La Pine Frontier Days

On the Frontier Days grounds at 16260 Sixth Street in La Pine, a pond stocked with trout sits at the heart of the midway. Welding students at La Pine High School built its frame. Children take miniature poles, drop a line, reel in a trout, show it around, and put it back in the water. The pond is open all four days of the celebration. In 2026 that ran July 1 through 4 and marked both the 50th La Pine Frontier Days and America’s 250th birthday.

The grounds are a 40-acre parcel of former pasture a few blocks from the core of La Pine, a Deschutes County town at 4,236 feet. A grove of lodgepole pine stands on it, and part of it is wetland. The fifteen-odd buildable acres hold the midway, a permanent stage, the fish pond, and parking. The La Pine Frontier Days Association, a nonprofit, owns the land and runs the celebration, including the parade and the fireworks. Between Fourths the association has opened the grounds to the Cycle Oregon Classic bicycle tour, to the annual company picnic of Gilchrist Forest Products, and to a fire camp supporting crews on nearby fires. By the association’s account, Frontier Days is always free because sponsors pay for it.

Four days on the stage

In 2026 music ran from Wednesday afternoon to Saturday night. The Newberry Family Band opened on July 1, followed by an Open Mic Night, new that year. Thursday brought Bryan Keith, an hour of barn dancing, The Wild Cards, and the DMM Band. Friday brought The Wild Cards again, the Copper Ridge Band, and Desert Wheelhouse. On Saturday the TRUU Band and the Highway 97 Band played, and then Brooke & The Honeybees from 7:30 until 10. A set billed as History Comes Alive came between the acts each evening. A Kiddie Train carried children around the grounds. The activities cards also listed a beard and mustache contest paired with a Men’s Beautiful Legs contest.

The festival’s ambassador for 2026, Miss Frontier Days, was Abbie Barrett. She was secretary of her student council and cheered on the school’s team. She also bakes and sells under the name Abs Goodies, at Legend Cider’s Sunday Markets and from a table at The Vegetable Man fruit stand. She planned to enter the Cascade Culinary Institute’s pastry program at COCC.

Some years add their own attractions. KTVZ reported in 2022 that the midway had been laid out anew, with the stage moved to the center and more shade and seating. That year brought bounce houses, stick-pony endurance rides, and a Rendezvous Village. Tipis stood there, and two mountain men showed children hoop rolling, tomahawks, and bows and arrows. Meghan Edwards, who was working the event, told the station what she looked forward to: “I’m looking forward to all the food, for sure, and the fish pond for sure. And all the people.”

A pork butt, a pie in a bottle, and beans in the chili

Much of the program is cooking and judging, and the public eats afterward. The 2026 festival opened Wednesday with an apple pie contest on the Midway in two classes. One was Baked. The other was Bottled, which the association describes as “apple pie in a bottle.” Judging began at noon and the public tasting at 1:00. The Newberry Explosion Chili Cook-Off and Salsa Contest was also dated July 1. Every chili had to contain beans and be made at the cook site, at least four quarts of it, with all chopping and sautéing done there. Public judging and tasting began at 5:00, and the favorite chili took a $75 People’s Choice award. Salsa came from home, in fresh and canned classes.

Thursday, July 2, belonged to the High Desert Pig Squeal BBQ Throwdown, the festival’s signature barbecue contest. Each team received a boneless pork butt of about ten pounds at 7:00 in the morning. The teams cooked through the day under 10-by-10 canopies, on their own cookers, with wood, charcoal, or pellets. Volunteers would watch a cooker but would not touch the meat. At 5:00 each team turned in a box of three slices and three mounds of pulled pork, all from the same butt. Judges scored each box for appearance, sliced tenderness, pulled tenderness, and flavor while the People’s Choice tasting opened. Earlier that afternoon, home brewers 21 and older had brought beer, cider, and mead to the Midway contest tent. The entries were judged blind at 2:30, and the public tasting followed at 3:00. A signature cocktail contest on Friday called for a drink reflecting the 50th anniversary.

Sawdust, mowers, and the Fourth

At 1:00 on Friday, July 3, the Woodcutters Jamboree put competitors to slab cutting, firewood splitting, and axe throwing. The association advised closed-toe shoes.

Saturday, July 4, began at 7:00 with the 16th Annual Woodcutters Chop and Eggs Breakfast. At 8:00 children six to ten ran the one-mile leg of the 25th Annual Fun Run. The 5K followed at 8:30, with walkers in under-30 and over-30 categories, and ribbons went to the first three in each. Entry money went to the La Pine High School cross-country team. The parade stepped off at 10:30 under the theme “250 Years of Freedom ~ 50 Years of Celebration!” Its judged entries came as autos, floats, mounted riders, and walkers.

