Melon Fest

On the Saturday of Melon Fest, Main Street and Festival Street in downtown Hermiston are closed to cars, and local farmers bring in truckloads of watermelon. The melons sit on display, and free slices go out all day. In 2025 the fruit came from Walchli Farms, Bellinger Farms and Pollock & Sons. The City of Hermiston and the Hermiston Downtown District run the festival together. The streets close the Friday afternoon before so vendors can set up along them.

The 2026 festival was held Saturday, August 22. The city’s notice gave the hours as 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. A Parks & Recreation post announcing one of the attractions gave 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Brandon Artz, the Parks & Recreation director, opened the city’s announcement this way: “There’s nothing quite like a Hermiston watermelon, and Melon Fest is the perfect celebration for what makes life so sweet in Hermiston.”

The program on Festival Street

The 2026 day began at 8 a.m. with a Rotary breakfast and music on Festival Street. The Industry Dance Company performed at 9. At 10:30 came the watermelon costume contest, with prizes of $300, $200 and $100. The 2025 rules for that contest asked only that entrants “use your melon-y imagination,” and anyone of any age could enter without signing up or paying. The band Musically Unstable played at 11. At 11:30 the watermelon eating contest and seed-spitting contest followed; in 2025 those were open to entrants 12 and older.

Between the scheduled events there was a classic car and hot rod show, expanded for 2026, along with a cornhole tournament and an FFA animal showcase. For children there were face painting, an obstacle course, a bouncy house and Bucky the bull. The 2026 title sponsor, Good Shepherd Health Care System, ran the Money Machine Cash Box, an enclosed booth where people could try to win cash, gift certificates and prizes. It was free to enter and open all day.

Judy Currin-Pederson is a Hermiston Downtown District board member and one of the organizers. Before the 2026 festival she said, “Melon Fest continues to grow every year, and this year will be our biggest year yet, with more vendors than we have ever had.”

Tubs from Hershey

The bathtub races start at 1 p.m. and close the day. Each team has three people: one rides, and two push. They run a wheeled bathtub down a 100-foot course on Festival Street. The tubs are painted as watermelons and hold water, and the city warns that participants will get wet. In 2026 the city asked for 16 teams. The first round is a set of timed, head-to-head sprints. The fastest teams then move into a single-elimination bracket that ends in a championship race. Prizes go to first place, valued at $300 on the city’s page, and to the best-dressed team.

The sources give slightly different accounts of the tubs. The city’s page says they came originally from the Hershey Chocolate Factory. Go! Eastern Oregon says they came from Hershey’s Chocolate World in Pennsylvania. In 2025 Artz told that paper the city first raced makeshift tubs. Then Larry Fetter, recreation director from 2012 to 2021, “went on the hunt to find some cool bathtubs and found them through the Hershey’s factory.”

The East Oregonian’s preview of the first Melon Fest, in 2019, has a different version. It says that year’s race, then called Splash and Dash, already used “a pair of retired industrial tubs” from Hershey. That preview also carried a photograph of a city team racing a Seahawks team at “the inaugural event in 2018,” the year before Melon Fest began.

A carver trades pumpkins for melons

The new attraction in 2026 was Roger Pope, carving a watermelon in front of the crowd. On weekdays Pope works as a graphics and media producer for the Hermiston School District. He has sculpted as a hobby since he was a boy twisting tin foil into figures. As an adult he worked mostly in pumpkins and sandcastles, and in 2013 he appeared on the Food Network show “Halloween Wars.” Watermelon was not his medium until the Umatilla County Fair invited him to try it, which OPB placed in 2025. With a carving knife he now turns melons into flowers or into green and red calligraphy. Northeast Oregon Now gives his home as Boardman; an OPB photo caption gives it as Hermiston.

“Not comparing myself to Michelangelo, but if you think about those types of sculptors, they take a big block of rock and then they clear away what they don’t want and what remains is the piece of art,” Pope told OPB. “That’s subtractive sculpting.” At the 2026 festival he carved the MelonFest logo.

A street built for festivals

Melon Fest began with the street itself. The idea behind Festival Street, Fetter told the East Oregonian in 2019, was to hold regular events that would draw people downtown. He and others had been considering a festival about watermelons. Melons are at their peak in August, so it made sense to Fetter to hold the event after the Umatilla County Fair. “We wanted to do something to celebrate our most popular product,” he said.

Nancy Walchli, a member of the Hermiston Downtown District, put it more simply: “We’re trying to do something fun to represent Hermiston.” According to OPB, Currin-Pederson worked out the idea with city officials in 2019, and she has tried to make the festival a little larger each year since.

The first Melon Fest ran from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with no admission charge. It had a waterslide, a photo booth, Jonna Kopta playing at 9 and the Chase Craig Band at 11, and a seed-spitting contest at noon. Volunteers handed out watermelon slices at random times through the day. The winning bathtub team received a pizza party for six. The costume contest paid $300, $200 and $100, the same prizes it paid in 2026. That evening an after-party for adults 21 and older was held at Maxwell Pavilion, with music by The Outsiders and a presentation honoring the area’s major watermelon producers.

Nerve gas, a brown slogan, and a slice of melon

Weapons made Hermiston known before melons did. In the 1940s the federal government built the Umatilla Army Depot nearby to store bombs, munitions and, eventually, nerve gas, which later leaked from the facility. The town’s population grew quickly as a result. OPB cites the Oregon Encyclopedia for what came next: after World War II, local boosters promoted watermelons aggressively to draw attention away from the depot.

Curtis Pederson, a manager at Walchli Farms, says the growing conditions are why the reputation lasted. The area has soft, sandy soil. Its hot summer days followed by cooler nights help bring out the sugar in the fruit. “A bushel of wheat, you wouldn’t say, ‘Man, that was the best bushel of wheat I’ve ever had,” he said. “But on watermelon, it’s more personal.”

Skip Walchli started growing watermelons with his brother when he was 17 and founded Walchli Farms in 1957. In the early years he delivered melons himself to local supermarkets, which bought fruit by the cartful. His son Patrick Walchli says the work has become more complex and riskier, and the family cut back its watermelon acreage in 2026. “Hermiston melons as a whole have always been family operations,” he said. The festival stays close to the farm: Currin-Pederson is Patrick’s sister and Curtis Pederson’s wife. “Judy is a Walchli,” Artz said.

The city’s own symbol took longer to arrive at the melon. In 2013 the council adopted the slogan “You can GROW here,” painted in plain brown script on the water tower at the south entrance to town. Residents called it bland and boring. Some joked that it encouraged growing cannabis. It also had no watermelon on it. In 2016 the city replaced it with a new logo: a watermelon slice in green, black and red, over the words “Where life is sweet.” The water tower now carries that slice.

“Idaho is known for potatoes,” Currin-Pederson said. “Hermiston is known for watermelons.”