Irrigon Watermelon Festival

Breakfast is served at Irrigon Marina Park from 6 to 9 a.m. on the last Saturday of July. The park lies at the end of NE Tenth Street on the Columbia River, with a public boat ramp, marina, picnic ground and playground. On other days it holds the One Plug Derby fishing tournament and summer Music in The Park.

For the 42nd annual Irrigon Watermelon Festival, on July 25, 2026, the breakfast raised money for Irrigon Celebrate Recovery. The ministry of Columbia View Community Church had begun just over ten months earlier. A full plate cost about $7, and items could be ordered à la carte. “Whether someone comes for breakfast, to support the ministry, or simply to learn more about Celebrate Recovery, we’re looking forward to meeting them,” said Shannon Johnson, who leads it.

From Stokes Landing to the four-way stop

The parade steps off downtown at 10 a.m. from Stokes Landing Senior Center and ends at the four-way stop at the marina park. Ribbons go to first and second place in around eight to ten categories. Irrigon’s mayor, Michelle Patton, coordinates it. Entrants are asked to pick up forms at city hall, though no one is turned away.

She also runs the car show. Owners pull into the park between 8 and 11 a.m., pay $20, take a dash plaque and park. At 3 p.m. winners are named in a dozen divisions, with a people’s choice award besides. Everything except the parade happens at the park, where the opening ceremony begins at 10:45.

Pie, melon and a mechanical bull

The festival committee passes some of the selling to local groups. In 2026 Family Worship Center sold pieces of pie and huge slices of watermelon from Pollock & Sons of Hermiston. The Small Town Critters 4-H group sold Pepsi, bottled water and Gatorade. “Our vendor fees cover most expenses, so we’re helping these organizations so they can have a full-on fundraiser,” said Charlene Cooley, a volunteer.

The food booths carried barbecue, Mexican and Polynesian fare. The committee’s list named the Polynesian Grill, Upper Place Burgers, Beckie’s Burgers with pulled pork sandwiches, and street tacos. For sweets there were freeze-dried candy, kettle corn, frozen yogurt, cookies from The Cookie Lady, donuts, Italian sodas and lemonade. The craft tables held wooden toys, crocheted stuffies, 3D-printed goods, jewelry, metal art, homemade jams and jellies, and women’s boutique apparel. Unicorn Designs painted faces, some designs free.

At the water, the Morrow County Sheriff’s Office Marine Patrol gave boat rides. Knockerball Tricities brought a mechanical bull and axe-throwing. Live music ran from the opening ceremony into the night. “Music is a way to bring the community together,” Cooley said. One booked act, Cody Bartels, had something come up days before the festival, and Eli Howard and The Greater Good played in his place.

The 2026 day was to close, as the two before it had, with fireworks at 10 p.m. set off by a crew from Western Display Fireworks. That evening the committee posted that it was working with Western Display and the local fire district on a plan. The winds were supposed to die down before ten, and the crew would light one off to test the direction. If they did not like the way it looked, the show might be canceled. “Please be kind and patient with us as we work through this,” the post read.

The next day the committee thanked Western Display and the fire district “for their diligence in watching the weather and wind patterns for our fireworks.” It also thanked the Turner family for policing the park of trash at the end of the night. Then it set the date for the next festival: July 31, 2027.

Fifty-cent slices and a duck race

In 2011 organizer Donna Eppenbach promised seed spitting, melon tossing and a watermelon eating contest. Slices sold for 50 cents. There was a show and shine, and in the evening came the annual Duck Race, with ducks a buck apiece at Irrigon Shell and the Nuts & Bolts Tavern.

The grand marshals that year were Warren and Frances McCoy, long-time residents. Laura Clark drove them in Lucille, a 1966 Ford Galaxy 500 convertible. Vickie Volk, the Irrigon Chamber of Commerce president, said of the couple: “The Lions Club, VFW, senior center and they’ve helped with the Watermelon Festival for years.” Volk also ran the parade and took entries until 9:55 a.m. “I start the parade at exactly 10 o’clock,” she said.

The Morrow County Unified Recreation District funded the festival then. The money raised went back to groups that helped through the day and to youth scholarships. Barb Huwe took calls about the softball tournament, which ran Saturday and Sunday.

The photographs in Phil Decker’s Oregon Crop Festival Photographic Archive, at Oregon State University, date from July 27, 2013, when the archive gave the festival 30 years. They show seconds served at the pancake breakfast, final touches on a Spongebob car, the Glory Riders leading the parade along Main Avenue, and Officer Matlack throwing candy to families. Princess Kailey rides in the Watermelon Carriage, and a veteran gets a welcome-home kiss. The archive also lists boat rides on the Columbia and a street dance.

The 33rd festival, on July 29, 2017, opened with a breakfast hosted by the Irrigon Moose Lodge. Life Flight, the Air National Guard and the United States Coast Guard put helicopters on display. There were a water slide, a dunk tank and a city leader seed-spitting contest. That year Bellinger Farms of Hermiston stood with the recreation district and the festival itself as a funder.

For the 40th, on July 27, 2024, Bellinger Farms supplied five cartons of melons. The parade honored the late Barb Huwe as grand marshal. Calico Bones sang the national anthem, and Wade Aylett closed the music before the festival’s first-ever fireworks. “However, Wade said he will continue to play as long as people are there,” Cooley said.

A siding called Stokes

The senior center at the head of the parade carries the town’s first name. Irrigon became a railroad siding in the 1880s. Early in the twentieth century a canal was proposed to carry Umatilla River water west to land near the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company’s Stokes siding. The Oregon Land and Water Company advertised that land, with a water right, at $100 an acre.

Settlers began coming in 1903. George M. Rand, among the first, planted 10 acres to fruit, and men could work on the canal for $2.50 a ten-hour day. The town was called Stokes until about 1905, when the first four letters of irrigation were joined to the last three of Oregon. By 1904 and 1905 it had a general merchandise store with a dance hall above, a hotel, a livery stable, a depot and a weekly paper, the “Irrigon Irrigator.”

Then the land company was declared bankrupt. Settlers sold for what they could get or left, until about 50 remained. Renewed interest in 1915, Senator Lande’s among it, brought the high ditch. The West Extension District, formed in 1916, reached west and south of town, and farmers in the arid county grew melons among other crops. Beginning about 1921, residents showed local products at a North Morrow County Fair for several years. Irrigon incorporated in 1957 and is now a city of 1910 people.

An island under Lake Umatilla

On October 19, 1805, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark camped with the Corps of Discovery on an island in the Columbia, a stone’s throw from the present marina. Here they met Native Americans living in lodges of reed mats. They bargained for dried fish, firewood, roots and dogs, paying in bells, thimbles, knitting pins, brass wire and beads. They offered to smoke with their hosts, and members of the party played the violin.

A spur of the Oregon Trail, mapped by the General Land Office in 1861, later met a Columbia shoreline trail here almost exactly at the campsite. A couple of faint swales from it still show in the sand and sagebrush along Highway 730 on the eastern edge of town. Water backed up by the John Day Dam has since covered the island under Lake Umatilla. In rare periods of low water, portions of it can still be seen peeking above the surface of the river.