Lamb Derby

Each morning of Lamb Derby week, a new clue goes up at Willows Hardware. The clues lead to the lost lamb, hidden somewhere in town, and whoever finds it is named the Lamb Hunter. In 2026 the first clue was posted on Monday, May 4, and the lamb was found on Thursday, May 7. That afternoon the Derby board planned to go live online to ask the finder how they had worked out the location.

Clues, buttons and crowns

The Derby runs Monday through Saturday in the week before Mother’s Day. It is organized by Willows Lamb Derby, Inc., a nonprofit whose volunteer board members are elected to two-year terms and raise money through the rest of the year. The Appeal-Democrat counted 2026 as the Derby’s 93rd year. The theme was “Baasking in the Baahaamaas,” which the parade rules spelled “Bahamas.” During the week the Willows Public Library showed Derby buttons from the last 60 years beside a history of the event. The buttons are sold from boxes set out in local businesses, among them Willows Hardware, Carl’s Feed, Casa Ramos and Willows Pharmacy. In 2019 a button took two dollars off the price of a pageant ticket.

The pageants fill Wednesday and Thursday evenings at Willows Memorial Hall. Doors opened at 5:30 and the stage at 6:00. In 2026 Wednesday crowned the Little Miss, Miranda, and the Princess, Alanna. Thursday crowned the Queen, Adrianna Hurlburt, with Kimberly Torres and Amanda Pozzi as runners-up and Faith Hamilton as Miss Congeniality.

The crowns travel through the summer. In June the Queen and Miss Congeniality sat as visiting royalty at the Colusa County Pageant. The Queen also spent an afternoon at the Glenn County First Responders Softball Tournament, selling Fire Department raffle tickets and working the Willows Fire Department food booth. In August the royalty rode into the 40th Annual Willows Car & Bike Show.

On Friday the Young Ladies’ Institute holds a salad luncheon at St. Monica’s Parish Hall, dressed to the year’s theme. The same day the softball tournament opens at Jensen Park and runs into Saturday. In 2026 it returned along with the Willows Volunteer Fire Department muster, after both had been missing for a few years. The board credited Seth Ramsey with reviving the tournament and Loren Chapman with reviving the muster.

One mile on Saturday

Saturday starts early. The Willows Music Boosters’ 5K Fun Run left Willows Memorial Park at 7 a.m. At 8:30 the Rotary served pancakes at Memorial Hall. At the same hour the Reunion Band, open to anyone who brings an instrument, gathered to rehearse in front of the Willows Museum. In 2026 the dress code was Bahama style, “Jimmy Buffett-inspired.” The museum building began as the town’s Carnegie library. It went up after a $10,000 grant in 1910, a Classical Revival building with Corinthian columns at 336 West Walnut Street, and it served as the library until 1969.

The parade steps off at 10 a.m. on Butte Street, beside Northern Valley Indian Health. The route runs one mile:

• south on Butte to Sycamore Street,
• west on Sycamore to Crawford Avenue,
• north on Crawford to Willow Street,
• east on Willow to the Willows High School parking lot on Merrill Street.

The judging stand is at Memorial Hall. The block before it, Plumas to Lassen, is a silent zone, so each unit can perform for the judges without noise from the one behind. Every entry must carry a lamb icon on its passenger side. Nothing may be thrown from the units. People walk alongside and hand out candy instead.

Entries compete as floats, horses, motor vehicles, farm equipment, marching units, or miscellaneous. The sweepstakes winner takes a trophy and $250. In 2026 the City of Willows sent fire apparatus and Public Works vehicles. Library staff drove a tropical, Animal Crossing-themed vehicle to announce the summer reading program, which began June 9. The grand marshals, Jessica and Tony Tapia, rode a float of their own, and the Music Boosters gave special awards to the bands.

Lamb barbecue at Jensen Park

When the parade ends, the crowd moves to Jensen Park at 380 Elm Street. It is the city’s largest park, 14.96 acres with two covered gazebos, horseshoe pits, and softball and little league fields. Booths ran from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in 2026, and parade awards were announced at 1 p.m. from the large gazebo. Patrick Feeney and Chris Martindale cooked the lamb barbecue, with Hank Leonardo helping. The board’s thanks afterward called them “the barbecue fellas.”

