Fourth of July Celebration

After the parade on the Fourth, the crowd in Council moves onto the football field at Council Elementary School. In 2024, Boise Weekly reporter Renee Van Ausdle found a small arena there, ringed with large plastic garbage cans and pickup trucks. An announcer counted down, the porcupines were let out, and they began shuffling off in different directions across the grass. Some made for the fence and came within inches of the spectators. Handlers closed in from every side with trash cans and brooms. By her account, that is all a competitor needs besides the quills. Winners take a cash prize of up to hundreds of dollars. Once the winners were announced and the animals were back in their cans, children and visitors poured onto the field and picked up the quills that had fallen off.

The City of Council calls these the Annual 4th of July “World Famous Porcupine Races.” “People have come from all over the world for this event,” said Miles Stanford, a resident and firefighter. “I have met people from Europe who traveled to watch.”

Lights and trash cans on the night of July 3

The racers are caught the night before. Participants go out on the night of July 3 with lights and trash cans and work the fields and woods. Each porcupine that is caught gets a name, rides in the parade, and races. Then it is released back where it was found. The animals are “auctioned off” to the crowd, and the proceeds go back to the community. The Council Chamber of Commerce, which runs the celebration, keeps a page of porcupine handling information and pictures of the handlers on its website.

The handlers start young. “Porcupine racing is a family-friendly event, and younger kids in the past have raced them before,” Stanford said. “I started hunting them when I was 12 or 13 years old. There were contestants younger than that this year, some even in the 5th grade. This is remarkable and shows that porcupines aren’t dangerous and can be kid-friendly.” Van Ausdle watched the scattering animals and the brooms and wondered why no quills were flying. Resident Sam Mahon told her that porcupines do not shoot their quills, and that what she had heard growing up was a myth.

From the Nazarene Church to the school

A schedule of local activities posted by the Council Loggers Jubilee sets out the day. The flag goes up at 8 a.m. in City Park. A community breakfast runs from 7 to 10 a.m. at the Community Church. The parade leaves the Nazarene Church at 11 a.m. and passes through downtown to the elementary school, and the porcupine races follow it there. The America250 in Idaho calendar listed the 2026 parade, “Council Chamber of Commerce Presents Fourth of July Parade,” for July 4 from 11 a.m. to noon. The Chamber’s own page billed the 2026 celebration as “250 Years in the Making!!”

In 2024 the parade carried 14 trucks of recently caught porcupines. It also had the fire department, a grandmother on her lawn mower, Smokey Bear, antique cars, Zumba dancers, veterans, and a man on stilts. The Porcupine Car Show parks on Galena Street in front of the Museum from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Downtown after the races

From the field the crowd drifts back into town. Vendors fill the downtown park all day, and live music plays there from 4 to 8 p.m. After the parade there are water activities for children at the park by the library until 4 p.m. In 2024 Van Ausdle found craft and food vendors and children dancing, and she bought a jar of fresh honey from a local beekeeper. A little way down the road, men raced one another to saw through wood while townspeople cheered. She called it “wild, messy, dusty, and very loud.” A softball tournament runs on July 4 and 5 at Boise Cascade Park, the same grounds the Loggers Jubilee uses. Under a heading for July 3, the Jubilee schedule also lists a community lunch at the Senior Center and a soap box derby race, both at 11 a.m., and a street dance from 7 to 10 p.m. with live music by Rancho Notorious.

At dusk the fireworks go up from the elementary school football field. In 2024 the fire department promised its biggest and most dangerous display yet. “Council has the best Fourth of July, hands down,” said Kaitlyn O’Brien, a visitor from Boise. “I love the porcupine races, parade, and that everyone in Council is so welcoming and fun.”

A county seat under Cuddy Mountain

Council lies in west central Idaho, between Cuddy Mountain to the west, which rises to 7,715 feet, and Council Mountain to the east, which reaches 8,126 feet. The town was incorporated on January 20, 1903, and is the county seat of Adams County. The pages do not record who held the first porcupine race or when. Van Ausdle’s account says only that the tradition began decades ago, and that by 2024 Council had hosted the races for over 50 years. Each year the animals are caught in the dark on the third, raced on the fourth, and carried back to the fields and woods where they were found.