Day in Damascus

On the fourth Saturday in July, Damascus Centennial Park fills with inflatables, game booths, and field games for children, each with prizes and goodies at the end of it. The park sits at 20080 SE Hwy 212, just east of Bi-Mart, and cars turn into a lot between Country Kids Daycare and the Centennial Park Fire Station. The 2026 edition ran on Saturday, July 25, from 10 AM until 3 PM. The Damascus Civic Club hosts it, local businesses sponsor it, and it is the park’s largest fundraiser of the year.

Bean bags, Model A’s, and a candidate in the tank

Children’s booths run to bean bag tosses and fishing for prizes. Volunteers greet arrivals and direct them, sell tickets, and manage the inflatables. Adults shop the vendor booths, which the club’s page says may hold clothing, handmade soaps, jewelry, or turned wood, and the club lists 40 local vendors for 2026. The same preview promised a Model A Car Show, live music, Bow & Arrow Coffee’s Suzy trailer, and what it calls “the always-popular spelling bee.” Food came from Pub 212 and Papa Murphy’s. Clackamas Fire was on hand.

The dunk tank in 2026 was billed as Dunk a Candidate. District 48 candidate Lamar Wise took his turn in it, and the park reported both candidates came out to help raise money for the park. “Dunk a Candidate at Day in Damascus!! We are going until 3pm,” the park posted that afternoon.

The raffle at day’s end

The day closes on a raffle. Each vendor contributes items, as do area businesses and residents. In past years people dropped in tickets for a mountain bike, a kayak, business services, and jewelry.

Much of the work happens before the gates open. In the week of the 2026 carnival, Day in Damascus Chair Alicia and Jess from Pub 212 met at the local Safeway to shop for supplies and haul them back to the park on a 98° day. Safeway donates to the event every year. US Foods CHEF’STORE gave a $500 gift card toward supplies. The day after, the park wrote that “the vendors were busy, the food was amazing, the dunk tank was a hit, the music kept the park alive.”

A party with money left over

The park exists because of a party. In 1959 Oregon was celebrating its 100th year of statehood, “almost,” as the Civic Club’s history puts it: the state and big cities like Portland could not quite get their acts together. A group in the little community of Damascus put on a 100-day Centennial Celebration of their own and formed the Damascus Civic Club to run it. When the dust settled three months later, the club’s history says, people went back to their regular jobs (if they still had them), shaved their beards, and found a little money left over.

They asked, “What does Damascus need?” The answer was a park. The leftover money went toward a down payment on land that included a house, and rent from the house was meant to pay off the mortgage and run the park. In time the mortgage was paid. A strip of highway frontage went to the Fire District for a fire station. The house became a daycare center, and its rent still funds the park’s maintenance and operation.

In the 1990s the Civic Club started Day in the Park, since renamed Day in Damascus. Its proceeds have paid for the playground structures, a basketball halfcourt, the gazebo, the pavilion, picnic tables, and other projects. The gazebo’s concrete pad was poured in 2009. After graffiti marked its eight pillars, a private donor, Uptown Painting, and Sherwin Williams helped have it masked and repainted in October 2022. A commemorative brick patio lies at the entrance to the Dee Wescott Memorial Pavilion.

The chain link fence around the park went up in 1972. By 2026 it was overgrown with ivy and blackberry vines, crushed in places by fallen trees, and cut through by vandals. About 30 volunteers, from Cub Scouts to a few octogenarians, cleared debris for six hours while the new club president, Tim Giorgi, cooked them lunch. Beez Treez cut trees and ground out stumps. Pacific Fence and Wire reset the posts, and the restoration was finished on May 28, 2026. “Ranger Rick” Readel, the new Park Maintenance Supervisor, now watches the fence. The club itself is run by volunteers, with a seven-member Executive Council. It charges no dues and meets six times a year.

The candle by the parking lot

For the 1959 centennial there was a plan for a giant birthday candle. Schools and youth groups collected wax for a year before engineers realized that a wax candle of that size would collapse under its own weight. “Well… Damascus did it anyway,” the Civic Club writes, and the replica that stands now was built in 1962. On the first Friday in December it lights the parking lot when Santa Claus comes to the Centennial Fire Station. The club’s page records that the original wax candle burned for 100 days.