Street, 8th Street and part of 9th Street and then, of course, in the park we have food trucks lined up for the parking lot inside the Bastille parking lot.
I put off the call to musicians throughout Central California and, as of today's recording, we have over 60 musicians who have committed to come to Hanford to perform that day. Many of them most of them, from out of town, they're just. They know the building, they know that this is a very special event so they wanted to be involved in it, and that that evening, Saturday evening, there's going to be a special event inside the auditorium, which is a ticketed event.
During that evening there'll be food and drink, of course, live entertainment. We're going to be working on a video that kind of tells the story, you know, using a lot of the historic artifacts, maybe interviewing some folks and succinctly just kind of telling you know the building's history, the story, as you just mentioned so many wonderful events over many, many years. Really cool too is there's a hundred-year-old time capsule.
We do have a list from a newspaper article written when they embedded it in the cornerstone. The Masons embedded that. So it'll be really interesting to look at those things that folks thought was important a hundred years ago. And when we close it up we'd like to put in things from today's times. So in another 100 years they'll look at what we put in and like, wow, you guys were behind. Again, when you're talking centuries, long time, there may be very few folks around that were born, you know, when the Civic was built
Brian Johnson, the City Communications Director, has been working on that page to kind of be a landing point for all the information for the events, including the National Anthem auditions, which will be via YouTube for preliminary rounds, and then we'll listen to finalists inside the Civic Auditorium closer to the event.
We will be out in the community seeking sponsorships. We're very thankful the city council has allotted a budget for this. My job is to recoup some of that expenditure through sponsorship through the evening ticket sales. But we're looking for what I refer to as a gold level or signature sponsor.
The place in people's heart for this building, I think you know resonates with a lot of folks in the community and we hopeful it resonates with some of the business too. We're not quite there to ticket sales yet but that will be rolling out here probably within the next month or so. And just so everyone knows, the evening is a ticketed but all of leading up to it.
thursday, june 5th, the Thursday Night Marketplace will dedicate a portion of their program to the event, and the car show will be open inside the Civic Auditorium. As well as Friday, the Classic Car Exhibition will be on display, and then, of course, on Saturday we talked about it's free and then Sunday, the Classic Car Show will stick around for one more day, and so it's a full four days of activities and we're really looking forward to it.
Economic Impact
Uncover how Hanford's Winter Wonderland isn't just a seasonal delight but a powerful catalyst for economic growth and community connection. Join us as we explore the transformative role this event plays in the region, drawing over 107,000 visitors and capturing attention far beyond our city limits.
With insights from the remarkable Parks and Community Services Director Brad Albert and City Manager Mario Cifuentez, we'll share how innovative tools like Placer AI are revolutionizing our approach to visitor data, leading to strategic marketing moves and attracting new retailers and restaurants to our vibrant community.
Additional Community Events
The Hanford Police Department will host a public community engagement meeting on Thursday, march 13th from 1 to 3 at the Police Activities League building at 902 North 11th Avenue. This meeting will provide an opportunity for the public to discuss and ask questions about the annual Military Equipment Report as well as the department's funding, acquisition and use of military equipment.
The council also adopted the 2025 Active Transportation Plan. The plan strongly indicated the priority and need for walking and biking trails, which Hanford lacks. Throughout the past 133 years the city has been developed as a car-centric community. As the city continues to expand, the need for a comprehensive active transportation plan is critical to the city's plan for growth.
We are so excited. We've been doing this event, I believe 10 years now, so we have about 25 businesses that are going to be participating from 6 to 9 on Friday, March 14th, and we have some really special craft beers for everyone to try.
We try to pick some really unique flavors and varieties, so some really fun names some traditional Irish beer, some red ale gotta have Guinness but we also have some strawberry lagers, some peach IPAs, mango IPAs, some popular brands and not so popular brands. So I feel like it's a really good variety.
It's a super opportunity to try different types. That's the one thing that I enjoy about it. And I noticed that a lot of the stores that are opening up they run you know some of them that you know sell items. They have clothing or whatever they have on sale, but it's become kind of a tradition to have a big spread. Some of them put on some extravagant layouts of charcuterie and stuff like that, and I know that that's a big part of it as well.
For $45, you get unlimited craft beer tasting. A lot of businesses will provide snacks, whether it's charcuterie or even tacos, and I think one business is having a pizza truck. We also have a business that is going to be providing games, so there's going to be poker tables, and so I mean it's a lot of fun. There's activities in many of the businesses. There's going to be lots of photo opportunities, fun pics to take with friends, some live music, so we're really looking forward to that. It's a really great event for $45. You can't beat it.
We have some that are a little bit on the outskirts but not too far to walk One business who recently moved to a new location, moth Tattoo. They're going to be participating and they're going to be doing some really cool stuff. So I urge people to make that one of their stops. And then as far down as the Carnegie Museum we have Hanford Antique Emporium on that side, and then on the west side we've got Top Hook Realty and the new candy store it's called Menarca Then Valley Strong Credit Union, which is newly opened last year. They're participating.
Tickets can be purchased online, mainstreethanfordcom, or here in our office, and the price is the same it's $45.
Annual Egg Hunt
Our egg hunt will take place in Civic Park. We're very, very fortunate to have Anthem Blue Cross as a sponsor, and they came in last year and wanted us to be able to offer the event at no cost to anybody. Folks will still need to go online and register. They'll come in, check in, they'll get their baskets. Several different age groups go at different times, so we don't want all the big kids fighting with the little kids. And this year, I'm excited, at the very end we're going to do an adult egg hunt and so the kids can laugh at the at the parents, right, and we're going to have some pretty cool surprises in some of those eggs. And so it's just, you know, we'll have the Easter bunny out there. We'll be able to take pictures. Beautiful site, beautiful location for it.