Loggers' Jubilee

On Saturday, Aug. 8, 2026, the Main Street parade of the Morton Loggers’ Jubilee came through behind members of the VFW and American Legion carrying the colors. The newly crowned Jubilee Queen, Adalynn Freitas, waved from the route. So did the Toledo Big Cheese, the Winlock Egg Days Queen, and the grand marshals. Behind them came a line of Mini Coopers, a quadricycle, a rider on a lawnmower, the AFIFI Temple Oriental Band, and candidates for sheriff and coroner handing out candy and stickers. Logging trucks and heavy equipment are not bunched at the tail. The parade rules scatter them through the whole lineup. Judges score entries in categories that run from floats and drill teams to Antique Logging Equipment, Best Load Lumber, and Best Load Logs.

Morton sits on Highway 12, 32 miles east of Interstate 5, and the Jubilee takes the town over on the second weekend of every August. Its organizers call it “the Granddaddy of all Logging Shows.” Their flea market page calls it the largest and oldest logging show and contest in the Northwest.

Thursday night to Sunday afternoon

The weekend opens Thursday at 8 p.m. in the Morton High School gymnasium. There the reigning queen and her court of princesses crown a successor. High-school-age girls run for the post. Beginning in April the candidates sell raffle tickets, and the proceeds go to scholarships in the Royalty Program. The court rides in the parade and appears at the Miss Lewis County and Miss Washington pageants. Linda Stanley held the crown in both 1976 and 1977, and Alayna Nicole Brindle held it in 2019 and 2020.

Friday morning, Hampton Lumber opens its working mill for tours, the last one starting at noon. Friday night belongs to the lawnmower races in the arena. Gates open at 4:30, time trials follow at 6:30, and racing starts at 7:30, with a beer garden for anyone over 21. The organizers write that the race “started out as a true lawnmower race” more than 40 years ago and that they mean to keep it one. It runs on basic mowers “that anyone can build.”

The champions’ list begins in 1973 with Dana Wolfe of Morton, who won the first race, run on the street. The first race in the arena came in 1977, and Gary Reed of Morton won it. Chad Kuschel of Amboy appears on the list eight times between 2012 and 2025. The list also shows a Jeff Rashoff of Glenoma winning in 1990, 1991, and 1997. In 2026 Tim McKenzie of Packwood and McKenna Matthews of Glenoma took the men’s and women’s titles, and Thomas McKenzie received the Jeff Rashoff Sportsmanship Award. That night the racers went on without Bill Claycamp, a member of the lawnmower racing family for more than 15 years, who had died of multiple myeloma. “Friday night was not the same without Bill,” the Jubilee posted.

Saturday starts at 8 with the Jubilee Run. The 10K follows a course through the Morton Valley with a downhill finish. A 2-mile fun run is meant for children and beginners, and the race page adds, “No ringers in this one!” Both runs start and finish in front of Morton High School near the “big tree.” Wyatt Harding and Nikita Roe won the 2026 10K.

Breakfast is served from 8 to 11 at Tilton River Connections, the senior center. At 11 the Championship Bed Races go off on Main Street. Four girls push a bed carrying one male rider of at least 100 pounds, on wheels no larger than six inches. The course runs about a city block, from the blinking light at the main intersection to the end of the block near the Fire Station. The four fastest teams meet head to head, and the two winners race for the title. The parade steps off at 11:30.

After the afternoon logging show, a cornhole tournament plays in the senior center parking lot. The first, in 2026, drew 18 teams, and the Cornhole Fugitives won it. The evening brings a 7 p.m. program at the Roxy Theater and a street dance until 10. All weekend a flea market fills the Morton Country Market, which will hold its 35th annual market in 2027.

Bucking and climbing in Jubilee Park

The Jubilee centers on the main arena in Jubilee Park, where permanent concrete bleachers built by Grose Construction Co. of Morton face the show ground. The logging show runs Saturday at 2 p.m. and again Sunday at noon. The Sunday show is the last of the weekend and ends with the awards. The field is capped at 35 contestants, who come “from all over the country,” according to the show page. Both days include the axe throw, choker setting, birling, single and double bucking, stock and hot saw, springboard chop, speed climbing, tree topping, vertical and horizontal chop, obstacle pole bucking, and Jack N’ Jill bucking. The titles of Bull of the Woods and Belle of the Woods went to Nate Hodges and Erin LaVoie in 2025 and again in 2026.

In 2026 Abby Jennings and Taz carried the Jubilee’s 250th flag through the parade and then opened the logging show with it. The arena has had three commanders in roughly seven decades. Eugene “Bing” Bingaman ran its events for nearly 30 years. His nephew Charlie Russell took over in 1989, and Brian Dalton has held the job since 2004.

A vacant lot on Main Street

According to the Jubilee’s own history, the idea of a logging show “grew out of friendly competition” among men in “the sometimes hazardous, always strenuous business of logging and lumbering.” That history admits it cannot fix the year. “Some say it was 1937 and some say 1938,” it reads. “It is a question of whose memory is best,” since no permanent record of those early shows seems to survive. A 2023 article from Discover Lewis County gives a third date, saying the Jubilee began in 1943.

