Dunsmuir Railroad Days

At noon on the Saturday of Railroad Days, the parade comes down Dunsmuir Avenue from Florence Loop to Branstetter. Locals and visitors line the main street to watch. Dunsmuir sits in a canyon in Siskiyou County near the base of Mount Shasta, off I-5 a few miles south of Mt. Shasta City. The Upper Sacramento River runs through the middle of town, and the city counts no traffic lights. The Amtrak Coast Starlight stops here daily, at the only station between Redding and Klamath Falls. In 2024 Jefferson Public Radio put the population at just under 2,000. Its reporter described brick storefronts, some closed or close to it, and young families going into new cafes and breweries.

Three days on Pine Street and Dunsmuir Avenue

The 2026 celebration ran June 12 through 14. On Friday evening Bee Kind Bakery hosted railroad culture bands on Sacramento Avenue. Rockin’ the Rails filled the main stage in the City Hall north parking lot, where the Fraternal Order of Eagles kept a beer booth all weekend. A raffle ran that night, and a handmade guitar by local artist John Abbott was among the prizes.

Saturday began with the Rotary pancake breakfast at the Community Building next to the ball park. Union Pacific set up a booth and a vehicle at Dunsmuir Avenue and the Resource Center. Food and craft vendors lined Upper Pine Street, and the band Black Dog Tongue played there in the morning. Tim Harris led the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the National Anthem. The committee credited Ester McClendon with putting the parade together.

Ric Garrett played among the vendors that afternoon. Children entered the Little Engineer Contest at a dollar per entry. At the library, Angel Gomez presented “Tales of the Siskiyou Trail.” The Siskiyou Art Museum opened on Dunsmuir Avenue from 4 to 7.

Sunday morning brought the soap box derby, run on Dunsmuir Avenue between Spruce and Pine Streets. The committee thanked Kevin Tynsky and Michael Kay for “your labor of love to make this happen for the kids.” The Show ‘n Shine car show followed in the afternoon, organized by Larry McClendon, and Jimmy Limo played on Pine Street.

At 3 o’clock the button raffle was drawn at the information booth. Prizes included train sets, a pendant necklace with a Dunsmuir view of Mt. Shasta, and baskets titled “Man Cave,” “Bumble Bees and Tea,” and “Hot chocolate.” The Blackwell Brothers closed the main stage at 6, and the 2026 celebration ended there at 7. Afterward the committee wrote, “We know it was a hot one out there.”

The Kids’ Zone was at Children’s Park. A committee post thanked Revive church for running it “these past few years,” with face painting, rock painting and snow cones. Another post said goodbye to a food vendor, Wecookforyou Sweely, after more than 20 years at Railroad Days.

The committee that runs the weekend is six people: Sandra Hood, Kristin Valenzuela, Tammy Cutting, Becky Catlett, and Ester and Larry McClendon. Hood was its president in 2024. Railroad Days also funds a scholarship for a Dunsmuir High School graduate bound for college, university or trade school. The committee states it will be awarded for the tenth time, and the 2025 recipient was Cyla Clemens.

Snow cones, Smokey the Bear and a ballpark

Shareen Strauss of Siskiyou News reported the 2023 festival in detail. The Kids’ Zone that year had a magician, a balloon lady, a bounce house, a dunk tank, a petting zoo, and rock painting four hours each day. Alan Clother volunteered there through Helping Hands. “We gave out 250 snow cones, painted about 50 rocks, and had about double the amount of people than we did last year at the Kid Zone,” he said.

The 2023 parade had about 26 entries, led by the American Legion Honor Guard.

• Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue, a 2003 graduate of Dunsmuir High School, rode in the DARE car.
• The grand marshal was Fire Chief Dan Padilla.
• Mayor Jalianna Lucchesi followed in a 2016 Chevrolet Camaro RS convertible belonging to the elementary school principal, Mandy Leahy.
• That year’s scholarship recipient, Tony Birimisa, came next.
• After them came the Dunsmuir/Castella Fire Department, Cal Fire, Smokey the Bear, the high school, and antique cars driven by their owners.

Fourteen bands played the evening stage, and belly dancers performed during the day. In the Little Engineer Contest’s 1-and-2-year-old category, Iris Isadora was named Little Miss Engineer.

Across town, 14 teams played a softball tournament at the ballpark where, Strauss wrote, Babe Ruth once played an exhibition game. Slammin Salmon won it without a loss. Jeannie Rogers spoke for the local team, Gary’s Pizza Factory: “These are like our own kids from around this area. Some of these young men are alumni.”

