Idaho Spud Day

In the week before the 2026 Spud Day, Shelley’s mayor, Kim Westergard, and the city’s public works director, Justin Johnson, picked up a truckload of potatoes donated by Liberty Gold and dropped it at the area schools. Early on Saturday, September 19, the cafeteria workers washed, wrapped, and baked them. By midday Miss Russet and her court were helping hand them out free in Shelley City Park. Ross Foster, chairman of the celebration and a volunteer since 2015, put the count at around 5,000 potatoes. “The nice thing is that it’s all done locally,” he told BYU-Idaho Radio. “All the potatoes are given locally and then they’re all baked at the schools.” In 2013 the potatoes came from Basic American Foods, roughly 6,500 of them, with butter, sour cream, and cheese from the United Dairymen of Idaho.

Shelley lies in Bingham County, ten miles south of Idaho Falls, and has a population of just over 5,000. The organizers’ website counts 10,000 to 15,000 people at Spud Day each year. The Idaho Farm Bureau estimates 12,000 to 15,000, and Foster says around 20,000 gather for the parade alone. The Kiwanis Club of Shelley runs the day with help from the city; the Farm Bureau calls it the Shelley-Firth Kiwanis Club. The event is free, and the proceeds stay in town. Kiwanis member Sharylee Shanks pointed to a batting cage built for the high school one year and a pickleball court another.

From the Friday trot to the parade on State Street

The 2026 celebration opened at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, September 18, on the Shelley High School track with the Tator Tot Trot. The youngest ran first. Two-year-olds ran 50 meters and ten-to-twelve-year-olds ran 800, with the high school’s girls’ soccer team and cross-country runners cheering them on. From 6 to 10 that evening a street festival took over downtown.

Saturday began at 7 a.m. with the 32nd annual 5K Spud Run and 1-mile walk, which starts and finishes at Sunrise Elementary and raises money for the same high school teams. At the same hour the Shelley-Firth QRU opened its ambulance benefit breakfast at the Elite Retreat. The QRU is 23 volunteer emergency medical technicians who serve Shelley, Firth, and the surrounding rural areas. They began the breakfast around 1993 at the senior citizens center and now serve approximately 200 to 300 people. Show cars parked in the small lot by the fountain, between the Hard Times gas station and Goodsell Elementary.

At 9:45 children rode decorated bicycles in their own parade, with no electric bikes or scooters allowed. The main parade stepped off at 10 down State Street after float judging on Byron Avenue. A photograph on the city’s Spud Day page shows Uncle Sam leading it. For the country’s 250th birthday the 2026 theme was “Red, White, and Blue – Spud Day Through & Through.” The parade had 125 entries, organized by volunteer Eric Bolander, and Stanley Searle was grand marshal. The organizers tell spectators to bring a bag for the candy. “It’s the biggest parade I’ve seen for a small community,” said Kiwanis member Daryl James. “It’s just jammed with people.”

The picking sack and the mashed-potato pit

After the parade the day moved to the park, where more than 150 booths of food and activities stood in 2026 and events ran until 4 p.m. Steven Longhurst Farms hung posters on agriculture and spuds around the grounds. Mick’s Home Cooking sold a Spud Sundae made for the day: ice cream shaped like a baked potato, with sweet toppings dressed up as sour cream, butter, and chives. It cost $5.50 regular and $7.00 loaded. On the free stage Brian Markham sang the national anthem at noon, and at 3:30 finalists competed in Spud Day Got Talent, new that year. The French fry eating contest used potatoes donated by Searle Ag and cut into fries by Mick’s. Potato sack races, a baking contest, a lip sync contest, a chalk walk, and a cornhole tournament filled out the program.

The potato picking contest is timed, and entrants put as many potatoes as they can into a burlap sack. Justin Maddux, a Kiwanis member and relative newcomer, expected a relaxed event. “People take it very seriously,” he told the Farm Bureau, especially people who work on a farm. “They take a lot of pride in picking fast and winning the championship.” Jamey Higham, chief executive of the Idaho Potato Commission, grew up a Shelley Russet and names the picking contest his favorite event.

For the Spud Tug, instant mashed potatoes are prepared in a cement mixer and poured into a big hole. Teams pull across it, and at least a few members of the losing side end up in the pit. In 2013 each team was made up of enough people to equal 1,000 pounds. Before the pull, one of Miss Russet’s official duties is to taste the potatoes and give her approval. That year the newly crowned Carly Nelson dipped a spoon into the batch hauled in by cement truck. Chris Sheetz, then chairwoman, spoke from experience: “(I’ve fallen in) before and it’s not that much fun.”

Evenings have changed. In 2013 a demolition derby at the North Bingham County Park arena closed the day. In 2026 a new rodeo began at the same park at 6 p.m.

Potato country

About 60,000 acres of potatoes are grown each year in Bingham County, according to the Farm Bureau, many of them around Shelley, close to 20 percent of Idaho’s crop. Area high schools close for a few weeks each fall for the harvest, and many if not most local children work in it. “I think every kid in Shelley should do it at least once,” said Kiwanis member MerAnda Miller. “You have to appreciate your roots and where you come from.” The high school teams are the Russets. “We’re the Russets. How much more pride can you get than that?” said Kiwanis member Chris Zweifel. Higham notes that a lot of class reunions are planned around Spud Day. The town itself takes its name from an early settler, John F. Shelley.

Booster Buttons and a Guinness record

Most sources date the first Spud Day to 1927; Sheetz in 2013 placed its start in the late 1920s. “They just wanted to celebrate the harvest,” Foster said. “Shelley was a big hub in the day for the potato harvest and so everybody would get together and celebrate it.”

In 1931 the celebration chose its first Spud Day Queen and Miss Shelley. The contestants sold Booster Buttons to help finance the day, and the winners were sent on an all-expense-paid trip to the World’s Fair. A scrapbook of town history held by the North Bingham County District Library names Patti Luke the 1999 Spud Day Queen. Today senior girls compete for Miss Russet on poise and beauty, talent, and a service project, and the winner receives a $2,000 college scholarship. Her year continues at the Easter egg hunt and the lighting ceremony with Santa Claus. A newer pageant, Miss Radiant, was started a few years ago by Jen Worlton for contestants with special needs. It raises money for the Heart 2 Hand food pantry.

In the early 1990s the national press arrived. Good Morning America covered Spud Day in 1990. The 1991 celebration appeared in National Geographic Travel Magazine, the New York Times, and Better Homes and Gardens. That year contestants peeled 694.6 pounds of potatoes in 45 minutes, beating the world record and earning a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. In 1993 ESPN showed the Spud Tug live, though Sheetz in 2013 described the tug as then in its twentieth year.

The Idaho State Journal called the 2013 celebration the 85th annual, and the Post Register’s 2026 headline counted 99 years of history. The morning after the 2026 Spud Day, students from Shelley High came to clean up the park. A week later the organizers posted: “one week ago today, only fifty one weeks to go!”