McCleary Bear Festival

At seven on the Friday morning of festival weekend, the park kitchen in McCleary takes anyone who arrives with a cutting board and a peeler. The work is vegetables: hundreds of pounds of potatoes, carrots and onions for the Bear Festival stew. The McCleary Fire Department and its stew crew cook it in enormous iron kettles on stoves in the City Park kitchen. The festival’s own account puts the cooking crew at about 40 people, with the firefighters taking round-the-clock shifts watching, stirring, and adding each ingredient at its proper time. More than 100 pounds of meat go in. A large kettle of “special” spicy sauce, made by community volunteers, is seasoned just before serving. The menu also calls for a ton of watermelon, 3,000 rolls, and baked beans by the kettle.

The stew is served on Saturday as soon as the Grand Parade is over, and the parade always starts at noon. McCleary is a lumber town in eastern Grays Harbor County, 15 miles west of Olympia by HistoryLink’s measure and 30 minutes west by the festival’s. Most of the weekend happens in Beerbower Park on South Third Street. According to HistoryLink, the park was laid out on the seven-acre site of Henry McCleary’s sawmill, which closed in 1931 after the company’s old-growth timber ran out. Its machinery was sold to other mills and to scrap dealers, and the ground is now also called Rainbow Park and City Park. A nonprofit group of volunteers runs the festival. Admission is free, and so is the music on the park stage.

Noon on Simpson Street

The kiddie parade goes first. Children gather by Simpson Door, the door plant that HistoryLink calls the town’s main industry and largest employer, with some 350 workers, and they walk the route ahead of the main procession. On the Friday before, the Kid Zone holds free art sessions so children can make a costume or a sign or decorate a wagon. In 2019, three-year-old Autumn Rose Nelson rode as “Future Royalty” in a decorated wagon that took first place. She was a cousin of that year’s Bear Festival Queen, Koral Young.

The Daily World’s account of the 2019 festival, the 60th, gives the parade in detail. Hundreds of people lined Simpson and Third streets downtown. Mayor Brenda Orffer rode at the head and tossed candy to the families along the curb. Behind her came the royal court and a line of cars carrying past court members. Floats came in from the state festival circuit: Olympia’s Capital Lakefair, the Port Townsend Rhody Festival, the Port Orchard Fathoms of Fun Festival, Olympia Harbor Days, and the Sequim Irrigation Festival, which took the Grand Sweepstakes Award. The Ocean Shores Pirates crewed their pirate ship, the Black Rose. Julia, Ella and Emelia Carnell built an entry for the anniversary of the moon landing, with Zane Zabala seated in a lunar rover. The grand marshal, Edith Soller, waved from a classic Ford Mustang. She had moved to McCleary from Kansas about 80 years before. She was the daughter of former mayor Ernie Beerbower, two of her daughters had been Bear Festival queens in the 1970s, and she had volunteered for the festival through the decades. The festival’s advice to spectators is to bring a chair and wave at the floats, bands and parade participants.

The court that leads the parade is the festival’s ambassador program. The festival says Bear Festival Ambassadors have reigned over the festival and represented the City of McCleary since 1959. The members are students from the McCleary and Elma school districts. Over a one-year reign they travel with the float and appear at events around Washington, and the crowned Senior Queen or King receives a $1,000 college or trade-school scholarship at the end of it. A junior program for ages 10 to 12 began at the 60th festival, with the senior members, ages 13 to 15, as mentors. Judi Ellingwood, Bear Festival Queen of 1966–1967, appears among the festival’s sponsors.

The 2026 court was crowned on the Thursday evening before the festival, July 9, at the McCleary Museum and Event Center, and Robert “Robbie” Duncan was named grand marshal. Ashlee Rensland, the royalty coordinator, told the audience: “When you talk about the Bear Festival, initially you think it’s a committee, but in actuality it’s a deep-seated tradition that is put together by every corner of this community.” She said of the court, “Imagine being at this age and putting in 10, 11 hour days and still holding it together.” Exiting Queen Zoey Walker said, “I’ve been doing Bear Festival now for three years, and it seems bizarre that I’m now leaving.” Aiden Avila was crowned Senior King. “I’ve grown up watching the royal court at Beerbower Park and dreaming of the day I could represent my hometown,” he said. Late that July the court worked a booth at the Grays Harbor County Fair, selling raffle tickets for a kayak to pay for a new bear mascot suit.

