Enumclaw Sales Pavilion

The office of the Enumclaw Sales Pavilion is through the front doors of the big red building, on the left. On a Saturday a buyer stops there first for a bidder number. The poultry auction begins at 9:00 in the morning and runs to about 12:30. The livestock auction begins at 1:00 and, in the pavilion’s words, runs “until it’s over.” The snack shack sells hot dogs and sweet treats. The office keeps weekday hours, but animals change hands only at the Saturday auctions and the monthly horse sales.

Saturday in the big red building

Poultry is checked in from 7 to 11 inside the main building, through a west-side entrance marked with signs and arrows. The poultry sale takes baby chicks, chickens, ducks, quail, pheasants, turkeys, peacocks, geese, fresh eggs, fertile eggs, rabbits, small-animal cages and equipment, and farm and garden supplies. “We never really know what will show up until Saturday morning,” the pavilion says.

Goats, sheep, and pigs come in west of the main barn. Cattle and horses are unloaded at a separate drop-off north of the property, off 228th. The afternoon ring usually holds sheep, goats, pigs, baby calves, and cattle of all ages. They sell in a set order: calves, cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and pigs. The horses are “Off-Catalog” consignments, which the yard has newly begun accepting for the Saturday sale.

The pavilion’s instructions for buyers describe the ring. Come a little early with the family and look over the animals. “Things happen quickly at an auction.” When two chickens are in the ring, the auctioneer’s price is per chicken. When three sheep are offered as “choice,” the price is for one, and the winning bidder picks which one. Everything is sold as is, where is, and payment is due by the end of the day. A credit card carries a 4 percent fee, while debit and cash carry none. Most animals must leave by 5 p.m., though the yard will hold an animal a few days, or quarantine it, for a daily fee. It is a licensed and bonded auction yard, regulated by the USDA and WSDA.

Horses on the first Sunday

On the first Sunday of each month the yard holds a catalog horse sale, billed as “Quality Performance Horses, Ponies, Mules,” with bidding both online and in person. The horses arrive only that morning. Viewing begins around 10, and many consignors ride their horses in the outdoor preview arena before the auction opens at noon. Each horse’s cover graphic carries the consignor’s phone number in its bottom left corner. Buyers who cannot haul a horse home that day may board it through the following Friday at $10 a day.

The October 4, 2026 sale offered several lots:

• Snowball, lot 9. A 12-year-old, 12.1-hand cart-trained donkey. His consignor wrote that he had been driven by children and adults, had been taken “out to town,” and would “look super cute in a Christmas parade.”
• Oreo. A 19-year-old black-and-white paint gelding said to have been used for reining in his early years and as a trail horse since.
• Beauty and Spirit. Two 3-year-old quarter horses, both saddled but never ridden.

The September 6 sale, called the End of Summer Extravaganza, listed Red, a 12-year-old red roan quarter horse that had served mainly as a pony horse at the race track.

Frank Wetzel’s sales barn

Before there was a pavilion, the plateau already bought and sold horses at auction. The Courier-Herald’s history columnist Richard Elfers wrote in 2021 that “the Enumclaw Sales Pavilion on the road to Auburn did not come into existence until 1938.” The Enumclaw Plateau Historical Society’s town timeline gives the same year, placing the pavilion between Pete’s Pool in 1935 and Enumclaw Memorial Hospital in 1949. The ground beneath it, by the city’s account, was laid down by a volcanic mudflow from Mount Rainier. HistoryLink records that hop lice and a falling market turned many plateau farmers to dairying, and that dairy farming remains a major industry.

The pavilion’s founder and owner was Frank Wetzel. Forrest Wetzel married Janice in 1960, and the couple worked at the pavilion with his parents. Janice Wetzel’s 2017 obituary states that they bought the business in 1973. The two later started S&W Exporters, which the obituary calls the biggest U.S. exporters of dairy cattle to Asia. A Courier-Herald column from 2020 tells the next sale differently. It names Frank Wetzel as the owner who put the business up for sale.

A horse in the Ski Inn Tavern

The buyer in that column was Ron Mariotti, who carried one of Enumclaw’s older family names. He grew up on the family dairy farm and decided in high school that milking cows morning and evening, seven days a week for 30 years, was not the life he wanted. According to the column, he “scraped a few nickels together” and bought the operation on April Fools Day, 1975. He later told the columnist that “before the ink dried on the check,” Frank’s son tried to buy it back, and Ron refused. The sales barn kept him among local farm families. In 1993 the Seattle Times found him, at 54, still the owner of the pavilion, “where livestock sales are held every week,” and called him one of the town’s most prominent businessmen.

The columnist’s last visit came a few months before Mariotti’s death. He leaned back in his swivel chair with his boots on the desk and complained about a “sh**-storm” of new state statutes. Over the years he had sold chickens, ducks, other birds, “a bunny or two,” furniture, and machinery. Now, he said, “I can’t sell any dogs or cats unless I buy a pet license!” A rule for businesses that drew regular crowds set him laughing: “This place has been in business for 60 years and now, by God, I have to buy a damn ‘crowd license’.” He brought out a collage of 30 or 40 old photographs of friends since dead, Frank and Forrest Wetzel among them.

Then he told about the 1950s, when Enumclaw held an annual two-week celebration called Naches Trail Days. One year Mariotti rode his horse into the Ski Inn Tavern and, still mounted, drank a beer or two until the police officer chased him and the horse back out to the street. “People are still talkin’ about that today!” he said. “That was probably the high point of my life!”