Fourth of July

The Fourth of July on Lopez Island begins with runners. The Lions Club Fun Run sends its 5K run, 5K walk, 10K, and One Mile Romp off together at 8:30 in the morning. The courses start and end in Lopez Village and finish on a long, gradual downhill, and the race page for 2023 told entrants to enjoy the parade after the awards. A book sale fills the rest of the morning. At 11 the parade leaves the Galley and winds through the Village. The fireworks association calls it a “down home” parade. The night before, July 3, the Annual Lopez Center Concert brings out local bands.

The float at the head of the parade

By the Lions Club’s leave, the Fireworks/Chamber of Commerce float leads the parade each year. Volunteers decorate it on July 3. On the Fourth, marchers walk beside it and collect donations along the route. The association’s history page says its members love it “when even the smallest people (the kids) get such joy out of giving their pennies.” On the water the Lopez Yacht Club collects from boats in the bay and from boats moored at the docks. After the 2026 parade the association thanked the Lopez Pharmacy crew and others who collected along the route, and the boat crew that worked the bay.

The show has no other purse. It is paid for by donations, by a grant from the Lopez Thrift Store, and by the sale of fireworks T-shirts and sweatshirts. The 2026 shirts, made for the nation’s 250th birthday, carried artwork by Laine Nichols and were sold at the Lopez Island Visitor Center. A barbecue on the Community Center grounds once belonged to the day, but it has been discontinued. The association is run by a board under president Kai Burleson.

Ten-thirty over Fisherman Bay

The Lopez Island Chamber of Commerce calls the Fourth the island’s busiest holiday, and the moorings fill. Many boaters choose Fisherman Bay so they can walk to the Village, and the fireworks go up over that bay. In 2026 the association posted video of the trailers leaving “the pit,” where the crew spends the last weekends of June in preparation, and heading out to the spit.

The spit closes for the day. For those on the peninsula, once Bayshore Road crosses the spit road, a pilot car leads cars out and back every hour from 7:00 am. The last trip across is at 7:00 pm. After that no one may bike or walk on the road or on the beach on either side until the show is over and the fire inspection is complete. The association notes that the length of the inspection “depends on what they find.” Tinkham Lane is closed except to guests of its homeowners.

The countdown can be heard across the water. One salute sounds fifteen minutes before the start, two salutes at ten minutes, and three at five. The show begins promptly at 10:30 pm, and KLOI, 102.9 FM, carries a live soundtrack. The program runs through 15 theme categories, each made up of many different sizes of shells, and closes with a Grand Finale. In 2014 the committee reported that three years of special fundraising events had paid for a new system, and that the whole show would now be fired remotely from a safe location.

On the morning of July 5, a cleanup crew meets at Otis Perkins Park on Peninsula Road between 8 and 9 o’clock. Their task is “to make the area look like Fireworks never happen there,” and their pay is an oceanfront meal of coffee and “sticky bits.” By then the line has formed at the ferry landing. Reservations cannot be made from Lopez back to Anacortes, and the chamber says July 5 traffic is always extremely heavy. Travelers may need to arrive two hours or more before sailing, and the landing has no food service or drinking water.

Willow, pine, and thunder before rain

The shells are made on the island. Nick Gislason, an organic farmer, winemaker, and brewer, is Director of Pyrotechnics. “I was born interested in pyrotechnic arts,” he told the Islands’ Weekly in 2026. According to that paper, the show became known under his predecessor as one of the five largest displays on the West Coast and as the only Japanese-style display in the country. Gislason describes the difference this way:

“It’s really different from how European — and then by default American fireworks — usually are composed, which use gunpowder and have names associated with the military. For instance, fireworks effects such as artillery, salute and bombardment are European in origin. By contrast, fireworks styling in Japan is all about nature, and the shells are named for different trees, plants, and even weather patterns: willow, pine tree, chrysanthemum, cherry blossoms, and thunder before rain.”

The volunteers use Japanese methods. Their casings are recycled paper, where most places use plastic, and their charcoal comes from local Douglas fir, cedar, and alder. “Douglas fir gives a bright, crackling energetic effect while cedar gives a thin, elegant and calming spark effect,” Gislason said. He describes the present show as a hybrid of Japanese and European elements that honors local flora and fauna. In 2019 the paper reported that the crew’s style drew on the Japanese tradition of “Sets,” which stresses contrast in time, noise, light, and space, and that it had won numerous awards at the Pyrotechnics Guild International Fireworks Competition.

That year Gislason oversaw 15 to 20 volunteer pyrotechnicians from Lopez, San Juan, and Orcas islands. The crew was also producing the Friday Harbor display for the fourth year, though each island funded its own show. “We begin work on July 5th for the following year’s shows,” he said. “Crunch time becomes the two weeks immediately before the 4th. Then it turns into full-time, dawn-till-dusk for the whole team.” He travels to international competitions for ideas, and he works with what the islands give him: “The sky is the canvas, and there are a lot of natural elements—wind, moonlight, the backdrop of the water and the islands—that we are considering.”

“It’s meant to be watched as you’d listen to an album,” he said in 2026. “You go on a journey.”

From a rock off Charles Island

The sources give different starts. The association’s own history begins with Jim Scripps, who “many years ago” celebrated the Fourth by shooting off fireworks from a rock just off Charles Island. Islanders flocked to the south end, near Richardson, to watch. “While not necessarily artistic, it was a great deal of fun,” the history says. Scripps died in 1986, and three people then began organizing a group to put on the display. They kept it on the south end for a time, then moved it to Fisherman Bay, where more people could see it. The history says the show drew such crowds in some years that Washington State Ferries added extra boats.

The Islands’ Weekly has told it two other ways. In 2019 the paper wrote that Dwight Walters had founded Lopez Community Fireworks thirty-three years earlier as an all-volunteer team. In 2026 it wrote that the show debuted in 1951 and that “the torch was passed” to Walters in 1983. According to the 2026 account, Walters had studied in the 1970s with the Japanese pyrotechnic builder Seiji Kase, who became a vital figure in preserving the fireworks legacy of Nagaoka after the Second World War.

The fireworks committee, writing in 2014, gave yet another account. It said Wayne Smith had been part of the original formation, and that Walters “came on the scene a few years after the first fireworks committee was formed.” Once involved, the committee wrote, Walters was “like a dog with a bone.” He went to conventions, earned every license he could, and taught others while he learned. “Without him I doubt our fireworks would be what they are today.”

Gislason began volunteering in 1995 and became Walters’ apprentice. A photograph from 1999 shows the two men together. He took over as director in 2005. Wayne Smith died on December 25, 2012, and Dwight Walters on April 8, 2014. That June, the committee announced the opening of the year’s show: “Our first set of Fireworks will be a tribute to the late Dwight Walters.”