Granger Cherry Festival

Stoney’s Plaza in April

On the opening day of the 2026 Granger Cherry Festival, the Granger Lions Club posted its instructions in English and in Spanish. There was one entrance, off Bailey Avenue by Brew2Go. No one was to come in from E Avenue. Everyone, vendors included, parked in the grass field, and the fire lanes stayed clear. By Sunday afternoon the club had posted a shorter warning: cars left at the Dollar General would be towed.

The festival ran from 8:00 a.m. Friday, April 17, through 10:00 p.m. Sunday, April 19, 2026. The grounds are Stoney’s Plaza at 300 E Avenue. For the 2025 festival the Yakima Herald-Republic reported free admission and free parking, merchandise vendors, entertainment, and bingo. The carnival opened at 4 p.m. Friday and at noon on Saturday and Sunday, and a $45 wristband bought a day of rides and two games. In the weeks before the 2026 festival, club members sat at folding tables outside the Dollar General, at El Sol, and behind the Lions Club building on East A Street, selling presale wristbands for $35, cash only. The last presale hour ran from 11 to noon on opening day. After that the price at the carnival was $45.

The club announced its food vendors one at a time. Aunty Jams Asian kitchen was new in 2026, and La Mana Gourmet popcorn was back. Embrace Healing brought a petting zoo on Saturday and Sunday, with a charge for each visit. The weekend also had a raffle. On Saturday night the club posted, “THANK YOU GRANGER! WHAT AN AMAZING CROWD TODAY!” Four days later it thanked its sponsors and members for “another attendance breaking year,” and asked which part people had liked best: “The food? Petting zoo? Bingo? Raffle?”

From the middle school to Main Street

The parade is held Saturday. In 2026 it ran from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on April 18. It forms at the back of Granger Middle School, 501 Bailey Avenue, and goes down E Avenue, Bailey Avenue, and Sunnyside Avenue to Main Street. MidValley Television, the public access station on Channel 192 for Granger, Toppenish, and Wapato, carried the 2024 parade, and the Lions Club’s site links to a recording of the parade from the 74th festival.

The club’s events listing also gives hours for the Granger Museum at 223 2nd Avenue: Friday and Saturday, noon to 4:00 p.m. On the Sunday of the 2026 festival, the Granger Athletic Booster Club held a car show from 10 a.m. to noon, with food, and then an auction from noon to 4:30.

A town named for a canal builder

Granger sits between Zillah and Sunnyside in the Yakima Valley. It is named for Walter Granger (1855–1930). In the 1890s he and a group of St. Paul, Minnesota, investors formed the Yakima Land and Canal Company and began work on the Sunnyside Canal. The country was shrub-steppe, big sagebrush and bluebunch wheatgrass, and the canal brought water to it. In 1904 the newly formed Granger Land Company laid out a town midway between the two older settlements and gave it his name. Newspaper advertisements in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane brought buyers. The town incorporated on September 28, 1909. The first child born in the new city was named Walter Granger Nelson, and Walter Granger gave the baby an engraved silver cup and spoon.

The farms around the town grew asparagus, potatoes, wheat, fruit, beets, and hops. The city’s history page, written by Alan J. Stein in 2013, says cherries were a popular crop and that Granger later adopted the fruit as its emblem. It adds that the town “still holds its annual cherry festival every spring.” In 1942 more than 500 Mexican nationals came to the valley under the federal Bracero program. Many later became citizens, and family and friends followed them. By 2013 the town was almost 90 percent Hispanic. Since 1994 residents have built dinosaurs of wire mesh and concrete and set them around town, and Granger now calls itself the place “where dinosaurs roam.”

Sixty-fifth, seventieth, seventy-fifth

The festival’s numbering does not hold steady from one source to the next. The Herald-Republic called the May 2013 festival the 65th. News Talk KIT called the April 2018 festival the 70th. The Lions Club lists a 74th among its past events, and the Herald-Republic reported that Granger was celebrating 75 years of the festival in April 2025. The 2013 and 2018 numbers run two years ahead of the 2025 one.

The 2013 program shows how the weekend once ran. Concessions and carnival rides were open all three days, with live entertainment Saturday and Sunday from noon to 8 p.m. Floats began arriving at 7 a.m. on the parade grounds behind Granger Elementary School. They were judged at 9:30 and the parade started at 11. On Sunday the festival moved to Granger Pond for the annual fishing derby. It began at 7 a.m., with cash prizes for the biggest and heaviest trout, and state laws and catch limits applied.

In 2018 the festival was held at Granger City Park, with live music, concessions, carnival rides, and a bingo tent. The parade started at 11 a.m. Saturday and wound through downtown. Precilla Lopez of the Lions Club told the station what the club sees each year: “we see a lot of people and plenty of new faces.”