Caliente Memorial Day Homecoming

In the weeks before Memorial Day, Homecoming buttons go on sale in Caliente for a dollar apiece. They are sold at the Knotty Pine, Jerry’s Sinclair, the Shamrock Pub, the Side Track Restaurant, the Overland Hotel and Great Basin Grocery. Each button carries a number. On the Sunday afternoon of the holiday weekend, after the barbecue at Rose Park, the Homecoming committee calls those numbers for prizes worth thousands of dollars, donated by residents and local businesses.

The Caliente Memorial Day Homecoming fills four days in this Lincoln County railroad town. The 76th annual celebration ran May 22 through 25, 2026, under the theme “Birth of our Nation, Spirit of Freedom.” It brings residents, visitors, former townspeople and veterans together, and the Lincoln County Record has counted the crowds in the hundreds. Lincoln County High School holds its graduation the same Friday evening in Panaca, and class reunions fall on the weekend as well.

Tacos at the post, a parade on Saturday

The weekend opens Friday with a lunchtime community barbecue at Nevada Bank & Trust. In 2024 people came through dozens at a time for free sides, popcorn, drinks and a raffle entry, and the prizes stood on display outside. Softball starts the same day at Dixon Memorial Park and runs through Monday. The county tourism authority says it draws teams from across the region. Near the ball fields, VFW Post 7114 keeps an open door. In 2024 the post served carne asada street tacos and margaritas, free to anyone who made a donation to the VFW. In 2026 it served Indian tacos and cold drinks. Before any of this begins, members of the post and its Ladies Auxiliary place the annual flags on graves at Conaway Memorial Cemetery and the City Cemetery.

Saturday starts at 7 a.m. with the 4-H pancake breakfast in Rose Park. In 2024 Keith Larson organized the breakfast, along with the Vendor Village and the children’s games. Larson is president of the Caliente Homecoming Committee, and the committee voted him grand marshal of the 75th annual event in 2025. The Union Pacific Railroad hired him in 1974 and moved him to Caliente. He was elected the town’s youngest mayor, and he has always maintained, “If you can’t buy it in Caliente, you didn’t need it.”

The morning continues with the Caliente Farmers Market, a Color Fun Run and rock painting with Teva Avery. According to the Record’s 2026 account, painters added their stones to a community rock snake near Spring Street. The advance notice had placed the painting near the Highway 93 Main Flagpole.

The parade steps off at 10 a.m. Entries line up behind the depot, a Mission Revival building put up in 1923 that once served the town as civic center and hotel. In 2024, hundreds lined Clover Street, which was hung with red, white and blue. The colors came first, and Elder Ryan Lewis of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints played the bagpipes behind them. The floats that followed carried the Boys and Girls Club, local businesses and candidates for city council and county commission, and the Department of Forestry brought Smokey the Bear. The 2026 announcement again placed the parade on Clover Street. The Record’s account afterward has the entries moving down Spring Street.

Each year’s grand marshals ride near the front. In 2022 they were Tommy and Peggy Rowe, and the VFW Post 7114 Color Guard led them. Tommy had been postmaster in Tonopah and Pioche, fire chief of the Caliente Volunteer Fire Department, county commissioner and mayor. In 2024 the grand marshals were Hayley and Kenny Gloekner. In 2026 Rosemary Davis, Rozanne Mangum and Millie FitzSimons rode, and later in the weekend each received a handmade commemorative “key to the city.”

After the parade the crowd spreads out. At the depot, the 2026 weekend brought the grand opening of the Caliente Visitors Center and Library, with a large book sale to raise money for the center. The Boxcar Museum was open, along with the Creative Artists of Lincoln County gallery and the Nevada Arts Council’s Rural Moments exhibit. Vendors set up in the Vendor Village. Through the afternoon there are cornhole, horseshoe and three-point basketball tournaments, and softball goes on at Dixon.