The founder is disputed too. Some say the late G.E. Coleman was the main force. Others say Coleman started it with Ed Baker, superintendent of Peterman Timber Company, and Jack Sutherland, superintendent of Kosmos Timber, later the Morton Division of Champion International. Still others credit J. Longmire, who is said to have started the first logging show in a lot near his auto and truck repair shop. Reg Lester was arena director. Log bucking took place on a vacant lot on Main Street, and tree climbing was added later on a tree near the Glen Fisher place.

A “hillbilly” band advertised the show by touring Tacoma, Chehalis, and Centralia. A mock “hillbilly” wedding on Main Street was a feature of the early years, and plywood axes were sold as souvenirs. As the show grew, it moved to the grade school playground. World War II came in 1941, and the Jubilee was not held for the duration.

In early October 1946 the celebration returned as “Timber Wolves Daze,” managed by Ross Surnworth. The next year it was renamed Loggers’ Jubilee, and Nels “Bill” Hanson was hired as manager. Bleachers went up, and portable ones were brought in the following year. High climbing moved to trees near the Tilton River, and cable splicing and tie loading joined the program. That same year, the history says, “the roar of power saws was heard in the show” for the first time.

More bleachers came in 1950, along with climbing trees raised on the grounds. That year a tug-of-war between the loggers and the mill men was “especially hilarious,” and Kosmos Timber displayed a truck loaded with 34,170 board feet of logs. Morton was then known as “the tie producing capital of the world,” and tie loading drew crowds. The contests between Archie Cheney of Kosmos and Dean Blaksma of Oregon were a highlight. The city’s own history gives the town’s title as “the railroad tie capital of the world” and credits it to Morton’s tie docks, the world’s longest.

A field cleared with a St. Regis Cat

Morton’s Chamber of Commerce saved Jubilee money year by year and bought two blocks in the Collar-Wood addition. The land would give the show a home and the town’s young people a lighted athletic field. In the spring of 1952, Ernie Loden of Mineral began clearing the site with a Cat owned by the St. Regis Company. Volunteers lugged roots and limbs and burned slash. PUD employees and boys from the State Fire Camp did much of the work of putting up the lights. The field was graded and seeded and used for football that fall. Governor Arthur B. Langlie attended that year’s Jubilee and complimented the community on the work.

Jubilee Park grew around the field over the following years, adding a Little League diamond and playground equipment. Otto and Bill Studhalter donated an old steam donkey, believed to have worked in the Morton–Mineral area around 1918, for display in the park. It has since been moved to Gus Backstrom Park. In 1955 the Jubilee started a queen contest to advertise the show, and Kathy Boren was crowned first.

On Aug. 15, 1956, The Chronicle reported that two jet fighters performing for the Sunday crowd had met an obstacle. Their pilots told Mayor Elmer Jastad about “two evergreen trees not more than 70 feet in height,” standing about a block behind Jastad’s drug store. To make their low run over the arena, the jets came down into the valley west of town and swept up over the city at 550 miles per hour, the pilots said. “If you want us to come back for next year’s Jubilee, you better clip about 20 feet off those trees,” the airmen said, the paper noted, “jokingly.” Eight pilots flew that weekend as guests of the Jubilee, with Ross Dill as host. The Saturday flyers were guests on Sunday and the Sunday flyers on Saturday. Two of the Sunday pilots drove back that afternoon with their wives to catch the end of the celebration.

The Chronicle called the show of Sunday, Aug. 13, 1962, the 20th annual Jubilee. It reported that “beauty, brawn and Gracie vied for the attention of spectators.” By the paper’s headline, a Morton native made famous by the World’s Fair led the parade that year.

Voices from the announcer’s mike

Bill Hanson managed the Jubilee until 1957. Neil Wright, L. “Howdie” Davison, Gary Coleman, Jim Mitchell, and Don Rowe followed him. In 1976 “Sonny” Mettler ran it with his brothers “Punk” and Rob, and Terry Simonis managed from 1977 to 1979. Sonny Mettler then held the job from 1980 through 2024, and Devin Peters took over in 2025.

Gil Coleman called the early shows. Gary Coleman, Reg Lester Jr., and Mike Fairhart, all Morton natives, came after him. Reg Lester Jr. died in 2008 after 42 years with the Jubilee. In 2009 Rick Stockdale, another Morton native, joined Fairhart at the microphone.

The Budweiser Clydesdales came to Morton twice in four years. The first visit was for the Jubilee’s Washington Centennial celebration in 1989. In 1992 they marched in the parade and the logging arena for the Jubilee’s 50-year anniversary. In 2010 the Jubilee Committee commissioned the artist David Heck to paint a memorial mural honoring the show’s managers, committee members, chairmen, and workers. In 2016 the Jubilee gave the city $20,000 for playground equipment in the park. Its proceeds go out across East Lewis County to scholarships, sports teams, and school classrooms.

On May 27, 2020, The Chronicle reported that the 78th Jubilee had been canceled over the coronavirus. “The ‘granddaddy of logging shows’ will have to wait until 2021,” the paper wrote. The show returned in 2021. In 2026 the parade’s grand marshals were Mike and Sheryl Fairhart.