Loyalty Days

On the first Saturday in May the Children’s Parade forms on Howerton Way in Ilwaco, at Coho Charters, and walks into downtown at First and Lake streets. The 2026 parade, on May 2, started at noon under the theme “The Constitution.” Organizers say it is “not just for kids but also for the young at heart.” Children enter free, and family-friendly, non-political groups enter by donation, signing up the same morning. The Peninsula Saddle Club leads the way carrying local flags, and the people along the street wear red, white, and blue. The Chinook Observer called the 2026 Saturday in Ilwaco “a cooler and perfectly pleasant day.” The event chairs, Carol and Noah, walked out to watch.

The fleet at the Port of Ilwaco

The Ilwaco Saturday Market opens its season the same day, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Its vendors set out art, produce, and handmade goods along the waterfront at the Port of Ilwaco. At 2:30 in the afternoon comes the Blessing of the Fleet, sponsored by the Ilwaco Charter Association. Charter boats take visitors aboard free, first come, first served. The Saddle Club describes the boat riders blessing those lost at sea. In 2026 the fleet motored out of the port “to set the stage for a successful season for charters and other fishermen,” in the Observer’s words. Jenna Austin represents the Ilwaco Merchants Association on the organizing team, and she calls the market and the blessing an indelible part of the Loyalty Days tradition.

The Long Beach Elks, BPOE #1937, have served an oyster feed on the Saturday. In 2010 it cost $10 for all you could eat, or $8 for chicken “for those who don’t want oysters.” The Saddle Club also lists a Friday-night “Follies Talent Show” ahead of the parade. On Sunday morning the club holds a Cowboy Breakfast at its grounds on Sandridge Road, which ran from 7 a.m. at $6 a plate in 2010, and children get fire truck rides while the Long Beach parade forms.

Pacific Avenue at one o’clock

The Grand Parade begins at 1 p.m. In 2025 it ran south from Tenth Street North to Sid Snyder Drive, past a viewing stand just south of Castaway’s Restaurant at 207 Pacific Avenue. The main highway and many side streets are blocked before, during, and after. The route has not always gone that way: a 2011 Observer account notes that the parade once ran south to north. Spectators bring folding chairs and set up early. “The event will take place rain or shine, so be sure to dress for the weather—be it sunscreen or rain gear,” said Andi Day, one of the 2025 organizers. A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter flies over to mark the start, unless it is called to duty.

On Sunday, May 3, 2026, the 76th parade went out on the hottest day since the previous fall, 84 degrees in downtown Long Beach. Thousands lined Pacific Avenue, waving flags. Kids on bikes worked through the crowded sidewalks. The Ilwaco High School marching band played. Hilltop students Oswin Severson and Kayden Bates played trombone and Ryker Bartlett the bass drum. Long Beach police chief Flint Wright waved from the route, children rode on the back of a Long Beach Volunteer Fire Department truck, and members of the Coast Guard marched. The Viking Nordic Folk Dancers came across the river from Astoria, as they do each year, to promote the Astoria Scandinavian Midsummer Festival. The Woodland Planters Days jeep and its royalty are a regular sight.

Between 50 and 100 floats take part each year, along with drill teams, classic cars, military and veterans groups, emergency responders, elected officials, and community groups. Austin emcees. “It’s quite a grand parade,” she said before the 2026 weekend. “My favorite part is the bands.”

The sources differ on who led the 2026 parade. Discover Our Coast reported ahead of the weekend that U.S. Air Force Major Gen. Randolph Staudenraus was expected to serve as grand marshal. The Observer’s coverage of the day names U.S. Navy veteran Geran Vines as grand marshal.

After the last unit passes, trophies go out at Veterans Field, 111 Third St. S.E., at 3:30 p.m. In 2025 this came “after the parade concludes and any remaining poop has been scooped.” Bands, flag and dance teams, drill teams, equestrian units, and floats compete, and the best pooper-scooper team is eligible for an award of its own.

Bands from Belfair to central Oregon

The bands come from well beyond the peninsula. “Last year, we had 17 bands,” Noah Remillard of the Loyalty Days Committee said in 2023. “We just love that over 1,000 middle and high schoolers make the trip to Long Beach to show their school pride and participate in our celebration.” He said those schools came “from as far north as Belfair and as far south as central Oregon.” He also passed on a judge’s remark that “many of the bands were of the same caliber as those who participate in the Rose Parade.” The Camas High School Papermakers, in red uniforms, took the first-place award for 4A schools in 2019. Ridgefield’s Spudder Band has marched in a more informal dress. In 2025 bands came from as far as Bellingham, Tenino, and Woodland.