Light the Night from the Clock Tower

At 8 p.m. Saturday, Tall Bike Ed’s Light the Night Ride leaves from the Clock Tower on Front Street. Bicycles and scooters wound with lights and glow sticks ride for about 40 minutes through town. In 2026 the route ran down Main Street and Lincoln Street. Prizes go to the best girl’s bike, the best boy’s bike and the best adult bike. The 2026 ride ended at Fruend’s Tea House Inn with popsicles for everyone. Organizers called the ride a “fun new tradition” and thanked Ryan Moore and his family, who had come to the very first one years before.

Beef from the Rose Park pit

Sunday belongs to Rose Park. Cars line up at 11 a.m. for the Show ‘n Shine classic car and motorcycle show. In 2026 the People’s Choice award went to nineteen-year-old Joshua Post for his Dodge Dart, which was his first car and his first show. Children use the bounce houses, and in 2024 DJ Rodney Balser supplied the music.

Just after 1 p.m. the lunch line opens. In 2024 the beef came out of fire pits at the park and was served with coleslaw, potato salad and baked beans. A table of donated desserts stood beside it.

Then the VFW gives its salute to veterans. In 2024 Post Commander Jack Horner told the gathering, “As we maintain the memory and the deeds of our fallen throughout the coming years, we must also remember to care for those who return from their service and their wars as well.” The grand marshals are introduced, the button numbers are called, and the park clears. In 2024 some stayed on for line dancing and lawn games.

Taps at Conaway Cemetery

On Monday at 11 a.m. the town gathers at the VFW cemetery at Conaway for the Memorial Day service, which Post 7114 organizes. The 2026 service honored Jerry “Smitty” Blaine Smith. Speakers paid tribute to comrades “who served in all wars” and to those who defended the country “in death as in life.” Red, white and blue roses were laid at the grave site, the comrades in attendance gave a salute, a prayer was said, and Taps was played. Horner closed the 2024 service with a request: “When you see a veteran today, shake their hand, and remember freedom is not free.”

That year the cemetery parking lot had turned to mud. Horner called Bert Cox, a Caliente native, who agreed at once to help. Cox donated the equipment, materials and labor to make the lot ready, and he declined the VFW’s offer to pay.

The weekend ends Monday afternoon with Memorial Day bingo at the Olson Senior Center. Organizers reported a full house in 2026.

A picnic in Dixon Park, 1950

Rose Rowan, a longtime Caliente resident, told the story of the beginning in 2002. She was 90 then and living in Bountiful, Utah, and she shared her memories with her friend Janet Gray in Caliente. In 1950, she said, she and her husband Dan Rowan joined Kathryn and Bud Duffin, Bill and Doris McGhie, Ross and Betty Harrison and their families for a Memorial weekend picnic in Dixon Park. The holiday had filled the town with people, and many of them stopped at the park to ask what was going on. After much discussion, the families decided to invite community members, families and friends from out of town and make it an annual “homecoming.” The first official Homecoming came in 1951. Rowan names Don Rowan as chairman, a post he held for eight years.

By 1957, Nevada Highways and Parks magazine counted the Homecoming as an annual Caliente Chamber of Commerce project held in May. The author, Hazel Baker Denton, had lived in Caliente since 1916 and had served as Assemblywoman from Lincoln County. She wrote that Homecoming Day reunited people who had once lived or been born in Caliente and were now scattered throughout the West and from coast to coast. They gathered at the Dixon Athletic Park for a free beef-barbecue dinner, and Mayor Don Rowan headed the barbecue committee.

According to Rose Rowan, the group planned the menu together: barbecued beef, beans, coleslaw, cupcakes. That menu has stayed almost the same since the first year. At first Rose and Cora Stackhouse went to every home in Caliente and asked each household to make coleslaw or cupcakes or to help serve. Later each street was assigned one dish or the other. Ross Harrison and Bob Vowles ordered the beef and cooked it in a pit. The first pit was dug on the Soil Conservation grounds. A city crew later built a new pit in Rose Park, and that pit is still in use. At one time the barbecue served as many as 600 people. In the early years the Homecoming handed out ribbons, and buttons later took their place.