Buttons, boxcars and the travelers

The committee makes a button for every celebration. Hood told Jefferson Public Radio that one year a local found a stash of old Railroad Days buttons, some dating back to the 1940s. The committee sold them to raise money, and the buyers included people who ride freight trains. “They were probably one of our biggest buyers,” Hood said. “Because it was a simple token to take along with them and pass along to people that they met.”

Those riders gather the same weekend at the Black Butte Center for Railroad Culture in Weed, about 15 miles up the tracks. On June 7, 2024, a band played there in a decommissioned boxcar. Other boxcars hold a library on train culture and an exhibit on the labor organizer and singer Bruce Duncan “Utah” Phillips. The grounds have a communal kitchen and 50 acres of forest for sleeping bags. When a train passed, the crowd went out to the rails with beer in hand.

One traveler from Tucson, who gave his name only as Turtle, described the trip: “I got to look outside this train bro, and see from yellow to red to dead. And it was beauty to me.”

Hood said locals have mixed feelings about the riders. “Many of them that come in are wonderful. They’re helpful, they’re pleasant,” she said. “And then you have those that are a little edgy. But then, of course, all towns have edgy people.” JPR reported some brawls and public drunkenness in past years.

Nina Alameda has lived in Dunsmuir all of her 85 years. She said the town has always drawn rail riders, as in the Great Depression, and remembered one knocking at her family’s door as a child to ask for a pair of shoes. Of the riders today she said, “It’s a little more scary. You don’t really know who they are and what they’re up to.” At the 2024 parade, travelers and families shared the sidewalk. Turtle said: “These tracks cut through America. These are the veins of America.”

Norman Green’s idea, 1941

The town owes its existence to trains. It was built around a division point, where crews and equipment were changed. Steam locomotives once stopped here to take on “pusher” engines for the climb north toward Mt. Shasta. In the early 20th century nearly everyone worked on or around the rails. Dunsmuir historian Ron McCloud traces the town’s public celebrations to a July 4th observance in 1904.

Railroad Days began in 1941. Norman Green, a railroad conductor and businessman, proposed it to honor old-timers and to encourage young people to pursue railroad careers. The first event was called the “Southern Pacific Railroad Celebration” and was held June 15 and 16 of that year.

The Dunsmuir Railroad Depot Historical Society records the gaps and renamings that followed:

• No celebrations were held from 1942 through 1946, during World War II.
• The event was called Canyon Days in 1966 and 1967, and again in 2000.
• It was called River Daze from 1975 through 1979.

In the Southern Pacific years, Alameda said, the company backed the town and the festival. “They would bring the Shasta Daylight down and park it here so that we can see it,” she said. “But they don’t do any of that anymore.” Union Pacific now runs the line. Alameda told JPR the company is less involved in the festival and the town, and that fewer of its people live in Dunsmuir. New technology means fewer workers are needed, and there is less timber to haul. Hood said: “We don’t have the trains like we used to. But the spirit of those engineers and rail workers is still here.”

The trains came back in 2010, after a three-year absence. Equipment from Union Pacific and the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola rolled into the Dunsmuir railyards. It included a “silver plate” dining car dating to the 1940s, and a rubber-tired mini-train gave rides. Matt Shuman, president of the Shasta Cascade Rail Society, had negotiated with Union Pacific for the committee. “Get ready, Dunsmuir, to host rail fans from all over this region, from the Bay Area to Eugene,” he said.

The year before, in 2009, Phyllis Skalko held the historical society’s first Pie Social during Railroad Days. Twenty-six bakers donated 46 pies. In 2010 the social moved to the town’s Dogwood Daze.

The historical society runs the Dunsmuir Museum beside the Amtrak depot on Sacramento Avenue. It has opened the museum during Railroad Days in past years. In 2019 that included a book signing by Dunsmuir resident Robert Morris, who has photographed the Southern Pacific since 1959, for his book Photobob’s Espee. The society’s website now says the museum is closed because of nearby construction, with reopening to be determined.

In 2016 the museum displayed more than 30 Railroad Days T-shirts from 1978 through 2016. It also showed 53 buttons dated 1942 through 2015, the earliest from a year the society itself lists as having no celebration. In 2018 the society asked for buttons it still lacked: 1947–48, 1966–67, 1973–74, 2000, and 2014.