Buckley Log Show and Parade

At 9:30 on the Saturday morning of the Buckley Log Show, a parade goes down Main Street. A 2025 schedule posted by Art Gamblin Motors, a dealership in neighboring Enumclaw, lists logging equipment, classic floats and local groups among its entries. When the parade has passed, the crowd moves to the Log Show Grounds, beside the National Guard building and Weeks Funeral Home, where events start at noon. The arena is divided between a beer garden for those 21 and over and a large family area. The show falls on the last full weekend of June. In 2026 it ran June 27 and 28, and a separate junior show was held a week earlier, on June 20.

The Buckley Log Show Committee runs the show as a nonprofit “dedicated to preserving logging heritage and contributing to community causes.” Its rules, revised in 2019, open bluntly: “Local talent only – strictly amateur – no professionals.” Contestants must live in the area or work for someone who does.

Spar pole, pond and alder block

The events are logging work, timed from a whistle. In speed climbing, a climber starts with one spur in a spar tree about 75 feet tall and the other on the ground, and the clock stops when he rings the bell at the top. In tree topping, he climbs with traditional gear, taking up rope slack with a cat’s paw, and saws through a seven-inch alder block. Bucking comes in several forms. Single bucking uses a crosscut saw. Double bucking is for teams of two. Ma & Pa bucking pairs a man with a woman partner on a smaller block. In the hot-saw races, time stops “when the chip hits the ground.” Choppers bring their own alder blocks, 36 inches long. In the horizontal chop they stand astride the block and reverse halfway through. In the standing chop they cut a block set upright. Ax throwers aim at a four-inch bull’s-eye from 20 feet.

Much of the program runs over a pond. In obstacle bucking, a contestant runs across poles over the water and back, then saws through 14-inch alder. In obstacle choker setting, he crosses a pole perched over the pond and is disqualified if he falls in. Log rolling is fought on a cedar or fir log in the pond, and the rules state twice, in capitals, that no tennis-shoe caulks are allowed. The crew relay is run by a team from one full-time logging company. It starts with a choker setter jumping into the pond and ends when the ax thrower sticks his ax and then hits the water.

Sunday opens at 11 a.m. with the wrapper toss, in which a contestant pulls wrappers from a chain deck and binds them across a load of logs. When the last event is finished, awards are given for each one. The final award goes to the All-Around Logger, the contestant with the most points over the two days.

The Courier-Herald printed the full results for 2023. That year Billy Clinkingbeard, a Buckley native, climbed the spar in 37.19 seconds and topped his tree in 2:37.30, almost a minute ahead of the runner-up. He finished with 51 points to Bo Carlson’s 45, for his ninth All-Around title in a row. The paper also recorded a best load of logs, won by Kovash Logging #30, and a sportsmanship award to Harrison Farr.

In 2026 the committee congratulated “12-time All Around Logger Billy Clinkingbeard.” According to its Facebook page, the committee closed that weekend by cracking a cold one at the top of the poles, with “a toast to those looking down on us.” Pierce Beigh said the opening prayer that year and competed in speed climbing. His son was born July 1, after the show.

Behind Viz’s, 1973

The dealership’s 2025 account says the show began in 1973 as the Buckley Loggers Rodeo, held behind Viz’s in town. It names Ron Brannon, John Blanusa, Ron Bowen, Ron Kunz and Gordon Juhl as the founders. Elmer Timmons and Gene and Karen Rawson are named among the volunteers who guided the show afterward. In the early years beer was sold from a horse trailer, courtesy of Leon Wickizer. By 1990 the show had outgrown its first home and moved to the present grounds. The numbering of editions varies by source. The Courier-Herald called 2013 the show’s 40th year and 2023 its 49th annual, and the committee’s 2026 online store sold 50th-anniversary flags and buttons.

According to the Foothills Historical Museum, Buckley was founded by pioneers on the old Naches Trail. Its cedar and spruce forests brought loggers, who supplied timber to the coal mines of the Carbon River Corridor and to the Northern Pacific Railroad. The grounds are used outside June as well. On March 6, 2004, the White River High School FFA won a high school logging rodeo there, hosted by the Log Show Committee. On September 12, 2026, Jeff Fetter hosted a reunion at the grounds for anyone connected to the logging industry, with burgers, corn and cold drinks. The T-shirts sold out.

The All-Around roll

The Courier-Herald’s list of All-Around Loggers begins in 1976 with Carl Kaszycki, who won that year and the next. Bill Clinkingbeard took the title in 1978. Elmer Timmons won four times between 1979 and 1983. Dave Flanders won eight times between 1987 and 1997, sharing the 1995 title with Sonny Frick. Fetter won in 1990 and tied Bud Hanson in 1991, and in 2023 he and Arthur Fetter won the splicing. Tim Gray won six times between 1998 and 2004, and Tyson Hanson won four straight through 2012.

Bull of the Woods

Each year the committee also names a Bull of the Woods, a retired logger who is honored at a dinner and invited to share memories at the edge of the ring during the competition. The newspaper’s list begins with Jim Florez in 1978. Roy Bowen, whose logging outfit hired Wally Gray in 1968, was honored in 1999. John Blanusa, one of the founders, was honored in 2006. In 2023 the honor went to Elmer Timmons, forty years after his last All-Around title.

Gray was the 2013 Bull of the Woods and grand marshal of the parade. He was 68, born and raised in Buckley. He started out on chokers and rigging and later hauled logs and equipment around the state, until knee surgery in 2005 and 2006 forced him into retirement. His fondest show memories were of winning Ma and Pa Bucking on different occasions with his wife, Marian, and with both daughters. “I never won All Around Logger, but I did come in one or two points away a few times,” he told the paper. “I just couldn’t beat all the young kids, that’s why they call me Grandpa Gray.” His son, Tim, had won it, he said, “six or seven times.” “But now I’ll be grand marshal of the parade! It’s quite an honor that I’m proud of because the kids can’t take away Bull of the Woods from me!”

Larry Fairchild, the 2011 honoree, was 73 and had logged the Northwest woods for more than 50 years. He claimed a part in felling a Douglas fir 15 feet in diameter above Wilkeson on New Year’s Eve 1967. His father-in-law, a former logger who became a state safety supervisor, gave him a statistic he never forgot: of 20 loggers tracked through 20-year careers, 10 would die in the woods. Fairchild once nicked his leg with his chain saw and lost several pints of blood. The next day a game warden drove up wanting to know what the crew had done with the deer they had poached the day before. “There were mornings when I pulled on my boots and wondered if it would be me taking them off that night or the undertaker,” Fairchild said. Some nights ended elsewhere. “I spent a few nights in the hoosegow with cork boots for a pillow and my rain slicker for a blanket.”