Locust Blossom Festival

The 2026 Locust Blossom Festival opened at 7:30 on the morning of Saturday, May 23, with a color run. Kendrick lies in a 1,500-foot canyon valley along the Potlatch River in Latah County, among pine, fir, and cedar. At 9:50 there was a flyover and a VFW opening ceremony, and at 10 the parade stepped off. The Kendrick Lions Club, which runs the festival, gave the 2026 edition the theme “Happy Days.” The club chooses each theme from public suggestions, and the 2026 winner’s prize included a button good for a free BBQ meal at the festival.

After the parade the program spread across town. There was a BBQ beef lunch, live music, vendors, and a dunk tank. Children had crafts and games, and there was tie-dye, a cake walk, an egg toss, 3-on-3 basketball, a flower show, and a talent show. The Lions filmed the pie-eating contest and posted it that evening, along with a note: “Thank you all who participated to make the 2026 Locust Blossom Festival another success. See you next year!”

The 2025 festival, held May 24 from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., followed much the same plan. It had an opening flyover by Hangar 180, a parade through downtown, children’s races, and a pie booth. The regional tourism office described it as the start of Memorial Day weekend.

Switchboards and horse tack at the Grange

During the festival the Juliaetta-Kendrick Heritage Foundation opens its museum. In 2025 it was open from 10 to 2. The museum and research center are on the second floor of the Kendrick Fraternal Temple at 614 E. Main St., which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the fall of 2012. The archive there holds more than 4,600 printed newspapers, most of them issues of the Kendrick Gazette, which was published from 1890 to 1998.

The foundation was established on January 15, 2009, and set up a booth at that May’s festival. Its festival exhibits have changed from year to year:

• 2010: It began selling the first volume of “Letters From the Front.”
• 2011: It mounted a military exhibit in the Fraternal Temple and held a World War II “Meet & Greet.”
• 2012: It released its “Leland History” at the festival.
• 2014: Its displays in the Grange building included a Potlatch Telephone Co. switchboard, historical horse tack with pieces made in Kendrick by Hamley & Co., and local high school yearbooks.

Kirby, the railroad, and three disasters

Thomas Kirby founded the town in 1889. It was first called Latah or Latah City. When the post office opened on May 24, 1889, with Kirby as first postmaster, the town took his name. In May 1890 the Northern Pacific guaranteed it would extend its track to the town, and the town was renamed for John P. Kendrick. The city’s account calls him the railroad’s chief engineer, while the Latah County Historic Preservation Commission calls him a Northern Pacific Railway engineer. Kendrick incorporated on October 15, 1890. Kirby’s Queen Anne house is the only remaining structure associated with him.

According to the preservation commission, the railroad arrived in 1891. Kendrick then became the trading center for mining operations in the back country. The town burned to the ground in 1893. It was rebuilt, and then in early 1900 it suffered a train wreck and severe flooding. It was rebuilt again, and burned again in August 1904.

The business district thrived after the 1904 rebuilding. The population peaked in the 1920s at 856. Farmland on the seven ridges around the valley and the area’s timber supported the economy. Kendrick was known for its Fourth of July celebrations, which drew thousands of people. The automobile hurt the town, because merchants no longer needed the railroad to ship their goods. The old track is now the Ed Corkill Memorial Bike Trail, which links Kendrick and Juliaetta.

A dollar sandwich and a ticket-selling queen

Sharon Harris recounted the festival’s early years in a June 2009 community newsletter. The first Locust Blossom Festival was held in 1961, and a barbecue roast beef sandwich cost $1.00. The festival queen was the high school junior who sold the most tickets. Evelyn Andrews won in 1962, with Sharon Fey and Linda Eckman as runners-up. The queen received a wristwatch, and each runner-up received a $25.00 savings bond.

In those early years festivalgoers went to a gymkhana at the west end of town past Wallace Park, and to motorcycle races. There was always a community dance at the VFW Hall. Later additions included:

• Early 1970s: a children’s parade.
• Unspecified year: a logging show in the vacant lot next to City Hall.
• 1978: a Fun Run. That was also the year the price for the events rose to $2.00.

Steve Caskey, a former pastor of the Kendrick Methodist Church, and his wife Beth ran in every Fun Run from that first one in 1978. The festival also has a grand marshal each year. “As near as I can tell,” Harris wrote, Doctor and Irene Christensen were the first. Past themes have included Make Mine Country Style, Let Freedom Ring, Small Town – Big Memories, and Millennium Madness. Other attractions added over the years include:

• a quilt show and art displays
• 3-on-3 basketball on the street courts
• antique tractor displays, which had drawn growing interest by 2009
• the Sweet Adelines, who sang in some years

The Lions Club sponsored the festival at first. After several years the VFW became a co-sponsor, but the joint arrangement “fizzled out,” in Harris’s words, and the Lions became the sole sponsor again.

The forty-ninth, in 2009

The 49th annual festival was held on May 30, 2009, with the theme “Springtime on the Seven Ridges.” Jim Brocke was chairman. The Fun Run, with 5-mile and 2-mile courses, began at 8 a.m., and runners registered in Juliaetta. Other events through the morning:

• the grand marshal’s open house at the TDS office
• pioneer registration in Kendrick Memorial Park
• the Hill and Valley Garden Club flower show at the Senior Center
• the parade on Main Street at 10
• a quilt show at the Methodist Church
• kids’ races in the park at 10:45
• a display of new and antique tractors along Main Street

The Lions served their BBQ in the Fire Hall from 11:30 to 1. At noon the Old Time Fiddlers played in the park, as Harris wrote they had at every festival. At 1 o’clock there was an auto accident recovery demonstration at Sixth and Main. At 1:30 Danny O and the Small Town Boyz played music in the park.