The city kept two booths of its own. At the library booth visitors could sign up for summer reading, “Plant a Seed, Read,” and take free craft kits and books. The administration booth showed photographs from the January 2026 celebration of the 140th anniversary of Willows’ incorporation, which took place on January 16, 1886. It also collected ideas for a community time capsule. The list of suggested items included Lamb Derby programs, pins and stickers. If rain leaves the park too wet, the park day moves indoors to Memorial Hall at 525 West Sycamore Street.

Fifty lambs on Butte Street

The Derby board’s history begins in the winter of 1933, when Willows businessmen were “suffering from the throes of the depression.” W.A. “Bill” Weinrich, a director of the Willows Chamber of Commerce, wanted to bring in new members and more trade. He proposed a celebration built around sheep and, by the board’s account, was laughed down. The board recalled in 2019 that the Chamber “pretty much laughed at him and thought he was crazy.” Weinrich answered with a speech the board still prints:

“There’s nothing cuter than a wooly lamb. They are beautiful little creatures, more affectionate than a dog. They bring thousands of dollars each year to Glenn County.” He went on: “We will have a parade of lambs, lamb races, a sheep-shearing contest for the principle features of the day. We will make the town people lamb conscious; we’ll make sheep more popular.” He closed with: “It will be entirely original to boot!”

The Chamber agreed to sponsor the event, with Weinrich as general chairman. On April 14, 1934, fifty entered lambs raced down Butte Street for a first prize of $7.50. The day also held a band concert and a flower show put on by the garden section of the Monday Afternoon Club. It ended with an evening ball at Memorial Hall, admission 75 cents.

A free bean feed followed the races. The board’s history puts it at Sheridan Park, with more than 1,000 people attending. The board’s 2019 account to the Appeal-Democrat placed it at Memorial Park. A 2006 Chico Enterprise-Record story gave a third version: the first lamb race was held in 1933, down Sycamore Street. The Glenn County Superior Court’s list of county events still files the Lamb Derby under April.

What Eugene Morton remembered

By 2006 the Derby covered three days. Kids Day came on Thursday, and the variety show and the Queen and Little Miss pageants on Friday. The 73rd parade that Saturday drew 55 organizations. They rode in pickups, wagons and floats and on tractors ranging from a small Model-T to a harvester, or came on horseback and on foot.

Parade co-chair Karen Hansen opened City Hall at 6:30 that morning to get the lineup ready, and Glenn County Jail inmates set up the street barricades. Asked whether the crowd was smaller than the year before, she said: “I’m so busy, I don’t notice that.”

Kathleen Von Bargen watched from a chair on Sycamore Street. She told the paper the parade took its name from the days when the county held many sheep and people brought their lambs to auction.

Eugene Morton sat on the courthouse steps. He had come for 55 years. “There’s not many floats this year,” he said. “They don’t chase sheep down the street or catch chickens anymore.” He remembered a sheep-shearing contest that was gone, and high school booths that used to fill the park. “It signifies something kids can see — what we had in the past,” he said. “I’d hate to see it go.”

In 2019 a carnival committee raised $10,000 to bring back the carnival after an absence of two or three years. That 86th Derby, themed “May the Fleece be with Ewe,” with Chuck Colombo as grand marshal, also held a Wadding Beauty, Muscle Man and Diaper Derby at the park. “Granted we are not a lamb community anymore, but we can still celebrate what we had,” the board said. In 2023 the theme was “Arr Vast Yea Lamblubbers,” the grand marshal was Barbara Mann, and magicians and a hypnotist worked the barbecue crowd.

In 1959 William Baird Weinrich, son of the man who proposed the Derby, opened Willows Hardware. He ran it for 56 years. When he died in 2015, his own son, Bill, was running the store, the same place where the lost lamb’s clues go up each morning of Derby week.