Bourbon Street? Not quite, but this Mardi Gras is one of best little parties in North Texas
It’s a Saturday in early March, and revelers line the sidewalks for a raucous parade. Some lean over wrought iron balconies to watch floats adorned in green, gold and purple snake by while colorful beads rain from the sky. Music echoes from the cracked pavement and off the old brick buildings.
Is it Bourbon Street? Not quite, but if you squint and use a little imagination, you just might mistake Clay Street in downtown Nocona, at least for one day, for the French Quarter in New Orleans.
Each year the city throws its Mardi Gras Nocona Style celebration, one of the best parties this side of the Big Easy — and lying 500 miles closer, a heck of a lot easier to get to from Fort Worth. Get on U.S. 287 and catch a tailwind, and you’ll be having crawfish and red beans and rice in about an hour and a half.
This year, Nocona’s party planners expected a couple thousand people on March 1, many driving long distances to experience this hidden gem of a bash. In addition to a few Fort Worthians, there were folks from Dallas, Sherman, far East Texas and even some from up the road in Oklahoma.
One group, friends and fiddle players from around the Metroplex, meets here annually, some with their young children in tow. All of them were dressed to the nines in Mardi Gras regalia, and all were happy to be in Nocona on what was a gorgeous day.
Locals love the family-friendly event, too. Since Mardi Gras Nocona Style began 15 years ago, it’s brought some publicity to the town of around 3,000, not to mention an economic boon. Susie Grant, who owns Downtown Flowers and Gifts on Nocona’s main street, had nothing but good things to say.
“It seems to grow a little more each year,” she mused. “We get more vendors coming in, I think more participants come in. Every little event that we do throughout the week of Mardi Gras seems to grow a just a little bit. As a business owner myself, it is incredible the amount of people that come to town for this every year. The people that come through my door, whether they’re buying or they’re just in looking, they all seem to come back later. So I think it’s made a great impact on our economy.”
The day began slowly with a pancake breakfast followed by a 5K run and a shoebox parade, where kids show off small-scale parade floats. By 1 p.m. the crowd was growing, and by the time the big parade kicked off at 3:30, throngs of people had descended upon downtown.
They shouted and waved, arms outstretched to catch candy and trinkets tossed from parade floats and classic cars. The float that received one of the bigger reactions was a wooden pirate ship built on a RV chassis. Created by construction company owner Buc Avanzini, it was a pretty good approximation of what you would have seen prowling 17th-century high seas, only this one was loaded for bear with beads instead of cannonballs.
One of the merry swashbucklers on board was Bobby Fenoglio, whose family owns Fenoglio Boots in Nocona. Riding the upper deck with Fenoglio was like being part of a rock-and-roll royal motorcade. He and his family and friends waved and smiled at the crowd while Guns ‘N’ Roses and AC/DC blasted out of the speakers.
Following this flagship was a smaller pirate ship built by Avanzini. Other notables in the parade included Bob Ferguson, owner of the Red River Station Inn, in his motorized recliner and the Texas Glammas, who danced and strutted with their bedazzled walkers.
The Glammas are something of an institution, having performed at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York, the Texas State Fair and a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Ireland, among many, many other events, according to the group’s leader, Christina Fuller. This was their first Mardi Gras in Nocona, but by the looks of things, they’ll be back.
Bringing the parade to an end were some golden-age American muscle cars, some of which dutifully performed burnouts for the crowd, and a cavalry of horseback riders, including a couple of rodeo queens.
After the parade ended, kids scurried through the barriers to claim excess goodies lying on the street, careful to avoid the goodies left behind by the horses. Some people headed over to the Knights of Columbus fish fry while others went home to freshen up before the big evening parties began at the Nocona Beer and Brewery and the VFW hall.
It had been a perfect day so far. You couldn’t ask for better weather, and moods seemed just as sunny. Mardi Gras Nocona Style is the kind of event people think of when they romanticize life in small-town Texas, only this one’s real, and it’s one you ought to see for yourself.
This story was originally published March 3, 2025 at 9:12 AM.