Lebanon Strawberry Festival

At the entrance to the shortcake line, members of the Lebanon Strawberrians stand in bright red jackets holding plastic containers. The donations go to a scholarship fund for the festival’s Royal Court. Past them, on the Saturday of the Lebanon Strawberry Festival, volunteers work through trays of sheet cake. In 2025, by The Oregonian’s account, Chuck McDowell cut the pieces, Jack Bilyew plated them, Morgan Volbeda sprayed on whipped cream, and Micah Knox handed the slices across. Bilyew was in his third year on the shortcake team with his wife, Brenda. “We’ve only done this every year, it’s our gig,” he said.

The cake is assembled from many small sheet cakes. Ashley McDowell, the festival’s shortcake chair, said the 2025 cake served 10,000 people, took 1,125 pounds of strawberries, and weighed 910 pounds in all. Because of the volume, it has been bought from Safeway. The festival’s own page puts the count at more than 8,000 pieces. The Oregon Dairy Wives donate the whipped cream, and the Teen Challenge team helps serve. Before the first slice goes out, at about 1 p.m., the reigning Strawberry Queen and her court make a ceremonial cut with one of the festival’s historic giant knives. Volunteers and the court then spend up to five hours handing out cake. Sally Skaggs of Santiam Place Event Hall carries about 1,000 pieces through town to people who cannot reach the grounds: residents of assisted living communities, patients at Lebanon Community Hospital, and on-duty fire and police crews.

A lawn by the old log pond

The festival grounds are at Cheadle Lake Park. The lake was once the log pond for Lebanon’s plywood mill and is now a city park. The festival runs four days on the first full weekend in June. Thursday is All Heroes Day. Veterans, active military, and first responders are admitted free, a presentation is held on the Main Stage at 5:15, and the Senior Court coronation follows at 6:00.

The Main Stage stands in the middle of a lawn under shade trees. Its daytime program is planned for families, and after children’s bedtimes the committee turns the volume up. The 2026 festival ran under the theme “Strawberry Nights.” On its Saturday, Lucas Cole played at 4:30 and Brady Goss brought rockabilly piano at 6:15, joined on stage by the blues musician Curtis Salgado. At 7:30, Goss and the Hollywood Studio Dancers led a Community Hand Jive meant to challenge the world record, with final tallies still being counted the next morning. Roll On, a tribute to Alabama, played at 8:30, and fireworks closed the night at dusk. Sunday’s program ran through Verdant A Cappella, the Cherry City Cloggers, the Hollywood Studio Dancers, and the Lebanon High School Jazz Band.

Family Land, the children’s area, had Peppy’s Water Palooza, Circus Imagination, Washboard Willy, and the ventriloquist Vikki Gasko Green in 2026. MAC the FlexBot, a strolling robot, turned up wherever he chose. A pop-up museum there showed court dresses, crowns, photographs, and memorabilia. The festival mascots, A.J. and Ida Berry, pose with families who have their cake. Rainier Amusements, a carnival company with more than 60 years on the road, runs the midway all four days. In 2025 its rides included the “Berry-Go-Round.” That year 120 vendors sold flats of fresh strawberries, strawberry foods and drinks, themed jewelry, and clothing.

Main Street on Friday and Saturday

The festival also leaves the park for town. On Friday at 2:30 the Junior Parade goes down Main Street from Rose Street to Maple Street. On Saturday a run and walk starts at the American Legion at 9:00. The Grand Parade leaves the same spot at 11:00 and ends at Market Street. Every fifth festival, past court members ride a reunion float. From mid-May through mid-June, princess dresses kept by former court members hang in downtown windows, with the main display at 550 Main Street.

The shortcake rides in the Grand Parade. The Oregonian in 2025 described its float as a giant white box with “World’s Largest Strawberry Shortcake” lettered on the side, and photographed it going down the South Santiam Highway. Lebanon Local News described a 36-foot, three-tier float that had carried the cake through the parade for decades. For the 2026 parade that float returned after a complete restoration and rebuild. When it reached the grounds, the festival posted: “The Strawberry Shortcake is here! And it’s lookin’ good on its new trailer!!”

Munyun’s truck and the Garden Grove cake

The parade and the cake go back to the strawberry fields. By 1907, according to the Oregon Encyclopedia, Lebanon was a leading strawberry-growing area in the Willamette Valley. In 1909 the city held its first fair to promote the industry, and the event has been held every year since. The festival’s history says local leaders organized that first one, showing off the crop with parades, entertainment, and community picnics. Its queen was Ida Devine. The Oregonian counts it among Oregon’s longest-running festivals, alongside the Portland Rose Festival, which began in 1907.

For its first two decades the shortcake was served in individual pieces. In 1931, according to The Oregonian, Leslie Munyun of Munyun Bakery decided to bake it as one giant cake and set it on the back of a truck for the Grand Parade. The festival spells the bakery “Munyan.” The Shimaneks and then the Durlams kept up the cake when they took over the bakery. Later, Safeway and Roth’s took turns with the baking. A 1940 photograph in the Oregon Historical Society’s collection shows Queen Dorothy officially starting the cut.

The festival says the “World’s Largest” title was applied early and has been disputed by other communities at various times. In 1975 Lebanon met Garden Grove, California, in a Battle of the Shortcakes. Lebanon’s cake weighed more than 5,700 pounds and served about 16,000 people. Garden Grove’s weighed 1,200 pounds and served about 3,000. The Lebanon cake took 514 cups of sugar, 992 cups of flour, 192 cups of eggs, 448 cups of milk, 2,048 teaspoons of baking powder, and 18 cups of vanilla.

Victoria Dobrkovsky, the festival’s historian, has looked for proof of the title. “At one point, it was probably the ‘world’s largest,’ which at its biggest in the records served 17,000 pieces,” she told The Oregonian, “but I couldn’t find any paperwork that officially declared ours was the world’s largest.” The Guinness entry for largest fruit shortcake goes to a strawberry shortcake of more than 21,213 pounds. It was made on March 20, 2004, at the La Trinidad Strawberry Festival in Benguet, Philippines.

Queens from every high school in Linn County

The court is as old as the cake is not. Before 1950 the Senior Court drew a representative from each high school in Linn County, often including Corvallis, and courts of nine or ten princesses were common. In 1950 the Strawberry Festival became the Lebanon Strawberry Festival, and its court became all Lebanon girls. The court now has five seniors. A Junior Court adds a second-grade princess from each elementary school in the Lebanon School District. The Strawberrians, the court’s official escorts, began in 1969 as the Royal Order of the Golden Strawberry, called the “Golden Strawberrians” for short.

Since 1984 the festival has been overseen by the Lebanon Strawberry Festival Association, Inc., a nonprofit, and planned by a board made up only of volunteers. The Oregon Heritage Commission has designated Lebanon an Oregon Heritage Tradition Community in recognition of the festival. The crop it was founded on is gone from the town’s edge. No strawberry farms remain in the immediate vicinity of Lebanon. The Oregon Encyclopedia gives the reasons for the decline as crop disease, competition from other regions, and, above all, the housing built on the sandy loam soils near the river.