Harrison Old Time Picnic

Sunday of the Old Time Picnic starts with breakfast in Harrison City Park, served from 7:30 to 10 a.m. on the grass above Lake Coeur d’Alene. The park sits in the center of town. It has a playground, open lawn, and a gazebo where musicians play on summer Saturdays. A few steps away is the town’s sandy public beach, a protected swimming area with a swimming and diving platform, set between the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes and the county boat docks.

The 2021 schedule printed by the Coeur d’Alene Press shows the shape of the day. A fun run started at 8:30. At 10 a.m. there was worship at the Harrison Community Baptist Church, and at the same hour the kiddie parade set off with the main parade behind it. Lunch was served at 11, and the Visit North Idaho listing gives it until 2 p.m. From 12:30 to 1:30 the park held the baby crawling contest, foot races, a penny scramble, sack races and the greased pole climb. The men’s obstacle contest followed at 2 p.m., and the women’s nail driving contest at 2:45.

Friday to Sunday on the fourth weekend of July

That Sunday closes a three-day program run by the Old Time Picnic Committee. It opens Friday evening with a dinner and the crowning of the King and Queen for the year. Saturday brings a kids’ fishing derby in the morning, from 9 to 11 a.m. in 2021, and the Grange Market until 3 p.m. FYI North Idaho lists the event as the Old Timer’s Picnic, held on the fourth weekend in July, and adds a community yard sale that runs all weekend. The 2026 picnic was held July 24–26. Visit North Idaho notes that many of the people who come are locals or families with ties to the area, and that everyone is welcome.

A king and queen for the year

Sources place the coronation in different halls. Visit North Idaho and the 2021 Press put the Friday dinner and coronation in the Harrison Grange Hall. In 2024 the Gazette Record of St. Maries announced the coronation celebration, with a community potluck and pie auction, for 6:30 p.m. on July 26 at the Harrison Senior Center.

The 2024 royalty were Rich and Susie Lund. The Gazette Record wrote that Rich’s family “has always been involved” in the picnic. He marched in the kiddie parade as a boy, and Al and Ferlee of his family were picnic royalty in 1982. Rich was born and raised in Harrison and graduated from Kootenai High School in 1969. He spent 36 years on its staff as a teacher, a coach, athletic director, counselor and, for 15 years, principal. He joined the EMTs in 1978 and was on call for the first ambulance in Harrison, and he spent 16 summers as captain of the Harrison and the Idaho Cruise boats. Susie was born in Sun Valley and grew up at Placer Creek in Wallace and later in Silverton. She graduated from Wallace High School in 1970. She later worked as Harrison City Clerk and at the Harrison Library until 2016, and she served as treasurer of the Old Time Picnic Committee. “We love our Harrison Community!” the Lunds told the paper. “Many things have changed over the years while other things remain the same.”

The same year Al and Ferlee reigned, someone photographed an Old Time Picnic cruise on the boat Dancewana. The color print, dated July 1, 1982, is now in the University of Idaho Library. It shows the railroad bridge swung open to let the boat pass.

The picnic has been held every year since 1953, with one gap. In 2020 it was canceled for the first time in over sixty years because of coronavirus concerns. It returned in 2021 with three days of activities.

A grocer’s daughter and a flagpole

In July 1998 the town opened the weekend with its parade on Saturday and held the picnic on Sunday. The Spokesman-Review’s correspondent Jeri McCroskey found the park newly improved. The gazebo, a bandstand, had been designed and finished the fall before with local gifts of money, materials and labor. The preschool and its supporters had donated new playground equipment. Joan Cornell, who owned the Harrison Trading Co. across the street, looked over at the park and said, “You know, it’s one of the prettiest parks in the state.”

A new gift had also arrived. Mary Burleigh Lehmann, who had recently died on Oahu, left more than $45,000 to the Old Time Picnic Committee for improvements to the city park. She asked that a flagpole be set in the park with a plaque acknowledging her gift. By that July the pole and flag were up, and the committee had also built a new restroom with the city’s cooperation, judging it a needed improvement. Her will also left $10,000 to the Crane Society, which keeps the Crane House, a historical museum on the main street.

Lehmann was born in Harrison in 1902. The town was young then. The Crane family settled there in 1890, and Harrison was incorporated in 1899 on a one-mile strip carved out of the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation by a bill President Harrison signed on the night of March 4, 1891. It grew as a gateway to the Coeur d’Alene mining district, and sawmills lined its waterfront. Accounts of its size differ. The 1911 city directory reported a population of 1,250. The Spokesman-Review wrote that during Lehmann’s years the town had seven working mills and more than 3,000 people.

Early on Saturday morning, July 24, 1917, according to Kootenai County, fire broke out at the Grant Lumber Company. Driven by high winds, it burned for two days and destroyed about 30 residences, the sawmills and the business district. Much of the town was never rebuilt. The Burleigh Building was listed among the losses at a valuation of $1,500. A restored photograph shows it as a false-front frame building with “A.W. Burleigh, Groceries” painted on its south wall. The family moved to Spokane that year. The Spokesman-Review’s correspondent wrote that “one might assume” the loss of the store had prompted the move.

Few people in Harrison in 1998 remembered her. What was known came from letters she wrote over the years to the editor of The Harrison Searchlight. She graduated from the University of Idaho in 1925, moved to Hawaii the next year, came back to the mainland in 1929, and returned to Hawaii for good in 1937. By 1998 the sign outside town gave a population of just over 300. In one of her letters, she mentioned that she and her husband had attended the picnic in 1978 and that she enjoyed seeing old friends.