Meridian Dairy Days

On the Thursday evening that opens Meridian Dairy Days, the ice cream comes first. The Ice Cream Social starts at 5 p.m. in Storey Park, fourteen acres at the corner of Main Street and Franklin Road. The park lies near downtown, the Meridian Dairy Barns, and the Meridian Speedway, and it is the city’s oldest, established in 1980 and named for former mayor Don Storey. By evening the Rainier Amusements carnival is turning, vendor booths and food trucks line the paths, and a band is on the CBH Homes Stage. Most Dairy Days events are free. The 2026 festival, the 97th, ran June 25 through 27 under the theme “Red, White & Moo!”, marking America’s 250th anniversary.

Storey Park, Thursday through Saturday

The stage runs all three days. In 2026, Niccole Blaze and Dan Costello played Thursday from 5:00 to 6:30, and Soul Patch followed until 9:30. Friday’s music fest opened with Ballet Folklorico Yareth, then Tejano Outlaw and the Midnight Jazz Cats. Saturday began at 10 a.m. with Ballet Folklorico Mexico Lindo Idaho and ran through the Half Fast Hillbillies, Hot Club Les Bois, and the Billy Blues Band.

The 2026 food trucks included Hungry Cowboy BBQ, the Machu Picchu Peruvian Food Truck, Walking Sombrero Tacos, Wok N Roll, Meltz Extreme Grilled Cheese, Hole-Y Moly Donuts, MJ’s Italian Ice & Custard Cafe, and World’s Best Corndogs.

Some of the program comes before the park opens. The Keith Bird Memorial Golf Tournament, a scholarship event, played its sixth year at Lakeview Golf Course on Monday, June 22, 2026. The Dairy Princess Pageant took place on the Wednesday night. The organizers count the crowning of the Dairy Day Princesses among the highlights of the celebration.

Pancakes, heifers, and a demolition derby

Friday starts early. The 4-H Pancake Breakfast is served in Storey Park from 7 to 10:30 a.m., at $10 a ticket and $5 for children under twelve. The youth dairy shows run the same day, with local 4-H members showing their animals. In 2026 the morning was wet. The organizers posted afterward: “Rain or shine, Meridian shows up.”

By late afternoon the rain had cleared. Friday night moves to the Meridian Speedway, where the Demolition Derby starts at 7 p.m. In 2026 the evening began with razor racing. A storm rolled in just as the derby got under way, and the organizers shut the night down early.

Red, White & Moo down Main Street

Saturday opens with a balloon launch at sunrise. In 2026 it was canceled for rain and lightning. The forecast was expected to improve before the parade, and it did.

The Real Dairy Parade steps off at 11 a.m. from the Watertower and works down Main Street. The organizers bill it as Idaho’s largest real dairy parade, and it is televised. Entries line up at the Meridian Speedway, and the judges sit at the Dynamite Feed Store along the route. Darigold hands out free cold milk to spectators. The 2026 parade carried cheerleaders, dairy farmers, 4-H and FFA members, city leaders, local businesses, and families. Its grand marshal was Bob Batista, the longest-serving director of Expo Idaho and the Western Idaho Fair, who retired in 2026 after almost 26 years.

The parade rules bar throwing candy or treats from any entry, for the safety of children along the curb. Walkers may hand candy out instead. Children under ten must ride, since the route is too long for them to walk or ride bikes or horses. The organizers’ post that afternoon read: “The streets were packed, the candy flew, and the community showed up in a huge way.”

After the parade, families walk over to Old MacDonald’s Farm to meet dairy animals raised by local youth. In 2026, Dairy Days Princess Sophie Workman showed her prize-winning cow, Faith. “I’ve learned to be responsible with her and always work hard,” she told Idaho News 6. “Agriculture is one of the most important things in Idaho. It feeds everybody.”

The Dairy Days Races start at the Speedway at 5:30 p.m. At dusk the hot-air balloons fire their burners for the balloon glow. In 2026 the glow went ahead at sunset.

The board that runs it

The festival is run by the Meridian Dairy Board, incorporated as Meridian Dairy & Stock Shows, Inc. Its stated mission is “building strong leaders for our future by supporting 4-H and FFA in the Meridian area.” Sponsorship money pays for scholarships and sends 4-H and FFA members to regional and national agricultural conferences. The board’s 2026 sponsorship letter gives its reason: “With the decline of farmland and fewer dairy farms in the Treasure Valley, our goal is to support young people pursuing education in agriculture, particularly in dairy-related fields.” The same letter claims more than 30,000 attendees from across Idaho.

The board lists each member’s year of election:

• Hans Bruijn, president, 1987
• Gerald Mattison, secretary-treasurer, 1985
• Sharlie Workman, 2012, the third generation of the Stevens family on the board
• Russell Clancy of Emmett, an honorary member, 1958

Ray Plum joined in 2019. He remembers the parade from childhood: “The library had a float ... so my mom would volunteer us to walk down the parade when we were little.”

A creamery and a milk check

The town was settled in 1893 under the name Hunter. It became Meridian in 1894 and was incorporated in 1903 with about 200 people. Its first creamery opened in 1897. By the turn of the century, according to BoiseDev, Meridian was the center of dairy farming in Idaho.

In 1929 the Ada County Dairymen’s cooperative creamery opened downtown. On June 18 of that year, a dairy show was held to celebrate the opening. Jersey breeders and 4-H members brought their stock to exhibit. The early sponsors were the Ada County Dairymen’s Association, Meridian businessmen, and the Jersey breeders. According to the Meridian Library District’s history center, more animals were shown that first year than people came to watch. Idaho News 6 calls it “a picnic for local farmers.”

The opening came at the start of the Great Depression. Farmers hauled their milk to the creamery and received milk checks as co-op members, and they used those checks to pay their taxes and feed their families. The creamery’s product was Challenge Butter. The City of Meridian’s archive calls the creamery “a local counterbalance to the Great Depression.” Its operations, the archive says, “reached from the core of the downtown area to hundreds of area farms of varying sizes and types, all of which had a few milk cows.” A 1933 photograph in that archive shows the association’s members in three rows, from Frank Matcham at one end to Tom Hall at the other.

The record for 1948 differs by source. The festival’s own timeline says the Meridian Dairy Show incorporated that year. BoiseDev writes that the celebration began to include a dairy show that year. In 1949 the show moved to the Dairy Show Grounds, which BoiseDev identifies as today’s Meridian Speedway. A parade, a pageant, and a carnival were added over the years. The library district keeps a digital collection of photographs of the 1950 parade and events.

The creamery ran seven days a week for forty years. Additions were built while the plant kept operating. In later years Wyeth Laboratories worked with the creamery to make SMA baby formula there. Local processing ended in 1970, a date Idaho News 6 gives as “around 1970,” and from then on the dairymen’s milk went to Caldwell. Dairy Days continued.

In the decades since, subdivisions have replaced the dairy farms, and Meridian counted more than 117,000 people in the 2020 census. In 2008 the city dedicated its new City Hall, at 33 E. Broadway Avenue, on the ground where the creamery stood.

Hans Bruijn remembers the farms. “At that time in Meridian, there was like four or five other dairies within a mile each way,” he told Idaho News 6. “Now that has changed. There’s really no dairies left in Meridian.”