Ione Homecoming

At 9 p.m. on the Friday of Ione Homecoming the fireworks go up over Howard Park. In 2026, the 150th edition, Aubrie Gold sang the national anthem before the display, as she had in 2024, and the carnival midway ran until eleven. The celebration fills two days in May at the park, 600 South Church Street, and moves onto Main Street for a Saturday parade. The Ione Picnic Association puts it on.

The park holds it all: baseball and soccer fields, a one-mile track, a picnic hill with tables, horseshoe pits, Evalynn Bishop Hall, stables, and the Ed Hughes Memorial Arena. The city allows dry camping there for events only. The Homecoming schedule asks campers with horses to stay in the designated area near the stables.

Friday and Saturday morning, May 2026

The 2026 Homecoming ran Friday and Saturday, May 8 and 9. Friday began at 9 a.m. at Ione Elementary School, where Ione Rotary hosts the kids’ costume contest. The association’s Facebook page posted photographs of the costume parade and a line for one returning daughter: “Cheers to Jessica!!! So glad you came home for Homecoming!!!”

Johnston’s Carnival opened the midway at 4 p.m. and the vendor booths opened with it. On the park diamonds the Little League majors played, Cardinals at Padres, after a ceremonial first pitch by the grand marshals, the Gold family. Arlene Dutschke chaired bingo on Picnic Hill.

At the arena the smallest riders had the Kids Corral. It offered leadline, goat ribbon tying with goats supplied by Cody Gold, and goat roping for children five and under. Mutton bustin’ followed at 6:30, chaired by Cody and Ronnie Gold, and the Kids Boot Scramble came after it. Cornhole partners paired off at the horseshoe pits. The beer and wine garden had Clint Stremcha at six and Greenbroke after the fireworks.

Saturday starts at Castle Oaks Golf Club with the Bedbug Challenge, a 5K color run organized by the 5th Grade Science Camp. Check-in is at 6:30 a.m. and the start at 7:30. Cub Scout Pack 477 served pancakes from 7:30 to 10:30 for $8, and breakaway roping began in the arena at eight.

The parade stepped off down Main Street at 10 a.m. under Kris Custino, its longtime chairperson. The 2026 winners were Hunt Propane, Blue Stone Public House, and Kristi Roots Insurance. Downtown merchants dress their windows for a contest of their own, and in 2026 the association counted three businesses entering for the first time and three returning.

Behind the parade comes a soapbox derby on East Main Street, run in honor of Joel and Charlie Naranjo. On the park grass the cow and calf chip bingo begins.

Frogs, mowers, and a candy plane

By noon the carnival is running again and the jackpot horseshoe doubles are under way, partners drawn blind, with Pete Misuraca as chairperson. In the arena the Andy Bonham Memorial team roping is open only to locals from Amador and Calaveras counties. Belle Farm runs a petting zoo. On Picnic Hill the Kids Corner, held in honor of the community’s children battling cancer, offers bounce houses, painting, face painting, and yard games until four.

Chili and salsa go before the judges at 1 p.m. in Evalynn Bishop Hall, under chairperson Dolores Larrigan. At the same hour the Jr Frog Jump begins at the bandstand stage, run by the Holmes, DuBoise, and Workman families and awarded by the Miss Ione Court. The schedule warns: “Frogs are not always supplied. Bring your own!” Double Take Band played the beer garden in the afternoon of 2026, and parade results were read there at three.

At 3:30 an airplane, sponsored by a dentist, Neal Swann, drops candy over Baseball Field No. 3. Eyewear is mandatory, and the program notes it is in limited supply at the event. Ribs are judged at four behind the beer garden, at “Holy Smokes! It’s A Rib Cook-off,” while lawnmowers race the park track under Sam Fabila. Bronc and bull riding closed the 2026 arena program at 6 p.m. Saturday. All weekend the beer garden kept ATMs and sold the Ione community calendar.

Bedbug and Freezeout in 1876

The Bedbug Challenge borrows an old name. The city’s history page says Thomas Brown is believed to have named the Ione Valley around 1849, after a heroine in Edward Bulwer Lytton’s “The Last Days of Pompeii.” Gold Rush miners called the town “Bedbug” and “Freezeout.” Unlike the mining camps elsewhere in Amador County, Ione grew as a supply center, a stage and rail stop, and an agricultural hub.

By the centennial of 1876 the town had about 600 people, about 100 of them Chinese living in Ione’s Chinatown. Its businesses included:

• one public school and four churches
• four general stores, a meat market, a laundry, and a brewery
• a restaurant, a millinery shop, and an art gallery
• six saloons, a drug store, and a barber shop

The centennial celebration also marked the completion of the railroad to Ione. The city counts it as the beginning of what is now known as Ione Homecoming.

The sources differ on the weekend. The city says the celebration has been held in May almost every year since 1876 and now falls on the first weekend in May. The Amador County Chamber’s 2019 listing puts it on the second weekend of May, and the association’s 2024 program calls it “this second weekend in May.” The 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions fell on May 10 and 11, May 9 and 10, and May 8 and 9.

A pageant, a lean year, and a return

The week before the park fills, the Miss Ione Scholarship Pageant opens the season at Evalynn Bishop Hall. In 2026 it was held Saturday, May 2. The Ledger Dispatch reported in 2017 that the pageant had kicked off Homecoming nearly every year since 1966, apart from a hiatus from 1995 to 2003.

That year six young women competed. D’Lynn Zagami, a 17-year-old senior at Argonaut High School who planned to study trauma nursing, took the crown and a $1,000 scholarship. The runners-up received $500 and $250. The Miss Ione Court then hands out the weekend’s prizes, from the frog jump to the parade ribbons.

In 2021 Homecoming returned “after a year on the shelf,” in the Ledger Dispatch’s words. It ran Friday through Sunday, May 7 to 9, with no carnival because of state requirements, under the theme Benny’s Masks and Masquerades. That year paid tribute to Regia Sargent, who had died in February. “We are honoring her for her years of service and dedication to Ione Homecoming and the Ione community,” said event coordinator Mitzi Windley.

The arena went quiet in 2023. The 2024 program credited Christine and Jeff Gold with bringing rodeo events back: “We know those were missed last year.” The same program describes the work that comes before each Homecoming. On the Wednesday and Thursday before, volunteers rake the grounds, fill holes, spread bark and rock, paint, and hang banners and lights. Argonaut Football handles trash pickup.

Pete and Patti

The 2024 Homecoming, the 148th, took the theme Benny & the Rock ‘N’ Roll Legends and named Pete and Patti Misuraca grand marshals. Their sons, Reginald and Nigel, wrote the program’s account of them.

Patricia Fisher was born July 25, 1964, and raised in Ione, where her parents, David and Caroline Fisher, had moved in 1957. Peter Misuraca was born September 8, 1963, in Paradise and came to Ione at eight. They met in elementary school.

Pete moved away halfway through high school and joined the Navy. Patti went to college, and the two wrote letters while he was at sea. After his service they married on May 13, 1989, in her sister Kathy’s backyard in Ione. “Our parents have taught us about what it truly means to serve and be involved in the community from a very young age,” the sons wrote.

That Saturday night Patti also took ticket calls for the Ione High School alumni dinner at Evalynn Bishop Hall, where the class of 1974 received its 50-year pins. The program added a note on the attendance: “Each year, the # of people increases!!! How does that happen when the school has been closed for so long?!”