Cove Cherry Fair

The Cove Cherry Fair begins at 7 a.m. with sourdough pancakes in the dining room of Founders Hall, on the grounds of the Ascension School Camp and Conference Center at 1104 Church Street in Cove, Union County. At the 2026 fair the plates also held eggs and sausage, with juice and coffee alongside. Breakfast cost $9 for adults and $4 for children ages 5 to 11, and children under 5 ate free. Coffee alone was $1. Serving runs until 11, and the proceeds go to the Cove Education Foundation. Founders Hall has a deck that looks west over the valley toward the sunset. Elsewhere on the grounds stands Ascension Chapel, built in 1875 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The fair’s own notices describe a shady lawn with valley views.

The fair falls on the third Saturday of August. It is put on by the Cove Community Association, a community-led nonprofit that also stages the Cove Tree Lighting. The crew is entirely volunteer, and the fair, the parade and the games cost nothing to attend. The 2026 fair, held August 15, was the 26th annual, and the 2027 fair is set for August 21. Sarah West, who sits on the association’s board and its organizing committee, told The Observer in 2026 that the committee “really has it dialed in” at this point. “We’re excited. It’s a really nice time to connect with the community,” she said.

Down Jasper Street at ten

The community parade steps off at 10 a.m. It runs on Jasper Street, which is Highway 237, from Ash Street south through town and ends at Church Street beside the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Observer gives the route as Jasper and Main streets. The organizers put the length at three-quarters of a mile. They tell spectators to spread out, because Jasper has shady spots on warm mornings. They also advise parking on the side streets off Jasper and Main before 9:45, bringing a lawn chair and a water bottle, and keeping watch on children, since some of the moving pieces are large.

Entries may be cars, trucks, bicycles, gizmos, critters, kids or grown-ups, and the organizers ask that they celebrate agriculture and the Grande Ronde Valley. Children can sign up to ride the Cherry Fairy Float. No political campaigning of any kind is allowed. The 2026 grand marshal was Deb Hansen. “We are honoring her for her service as an EMT who has volunteered with the Cove Rural Fire District for over 35 years,” West said. “She also volunteers with the Cove Booster Club, helping out at most Cove School sports events.” An opening ceremony and the national anthem follow the parade.

Pies, pits and a lawn of bubbles

The fairgrounds are open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Live music starts after the parade. At the 2026 fair Randy Woody played at 10, Jezebel’s Mother at noon, and the Mike Mallory Trio closed at 2. The fair describes its music as a mix of Americana, folk, blues, soul and rock.

The cherry contests run on a fixed schedule. The polite pie-eating contest comes at 11:30, pinkies out and bowtie optional. The hands-free pie-eating contest follows at 12:30, and cherry pit spitting at 1:30. Winners receive a Cherry Fair medal. A photograph from the fair in August 2016 shows children bent over pies in the pie-eating contest. For anyone who would rather buy pie than race through it, West’s advice in 2026 was to arrive early: “Come early for cherry pie — booth sales open at 9 a.m. — it usually sells out before noon.”

Children ride the Hog Wild Train and visit the face-painting and crafts tables. The Cove Fire Department covers part of the lawn in bubbles, and The Observer advised families to bring towels. A mechanical bull takes riders of all ages for $5 a ride, with tickets sold at the Cove Community Association booth. Lawn games run all day, among them hula hoops, cornhole and badminton.

In 2026 The Compost Chick supplied buckets for food scraps. Smoke had hung over Union County that summer, so the association drew up a plan for the day. If the air quality index passed 150, the cherry contests, the raffle ticket sales and the library book sale would move indoors.

Quilts, a market and a drive-in

Quilters show their work in Ascension’s Coe-Kerr Community Center. In 2026 the Cove Quilters & Friends exhibited entries from across the region and raffled two handmade quilts. Grain Queen Bakehouse donated a box of cherry treats to a second raffle. Tickets cost $2 each or three for $5, and the drawing is at 3:30. The Cove Library holds its annual book sale, and the association sells Cherry Fair T-shirts and tote bags. The 2026 shirt came from a contest among Cove’s fifth graders. The class chose Avery Pfel’s drawing unanimously, and she received $20 and a shirt.

