Asotin Days

The first plates of Asotin Days go out at 6 a.m. on Saturday, when the Lions Club opens its breakfast at the City Park. In 2026 breakfast cost $10.00 and ran until 10. The park sits on Asotin Creek, a short way above the creek’s meeting with the Snake River, and most of the festival’s two days happen there. Asotin, the seat of Asotin County, had 1,251 people at the 2010 census. The festival is held on the second full weekend in August. The 2026 edition, which the city counted as the 51st annual, fell on August 8 and 9.

Yard sales, cornhole, and a beer garden until midnight

At 7:30 a.m. the yard sales open across town. The 2026 community yard sale was the 21st, and households paid to be listed on a map that City Hall gave out the week before. A 2025 Lewiston Tribune account counted about 20 sales through town. At 8 the vendor fair opens at Chief Looking Glass Park, a large grassy park on First Street across from the high school, and it closes at 2. The city’s 2026 flyer also listed tours of the Asotin County Museum that day.

The park’s namesake was Apash Wyakaikt, who led some 20 villages along Asotin Creek. As the story goes, he got the name Looking Glass in 1805, when Meriwether Lewis kept saying “looking glass” and pointing at the small metal mirror the expedition had given him. By local lore, those present took the exchange as a naming ceremony. The mouth of the creek had long been a winter camp of the Alpowai Nez Perce, drawn by the freshwater eel there. The town’s name comes from their word for eel.

At 11 a.m. the Shriners start a cornhole tournament that runs until 3, and the beer garden opens. Barbecue is served from noon. The 2025 listing also included games for children. Music starts at 8 p.m., and the beer garden closes with it at midnight.

Biscuits and gravy, chapel, and Chrome on the Creek

On Sunday the Lions are back at the City Park from 7 to 9 a.m. with biscuits and gravy for $5.00. The Chrome on the Creek car show also opens at 7 and stays until 3. The city lists the car show in the festival’s own name. Chapel in the Park holds its service from 10 to 10:30. A museum information table opens at 10; the published 2026 schedule gives its closing time as 2:00 a.m. Hot Wheel races run from 11:30 to 1:30, and the Lions serve a barbecue lunch at noon for $15.00. At 2 p.m. players sign up for the horseshoe tournament, in two-man teams drawn blind.

Two city council members, Lori Loseth and David Weakland, are listed on the council’s Asotin Days committee. City Hall and its clerk, Tina Davidson, handle the vendor fair.

Mr. Asotin and the original group

The Lions Club breakfast at the start of the weekend goes back to the founding of the festival. Bob Van Pelt, named as a co-founder of Asotin Days, belonged to the Asotin Lions Club for more than 40 years. He served the club as district governor for two terms and as president for five, and he received its highest honor, the Melvin Jones Fellowship.

He was born April 1, 1937, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and his family moved to Asotin in 1942. He graduated from Asotin High School. On December 23, 1956, he married Nancy Lea Ruchert of Pomeroy. He served in the Marine Corps from 1959 to 1963 as a tank engineer and mechanic at Twentynine Palms. The couple lived in Riverside, California, for 12 years and moved their family back to Asotin in 1972. He owned Bob’s Asotin Chevron, served many years on the city council, and worked with the Asotin Fire Department until he retired. His obituary says he was known as Mr. Asotin, and it calls him an excellent storyteller. He died October 20, 2017.

Marjorie Wilson, born in 1931, was a member of the original group that started Asotin Days. Her obituary records that she built the Asotin Booster Club’s first Snack Shack. She drove the Anatone children to school in Asotin in a “school bus” that was in fact a VW van, and she owned restaurants and a bowling alley over the years. She died December 11, 2019. Neither obituary gives the year the festival began.

A hat in 1989 and 2,000 eggs

On August 14, 1989, the Lewiston Tribune ran a Barry Kough photograph of Claire Ausman, 86, showing off his Asotin Days hat. He had graduated from Asotin High School in 1921. At that year’s festival in the City Park he was honored as the oldest person born in Asotin who attended. The cutline called it the 13th annual festival. The Asotin County Museum now holds the clipping. Counted back, the 1989 numbering and the city’s 2026 numbering put the first festival a year apart.

In 2025 the festival named Nancy Van Pelt, then 88, its honorary citizen. Over the years she had sewn aprons and vests for Lions Club members to wear at their breakfasts. For the club’s Easter egg hunt she boiled about 2,000 eggs on her small stove, a job that took all day, until the club switched to plastic eggs. She still donates the French bread for the club’s dinners. “I was so surprised when they called me about this,” she told the Tribune. “What an honor.”

She said the park was a pleasant place to sit in the shade, eat good meals, and support the community. “I’m looking forward to it,” she said. “It’s going to be a good weekend.”