Three days at Beerbower Park

The 2026 festival, the 67th, ran from Friday, July 10, through Sunday, July 12. On Friday, the historic McCleary Hotel gave free tours. Built in 1912, it was fitted out, by the museum’s account, with doors, windows and staircases of Douglas fir milled in town. The beer garden opened at VFW Post 5564, where vendors also set up inside the hall. Ian Dobson held a steel drum party in the park. At six o’clock Monica Reeves sang the national anthem, King Aiden threw the first pitch, and the Guns vs. Hoses baseball game began. During the evening the McCleary Civic Renewal Council presented its American Spirit Award to Bears Dean, and SR109 played until nine.

Saturday began with the Bear Festival Breakfast at the McCleary Museum and the McCleary Country Bear Fun Run at 9 a.m. In the Kid Zone, Old Mcdebbie’s Farm visited, the Elma Building Center ran a building session, and there was a Dunk your Teacher event. The Strawberry Shortcake Social at the museum followed the parade and stew. The Fabulous Murphtones, Kynan McGaughy and Maxwell McGuire played the stage into the night. On Sunday the car show filled the morning and early afternoon with antique and restored classic cars, free to view. Miss Olympia, Mrs. Cascade, Mrs. Grays Harbor, Mrs. Renton and Mrs. Washington met visitors in the park, and Anomaly and Vaugn played. The Daily World notes that the museum and the VFW Hall are a short walk from the park.

Other events run through the weekend. Teams play a wooden-bat slow pitch softball tournament at Beerbower Park, double elimination under USSSA rules. Children race box cars in the soap box derby, which requires a bike helmet and closed-toed shoes, Crocs excluded. In 2019, vendors set up around the baseball field while the Guns and Hoses softball tournament ran through Sunday. That year’s festival logo was drawn by McCleary seventh-grader David Hooper and was chosen from 12 entries by local students. The museum keeps a Bear Festival exhibit of photos, posters and memorabilia from the first festival in 1959 onward. It also marches in the parade and keeps a booth in the park.

Skamania bears and second growth

The festival’s history begins with the forest. Its own account says Norman Porter dreamed the festival up in 1959, when he was editor of the hometown newspaper, the McCleary Stimulator. Residents knew that bears, before hibernation or just after it, crave the soft sapwood under the bark and will strip a tree to get at it, and that they also damage trees by rubbing against them to leave their scent. A badly stripped tree sickens and dies. The young trees replanted on Simpson Timber Company land were the ones bears found most to their taste each spring.

The festival’s account says it began with a remark by a friend of Porter’s, who claimed that Skamania bears, if properly cooked, were the world’s most delicious. The two agreed to settle it in a bear-tasting contest in McCleary. Civic-minded residents formed committees and decided to stage more than an eating contest, and with Porter they created the Second Growth and Bear Festival. KUOW describes the beginning as a joke competition over which county had the tastiest bear meat. It quotes the Seattle Daily Times of 1972: “everyone just gets together and eats bear because bear eats trees, and trees are the economic backbone of this area.”

Rachael Hahn of the McCleary Historical Society gave a third version at the society’s 50th anniversary in March 2026. She said an earlier historical society organized by Porter started a summer festival, which was later named the Second Growth Festival and then became the Bear Festival. “The committee changed both its name and its focus,” Hahn said. “And even though the original Historical Society did not continue, the festival committee flourished.”

By the ninth festival, 4,000 visitors came to McCleary. The cooking was done by several local sportsmen, who started two days ahead to have the stew ready in time. The festival now reports upwards of 10,000 visitors from across the United States and Canada; HistoryLink gives as many as 12,000.

A stew without bear

The bear meat comes through the state Fish and Wildlife Department. Hunters apply for and receive permits under its nuisance wildlife program, which carries state-mandated rules. In 2018 the Center for Biological Diversity sued over certain kinds of hunting on timber lands, among them bear baiting, and the suit led to a moratorium on the practice that had supplied the festival. KUOW reported that the department said McCleary could still get bear meat by conventional hunting while the case awaited a ruling.

At the 60th festival in 2019 there was no bear in the stew. Ron Pittman, a retired McCleary firefighter who had made the stew for decades, used beef for the first time, and the line of people waiting for a plate held steady. The Daily World reported that he hoped to have bear meat again the following year. The festival’s stew page now says that a small portion of the meat is beef if bear is short that season. City councilmember Jenna Amsbury told KUOW: “People like tradition. It’d be nice to have different ways that you could work around regulations.”