Cheese Days

On the Saturday of Cheese Days the parade forms at South Fifth and Augustus streets in Toledo. It runs down Augustus to South Second Street, turns south toward Oak, and comes west on Oak back to Fifth. After it passes, cheese sandwiches go out along the route. In 2026 Toledo Market Fresh supplied them, and members of Toledo Presbyterian Church handed out slices of watermelon. In 2025 the sandwiches were thrown to paradegoers. HistoryLink gives the recipe as white bread, cheese, and mayonnaise.

Toledo is a Lewis County town on the Cowlitz River. It counted 631 residents in the 2020 census and bills itself as the Gateway to Mount St. Helens. The Toledo Lions Club organizes the festival. The 2026 edition, held July 9 through 12, was the 105th, and its theme was “For the love of country and cheese,” in step with the nation’s 250th Independence Day. Toledo High School cheerleaders march in the parade, and candy is tossed to the crowd. Trophies and ribbons are awarded in front of the church, where an announcer calls out each entry as it slows. The 2026 parade form warned that unregistered entrants would be put at the back of the line with the log trucks.

Frogs from Carlisle Lake

The Friday evening frog jumping contest needs frogs, and in 2026 a local crew caught them. On Tuesday, July 7, Alex Vasquez, Mike Blankenship, Grady Fallon, and Cooper Fallon took a boat out on Carlisle Lake in Onalaska. Vasquez leaned over the bow to take frogs off the bank, and Blankenship pulled them from the weeds and handed them up. The festival’s Facebook page called the crew “#TheFrogmen.” It reported they had been out three nights and had “over 140 frogs ready to jump.” The contest ran from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on the Toledo High School football field. Frogs were available to rent at a dollar per frog per race, and the top three finishers won cash.

The rest of the 2026 program filled four days:

• Friday. The 30th annual Cheddar Open golf tournament was played at Newaukum Valley Golf Course. That evening a bingo game at the high school raised money for the girls basketball team. At 8 p.m. Music in the Street began on Ramsey Way in front of Donna’s Place, with country singer Chris Guenther, while a DJ played at El Tejano on Cowlitz Street.
• Saturday morning. Runners and walkers in the Cheddar Challenge set out on 3- and 8-mile courses from the firehouse on Coal Street. The Toledo Senior Center served its pancake breakfast for an $8 donation: pancakes with eggs and sausage, or biscuits and gravy with eggs. The festival’s page called it “a #CheeseDays staple.”
• Saturday midday. The car and motorcycle show filled the Toledo Middle School field with makes and models from nearly every decade. The Chronicle counted it as the 26th annual. The library held a bake and book sale. Toledo Market Fresh began selling baby-back ribs with corn on the cob at noon and kept going until the food ran out.
• Saturday afternoon and evening. The Cheese Days Tasting Garden poured wine and beer and served cheese at Steamboat Landing on Ramsey Way, with proceeds going to vision:TOLEDO. That night Groove Syndicate, a 1970s funk, soul, and rock tribute band, played the street, and Sucker Punched, a 1980s rock tribute band, played El Tejano.
• Sunday. A horseshoe tournament opened the day at Kemp Olson Memorial Park. At noon the Lions Club served barbecued beef with baked beans, coleslaw, a roll, and watermelon, then auctioned off the leftovers at 2:30. The Toledo Volunteer EMS and Firefighters Association held its 22nd annual dessert auction at the firehouse.

The festival’s own page also promises garage sales “GALORE” and tennis.

The city added new attractions in 2026. “Wanted” posters inside City Hall showed four “Toledo Bandits”: Mayor Cherie Devore, Parks Board member Kyle Wheeler, utilities clerk Sarah Hazlett, and Public Works supervisor Jon Cravens. A raffle at the city’s booth decided who would hit which of them in the face with a pie. Inside City Hall, Emily Feigenbaum painted a “Wishing Wall” mural where visitors could leave their wishes for town improvement projects. Larry Davidson of Greater Toledo Heritage and Horizons said his group’s booth would show steamboat artifacts like those used on the Steamboat Toledo, the boat the town is named for.

Coffee and cheese sandwiches, 1919

According to the Lions Club, cheese mattered enough to Toledo a century ago that the town had a semi-pro baseball team called the Toledo Cheesemakers. The Cowlitz Valley Cheese Association’s factory opened on N. Second Street in May 1919. Dairy farmers brought in their milk, and the factory turned it into American cheddar and pimento cheese, more than 800 pounds a day.

Accounts of the first gathering differ. HistoryLink and the city’s history agree that in June 1919 about a hundred shippers came to the association’s building to collect their first checks from cheese sales. President Del Giblin, the board members, the employees, and their wives served them coffee and cheese sandwiches. The board then decided to make the affair annual and open it to the public. The city’s account places the first public Cheese Day in June 1920 at Day’s Grove, a picnic area behind the present-day middle school. HistoryLink describes that 1920 gathering as having dancing, entertainment, and tables overflowing with cheese. The Lions Club tells it another way. In its account, more than 100 co-op members met at Day’s Grove on June 15, 1919, and the Toledo Commercial Club then sponsored a Cheese Day that included the whole community.

The day grew. It added baseball, tennis, and wrestling, dancing to hillbilly music, a Ferris wheel, and a merry-go-round. At the factory, an ice machine installed in 1920 provided cold storage for public use.

The sources also differ on when the association sold the factory and to whom:

• The Lions Club says it sold in 1926 to Art Karlen. Karlen kept making cheese, added a butter churn that produced hundreds of pounds of butter a day, and also made ice and the milk protein casein.
• HistoryLink says the association sold its building and equipment in 1927 to Art Kalen, who ran the plant until 1945. By the end, HistoryLink says, the plant made only powdered milk and butter.

The local Veterans of Foreign Wars post took over sponsorship of Cheese Day in 1937. The factory closed in 1945, and Cheese Day stopped during the war years. The city’s history credits the Toledo Lions Club with reviving it in 1948. The club’s own account notes that the tradition outlasted the factory, “causing many today to wonder ‘where’s the cheese?’”

The Big Cheeses

Over the years the one-day event became a July weekend, which HistoryLink describes as three days; in 2026 it ran four. Its grand marshals are called Big Cheeses. They are toasted at the Big Cheese Social, held on the opening Thursday at Kemp Olson Memorial Park, the largest of the town’s three parks, where a wall of honor recognizes veterans. In 2026 the meal was a free catered dinner from Bonanza BBQ, with country artists Dakota Robins and Mason Gaul performing. The tickets were sold out before the evening began.

The Daily Chronicle’s first preview named Alan and Ardith Crawford as the 2026 honorees. Two days later the paper reported three more.

• The Crawfords came to Toledo in 1966, shortly after they married, when Alan took a teaching job with the Toledo School District. Alan taught and coached youth sports in town. In 1973 they built a house on Plomodon Road for their four children, Roger, Lisa, Angela, and Jill, and they still live there. Ardith owned a wig and beauty products store and ran an in-home center that the program says “continues to provide childcare and preschool opportunities for Toledo families.”
• The Olson siblings, Karen Grove, Mike Olson, and Vickie Meyer, are three of the four children of Ronald and Velma Olson; the fourth is Susie. They were raised on the “Kangas Farm” on Toledo Salmon Creek Road, just outside town.

The festival magazine carried the Olsons’ thanks: “All the Olson children would like to thank everyone for choosing them to be the Big Cheeses this year as it also marks the 20-year anniversary of their dad Ron when he was selected to do the honors in 2006.”