Okay, it’s not really part of Lakewood Village per se, but the annual fireworks displays at Paramount’s Great America theme park have been both an attraction and distraction to the neighborhood for over 25 years. Fireworks display schedules vary from year to year. Some years, fireworks have been displayed every weekend night during the park’s open season. Other years, the displays happen only on special occasions like opening weekend, the 4^th of July, and closing weekend. Recently, however, fireworks have not been displayed on the 4th of July (in deference to the Santa Clara city’s display at Central Park, and probably also because they are very costly).

Great America’s fireworks have been an attraction to this neighborhood because many Lakewood Village residents, especially those on in Unit II and Unit IV, could sit in their back yards or climb up on their rooftops to watch the fireworks. Some could even see them from an upstairs window. This photo collage was taken on July 4^th, 2003, from just such a window.

The fireworks displays are also a distraction, because they cause a significant amount of traffic into and out of the park, and without extensive traffic control by Sunnyvale Public Safety, the entire neighborhood would be (and used to be) consumed by gridlock. In later years, the affected areas of Lakewood Village were closed to everyone except residents and guests throughout the evening of the fireworks display, and for a portion of that time, the freeway off-ramp on 101 at Lawrence Expressway was also closed.

If you have photographs of these displays and would like to see them published on this site, contact the webmaster.

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