Remillard works on the committee with his wife, Carol. She grew up in Shelton and marched in the parade twice as a teenage percussionist and drum major. As he told it in 2023, “One of the reasons she moved to Long Beach 18 years ago is the fond memories of our welcoming community as she marched in the parade and afterwards when she could play at the arcade, Marsh’s and the rides.”

The bands share the street with other kinds of units. Members of the Afifi Shriners’ clown unit stunt on bikes and novelty vehicles, and they won the top award for parade entries in 2024. The 2010 lineup ran past 100 units: drill teams from Seattle and Edmonds, ten units from the Shriners, VFW posts, horseback clubs, and the Newfoundland Dog Club.

A court crowned, ended, and crowned again

One float in the parade carries the Loyalty Days Court. According to a 2011 Observer account, the first Loyalty Days coronation was held forty-one years before that article. By 2011 the court was in trouble. On October 15 of that year, what was called the final Junior Miss Loyalty Coronation was held at the Inn at Harbour Village in Ilwaco. Six girls of fifth- and sixth-grade age earned points for meeting attendance, interviews, speeches, a dance performance, and a community service project. For the project they made disaster preparedness bags for their peers. Madeline Jacobson was crowned Junior Miss Loyalty 2011. The other five each received a title, among them Junior Miss Patriotism, Junior Miss Lighthouse, and Junior Miss Discovery.

The court’s advisor, Ragan Andrew, gave the reason it was ending: “We have found that the young women in our community are so busy with sports and extra curricular activities.” She said the rest of the weekend would go on: “There’s still going to be a grandiose parade, an honors banquet; you’ll still have a full weekend of activities, you just won’t have a royalty court.” The Loyalty Days Foundation treasurer, Ruth Ann Hocking, said she hoped new volunteers would step up.

In 2025 past pageant winners rode the Loyalty Days float, ahead of plans to bring the pageant back. In 2026 it returned. The organizers’ page announced the coronation for 7 p.m. on April 25 at the Inn at Harbour Village. Discover Our Coast placed the re-established pageant at the Chinook School the weekend before the festival. Elsa Linquist was crowned Miss Loyalty, and the court rode in the Grand Parade on May 3.

From Union Square to the peninsula

The Veterans of Foreign Wars traces the observance to “Americanization Day” in 1921, a counter to the Communists’ May 1 celebration of the Russian Revolution. On May 1, 1930, 10,000 VFW members rallied in New York’s Union Square. A resolution adopted at the VFW’s Golden Jubilee National Convention in Miami in 1949 made May 1 Loyalty Day. Observances began in 1950 on April 28 and reached their peak on May 1, when the VFW says more than five million people held rallies across the nation. Oregon declared it a state holiday that year. President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared the first federal Loyalty Day in 1955. In 1958 Congress, by Public Law 85-529, made it annual, “for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and the recognition of the heritage of American freedom.”

In Long Beach the VFW began its celebration in 1950, the Saddle Club records, “a few short years after the Peninsula Saddle Club came into existence.” According to Discover Our Coast, only about a dozen towns in the country still mark the holiday: Long Beach is the only one in Washington, and Newport is the one in Oregon.

Accounts of the town’s claim to continuity vary.

• The organizers’ page says Long Beach has hosted “the longest consecutive running Loyalty commemoration in the nation.”
• The Observer in 2005 called it the only known community to celebrate continuously since the founding.
• The 2025 organizers put it as “one of the longest.”
• Austin, in 2026, said, “I believe we’re the longest running Loyalty Days parade in the U.S.”
• A 2020 letter from residents dated the parade to 1945.
• The Observer reported in 2023 that the weekend was “virtual-only” in 2020 and took 2021 off.

The people who keep the weekend going have changed over the decades. In 2005 the Loyalty Days Foundation, through its historian Patty Patzold, went looking for pins and memorabilia from before 1975 for a permanent display. The 60th annual weekend, in 2010, honored the founding of the Coast Guard in 1790. That year Dean Malissa, who portrays George Washington, was guest speaker and grand marshal. In January 2020 Bob and Judi Andrew stepped back from running the parade, and a new group of residents met with the Foundation to take on the work. The Long Beach Foundation organized the 2025 parade, whose theme was “honoring servicewomen.” Its grand marshal was retired Chief Master Sgt. Terry Bryan of Ocean Park, who served 29 years in the Air Force.

Ilwaco artist Don Nisbett has painted the commemorative art for recent weekends. His 2025 piece showed Coast Guard Lt. Jessica Shafer and Army Reserves clinical specialist Connie Reandeau. The 2026 art was made for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and appears on the parade’s award plaques. It shows representatives of every branch of the military with George Washington coming ashore in a boat named “We the People.” On July 3, 2026, the organizers posted: “Artist Don Nisbett sharing his Loyalty Days art with George Washington.”