At 2:00 came the 25th Annual Grand Prix Lawnmower Race, which runs modified mowers through a course in heats, with heats for children. At 10 that night the fireworks went up from the meadow west of Highway 97, at 3rd Street and Walker.

By late July the association’s lost-and-found at the Chamber of Commerce held water bottles, sunglasses, shirts, a drawstring bag, hair accessories, earrings, and 3D-printed dragons.

From a roasting pit to the Finley Ranch

The association traces the gathering to the start of the 20th century, when the locals were a handful of pioneering families, mostly ranchers and farmers. The Fourth was their time to trade and catch up, and they held a rodeo, with much food and drink. As the story goes, they dug a large pit, someone donated a large critter to roast, and everyone else brought the rest. One story tells of the year the local trapper Ray Morehouse provided a bear for the pit. Some of the earliest photographs of La Pine show a rodeo of locals, with music and dancing.

In the 1960s the event was held sporadically as “Last Frontier Days.” In 1976 a local businessman, Oren Robinson, created a “Bicentennial Frontier Days.” Its rodeo ran a mile or so down Highway 31 at a local ranch, while the picnic, music, and dancing moved among open areas and parks in town. Bob and Carol Shotwell took on the “Last Frontier Days 4th of July Celebration” in 1986, and it became an annual event. In 1998 a group of business people led by Ken and Vicki Mulenex formed the nonprofit La Pine Frontier Days Association to carry it on.

The White School collapsed under the heavy snow of the winter of 1992–1993. The large shell of a building that replaced it, with its grounds, became the White School Park Complex and the celebration’s yearly home. Volunteers built a permanent stage there in 2000, and a permanent in-ground pit went in for a “Western Style Pit BBQ” in the manner of the old roasts. In time the event filled every inch of the surrounding grass and the parking lots.

In 2002 the organization became the La Pine Frontier Days and Rodeo Association, set on bringing back the rodeo. It took a property at the corner of 3rd and Walker Streets and spent months clearing it, building an arena and bleachers, and running in electric service. The first rodeo there was held in 2003. In 2004 the board members tied to the rodeo broke away to form the La Pine Rodeo Association, and Frontier Days returned to its old name.

In 2018 the association bought the 40 acres it holds now, across the street from the rodeo grounds. The land was part of the old Finley Ranch, one of the turn-of-the-century ranches that helped build La Pine. The association had leased it for years as the launch area for the Fourth of July fireworks. After minimal cleanup, the 2019 celebration was held on the new land. There was no celebration in 2020 because of the COVID pandemic, though the association still put on a fireworks display for the town.

Ann and Gerald Gawith, and the Dutch ovens

The parade’s grand marshals for the 50th were Ann and Gerald Gawith. For 28 years they had helped choose the grand marshal, and in 2026 the board chose them. “When you’re simply doing what you love, recognition feels almost unnecessary,” Ann Gawith wrote. Both came to La Pine in the late 1970s. Gerald had worked as a painter and builder, truck driver, restaurant worker, and farm hand. Ann had studied theater and journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, worked in commercial radio in Reno and Las Vegas, and designed and built in the high-rise hotel and casino trade. They worked thirty years together as remodelers. In 1998 they joined the Frontier Days board, along with several other community boards, and built stages and remodeled event spaces. Ann Gawith became the association’s president in 2002, and 2026 was the couple’s 29th Frontier Days. “It just always does my heart good to see the vendors come in and see all the hard work come together,” she told KTVZ in 2022.

The Bulletin identified her in 2026 as executive director of the La Pine Chamber of Commerce and a Dutch oven cook since her teens. Her favorites include country-style ribs with sauerkraut, Swiss steak, cobblers, and pies. “We started the Dutch oven cook-off at Frontier Days back in 2003 or 2004,” she told the paper. “People came from surrounding states and we had quite a few teams compete.” The cook-off ran nearly a decade and ended around 2012.

The Prairie Challenge Dutch Oven Cook-Off returned on Friday, July 3, 2026. Teams of two or three cooked prairie and frontier recipes entirely in Dutch ovens, in main dish, side dish, and dessert, enough for the judges plus at least thirty public portions. Entrants were urged to dress in pioneer or western clothes and dress their cook sites as camps. Cooking began at 1:00, and spectators asked questions over the pots until the judging at 5:00. “That can be very scientific in terms of how many briquettes to put on the top and on the bottom, depending on what you’re cooking,” Gawith said.

Deschutes County Commissioner Tony DeBone helped promote the revival and practiced recipes with friends ahead of it. “It fits into Oregon history with people coming across the country in prairie schooners,” he said. “People used Dutch ovens.” Of the cook-off itself he said: “It’s like a picnic. It’s just an old style of how to cook food.”