The sources count the market differently. West put the 2026 vendors at over 60, while the fair’s own posts that week said nearly 60. Ninety percent of each vendor’s goods must be handmade, and cherry themes are encouraged. The 2026 vendor list included:

• horseshoe, rebar and wine-barrel-ring metalwork from James’s Custom Metal Art
• knives and hooks from Philo Gustavson Blacksmithing
• blown glass barware from Kevin Boylan
• pickled quail eggs from Feathered Blessings
• jarred cherries and blueberries from a Cove realtor
• walking balloon animals sold by the Cove Pre School
• pies and baked goods from the Cove Community Church

On the food side, Grain Queen Bakehouse brought spelt-crust cherry pies made with Cove cherries. Other stalls served elotes from Taste of Mexico, waffles on a stick, kettle corn and cotton candy, and Hawaiian shave ice. To drink there was draft beer from Side A Brewing, fresh lemonade, limeade and orangeade, and wine. The Observer listed canned sweet cherries, cobbler and cherry cookies among what fairgoers come for.

The fair spills past its own day. On the Friday evening before, Cove graduates gather from 4 to 8 at Founders Hall for the Cove All Class Reunion. On Saturday evening the Cove Drive-In holds a ring-toss tourney, karaoke and more live local music.

King Bing and Queen Anne

The fair’s roots run to a nursery. Herman Geer moved to Cove in 1867 and started a nursery with cuttings and root stock he had brought from the Willamette Valley. According to John VanSchoonhoven of Cove, who has worked with the Cove Improvement Club to piece together the fair’s early days, a high percentage of Cove’s fruit trees could at one time be traced to Geer’s nursery. Geer lived in Cove about 34 years.

Early in the 20th century Cove grew cherries, prunes and apples, along with fields of raspberries and strawberries, and cherries led the orchards. They were sorted and packed into iced railroad cars bound for eastern markets. The growers did well enough that they needed an outlet for sales, and VanSchoonhoven counts this as a major reason the fair began. The community association’s history says the growers founded it to advertise Cove’s cherries. A caravan of residents drove to other Union County towns to announce the first fair, held in 1911.

A royal court of young people presided. VanSchoonhoven said each year’s king and queen were elected by the public, who earned one vote for every $1 spent in participating Cove stores. The boy crowned was King Bing and the girl Queen Anne, after the Bing and Queen Anne cherries grown in Cove. Archer Antles and Beryl Conley reigned in 1916.

The day included a parade through the streets, music, poetry readings and speeches. Oregon governor Oswald West spoke at the 1913 fair, held July 23. Walter Pierce, governor from 1923 to 1927, also spoke, and so did T.T. Geer, governor from 1899 to 1903. Geer was Herman’s son and had grown up in Cove in the 1860s and 1870s, so his visits were homecomings. The poet Joaquin Miller was an honored guest. The association’s history says a large dinner was followed by a baseball game, which Cove’s team usually won, and the day closed with a community dance.

The Cove-Union railroad ran special excursions for the fair. The crowds were reported at times to reach 3,000, and one newspaper reported that the town of Union was virtually empty one weekend because so many people had gone to Cove. “It was one of the biggest celebrations in the valley,” VanSchoonhoven told the Union County Historical Society. Ernest, Eudelle and Othella Gray sang this verse at an early fair:

“You can hear the autos humming. Of the multitudes a coming, For this is our cherry day.”

M.L. Carter, known as the Sandridge Poet, wrote many poems about Cove. One of them, about the fair, reads in part: “Than Cove with its big prize cherries / With its prunes and apple pie.”

A frost, a war and a long gap

The two accounts disagree on when the first run ended. The community association’s history says Cove held its last early fair in 1918, after America’s entry into World War I drained the town’s interest and resources. VanSchoonhoven dates the end to after 1917 and gives three causes. A spring frost in 1918 struck while the orchards were in blossom and wiped out much of that year’s crop. The war sent overseas many of the young men needed for the harvest. And growers had come to ship more by rail, so they had less need of a yearly fair to sell their fruit.

The Cove Community Association revived the fair in 2000. Its history says the aim was to recapture the community pride and unity of the early fairs. By 2007 an arts festival ran alongside it in the days before, and that summer the new fair was due to outlast the original in years held.

In 2020 the pandemic cancelled every fair event except the parade. “It was the only fun thing that happened in Union County last year,” Cindy Edwards, the fair’s director, told The Observer in 2021. She noted that she believed every other parade in the county had been called off. As infection rates fell, the 2021 fair was set for August 21. Edwards had directed the fair since 2013 and planned to step down after that year and stay on as a volunteer. “It has been very fulfilling,” she said. In 2026 her name appeared among the fair’s three top-level sponsors.