Dayton Days

Biscuits, gravy, and Main Street

On the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, Dayton’s Main Street fills from the east. The street is also Highway 12, and the Dayton Days Parade travels it from east to west, starting at 10 a.m. The riders gather beforehand on Patit Creek Road. The Dayton Chamber of Commerce runs the parade and sorts its entries into ag machinery, antique cars, adult and youth mounted riders, royalty courts on horseback and off, posse and trail groups, hitches, marching bands, and civic and fraternal lodges. A crew of pooper scoopers follows the horses. The announcer has about ten seconds to read out each entry. No candy may be thrown from floats or vehicles. The Chamber’s page for the event shows the Happy Canyon Princesses riding in the parade. The 2026 parade was set for Saturday, May 23.

In 2025 the morning began earlier, at the Cornerstone Christian Church at 3rd and Main. There, from 7 to 10 a.m., the Young Life and Wyldlife youth served a Cowboy Breakfast of biscuits and gravy to raise money for summer camp. The Times of Waitsburg described the order of the day: “After biscuits and gravy, it’s time to line Main Street.” That paper wrote that the parade carries local floats and riders celebrating the history of Dayton Days and the community that supports it.

Bronc and mutton at the fairgrounds

The rodeo is held at the Columbia County Fairgrounds. In 2025 it opened at 6 p.m. Friday and ran again at 1 p.m. Saturday, and the Times reported free admission. The program had bull riding, steer wrestling, team roping, and saddle bronc. Children five and under rode in Mutton Bustin’. Junior events for riders 14 and under were barrel racing, steer riding, and breakaway roping. The Dayton Kiwanis and Lions clubs sold food on the grounds. The Port of Columbia held its Spring Flea Market in the Pavilion and the Youth Building, with vintage goods, handmade crafts, and tables of local vendors and artists. The Pavilion also hung the entries from a Historic Dayton Days coloring contest for Dayton Elementary School students, and the winners received awards and prizes.

A Walla Walla Union-Bulletin photograph from Friday evening, May 28, 2021, shows a crowd in sunshine at the opening ceremonies of the Jackpot Rodeo. Another from the same night shows the cowboy Joe Wall sent flying in the saddle bronc competition. For 2026 the Chamber announced the rodeo for Memorial Day weekend without further detail.

The years of the racing horse

Dayton Days is older than the nonprofit that came to run it. Dayton Days Inc. was incorporated in 1966 and has hosted the rodeo since. The Union-Bulletin wrote that for many years the event was known for its rodeo and also for parimutuel horse racing at the fairgrounds. The racing ended after 2010.

That ending was reported in February 2011. The Washington State Horseracing Commission gave the four-track Class C “Bush” circuit only six days of racing, and all six went to Sun Downs in Kennewick, leaving Dayton, Waitsburg, and Walla Walla with none. Melissa Hansen was then racing manager and treasurer of Dayton Days. She said she would recommend that Dayton go dark for a year and regroup. “It’s going to be hard for us,” she said. “The Tri-Cities has so many other things to offset that loss that we don’t. I’m very disappointed.”

Dayton replaced the races that May with a two-day Pro West rodeo, which the Times called a much-anticipated substitute. On the Tuesday before Memorial Day, the board cancelled it out of concern over EHV-1, a highly contagious equine virus then spreading through the region. The rodeo would have brought horses into Dayton from all over the Pacific Northwest. “Although it’s terrible to do it at this late a date, I feel it’s the right decision,” Hansen said. The parade went on at 10 a.m. Saturday without horses. Claudia Nysoe, the Chamber director, had spoken with fair managers across Southeast Washington and asked all floats to leave their horses at home. “Everyone would rather be safe than sorry,” she said. The Chamber had about 40 entries that year. Queen Beka Adams kept her Coronation dinner at the Fairgrounds Pavilion on Friday and her luncheon in the Youth Building after the parade. The Saturday before, at the Waitsburg parade, she had been one of only three people on horseback.

Two boards, two rodeos

Late in 2024 the Dayton Days Inc. board split into two groups, and each claimed to be the real board. Loyal and Charlotte Baker own the Dayton Chronicle and East Washingtonian newspapers. Before the split, Loyal had served as president and vice president and Charlotte as secretary. The other board members said the Bakers had told meetings throughout 2024 that they meant to resign. Those members accepted the resignations in writing, effective Sunday, October 20, 2024. The Bakers denied it. In the Chronicle, Loyal was quoted: “That’s false. We have not resigned, nor have we written nor submitted a letter of resignation.”

The Bakers went on holding meetings as board officers at the Chronicle office. One agenda item was dissolving Dayton Days Inc. Under its bylaws, the nonprofit’s assets would then pass to the Columbia County Fair Board. The other side hired Spencer Rehn, an attorney with Charitable Allies Inc. of Indianapolis. He wrote a cease-and-desist letter dated Friday, December 13. Deanna Vandever, treasurer before the split, became president of the board she maintains is the real one. Wanda Baldwin served as her secretary. Neither side could reach the event funds at Banner Bank in Dayton. Loyal Baker wrote in the Chronicle that a rodeo “under the name Dayton Days is in question.”

On March 17, 2025, Loyal Baker asked the Columbia County commissioners for the fairgrounds and $2,700 in hotel and motel funds. “We want to bring a lot of people to town for the parade and for rodeo and have them spend money with the Kiwanis and the Lions Club and other businesses, stores, and buy gasoline, enjoy a rodeo and call it a great weekend,” he said. Baldwin answered him: “Have the rodeo. That’s fine. Have whatever you’d like, but please call it something else this year until we settle this dispute.” The commissioners approved the request unanimously. Commissioner Ryan Rundell said he was “somewhat satisfied that we aren’t playing a judge in this thing.” Commissioner Marty Hall warned that “if we go forward with calling it Dayton Days, there’s going to be some pushback.” Baker replied: “As a group, we will … cross that bridge when we come to it.”

That Memorial Day weekend there were two rodeos. The Bakers’ rodeo was billed as the Historic Dayton Days Jackpot Rodeo and Parade and held at the Columbia County Fairgrounds. Vandever’s group put on Let’s Get Wild & Western at the Benton County Fairgrounds in Kennewick, with stock from Shamrock Rodeo Company, at 6 p.m. Saturday. The board said its proceeds would go to the nonprofit to help the Dayton community. At 10 a.m. that same Saturday, the Chamber’s parade went down Main Street in Dayton.