Miner's Day

At 6 a.m. on the first Monday in September, Park City closes Main Street, Swede Alley, Heber Avenue, and Park Avenue to cars. Residents call the holiday Miners Day. The Park Record put it flatly in 2025: “Labor Day doesn’t exist in Park City.” The Park City Rotary Club organizes the day, and the 2026 edition fell on September 7. “The overall theme with Miners Day is that it is our neighborhood festival,” Rotarian Tom Kelly said in 2021. “It’s not an event that we promote outside of Park City, although we certainly get our share of visitors here.”

The morning begins in City Park. From 7:30 to 9:30, Saint Mary’s Catholic Church serves a free breakfast of pancakes, eggs, ham, and hash browns. A $5 donation is suggested, and it goes to the church’s religious education programs. At 8:00 the Bark City 5K starts beside the historic Miners Hospital. The course runs out and back along the Rail Trail, with an aid station at the turnaround that has water and treats for runners and dogs. Dogs come on leashes and often in costume, and strollers are welcome. The 2026 race added a pet costume contest. Park City Twilight Rotary runs the 5K, and part of the proceeds goes to local animal organizations.

Fifteen thousand golf balls on Main Street

At 10:30 the crowd moves up to Main Street for the Running of the Balls. Fifteen thousand numbered golf balls are released from a tower built to recall the district’s mining history. They run down a track three city blocks long, and the first balls into the landing chute win prizes. Balls are bought in advance, at $10 for one and up to $100 for twenty. Before the yellow balls go, 200 silver ones make the Silver Strike run, and its winner receives a $3,000 travel package. In 2026 the Egyptian Theatre marked its 100th anniversary with a separate run of 200 “100-Year-Old Balls,” sold at $250 each and released ahead of the silver ones. Theater manager Randy Barton told buyers, “You do not need to be present to win.” Winning numbers are posted after the parade.

The ball money pays for Rotary grants. Event chair Kristin Wright said the club gave area nonprofits $150,000 the year before the 2026 race. That money helped expand the perinatal program at People’s Health Clinic and children’s services at Peace House. In 2025 she credited Corrie Forsling and Steve Yapp, who “have been doing the running of the balls work for years.”

At 11:00 the Utah Wing of the Commemorative Air Force flies over, and the parade starts. Families spread blankets on the curb. The route runs the length of Main Street, crosses to Park Avenue, and goes on down to City Park. Organizers list fire trucks, cheerleaders, bands, community groups, and neighborhood floats. The 2026 parade had nearly 40 entries, among them the Park City High School Band, a mariachi band, the Summit County royalty, Peace House, the Corvette Club of Utah, a BMW entry, and High Valley Transit. Judges sit at 505 Main Street. In 2026 they awarded $1,000 in prizes to four entries, one of them for Best Mining Theme. A Best Performance prize was added in 2025 for “a spectacular six-second routine,” in Wright’s words. During the 2026 parade, the Friends of Ski Mountain Mining History held a ribbon cutting in the middle of the street for their new 7-mile Historic Mine Route hike.

Muck, drill, and an eight-ton stone

The parade ends in City Park. From 11:30 to 4:00 the park has food trucks, vendor booths, and a beer and liquor garden, and Mountain Town Music programs live music on the park stage. At 12:30 children run sack races and wheelbarrow races. The Park City Library holds its annual used book sale the same day. The Miners Hospital, at 1354 Park Avenue in the park, is open from noon to 4:00 for “Miners & Memories” history presentations. Sally Elliott, a co-chair of Friends of Ski Mountain Mining History, leads free tours there, and docents explain how the hospital was run in its working years.

The mucking and drilling competition runs from 12:30 to 2:00 across from the library, next to the skateboard bowl, and watching is free. Muck is the broken ore left by drilling and blasting. Mucking contestants run a mucking machine against a timer. The machine looks like a small front-end loader mounted on an ore cart, and it replaced the hand shovels that once filled the carts. Each contestant loads the muck into a cart and dumps it as fast as possible. In drilling, contestants handle a large compressed-air hammer drill and its hoses to bore two deep holes into a slab of rock, again against the clock.

The rock is an eight-ton block from Mountain Valley Stone, a quarry in Browns Canyon, and Ivan’s Crane moves it into the park. In 2026 eight miners signed up for drilling and eight for mucking, most of them doing both, and others waited on a list. “We limit it because it is hot and we want to be mindful of our spectators as well as the miners, who come from Montana, Utah and Idaho,” Wright said. Judges come from the University of Utah mining department, and the Rotary puts up $5,000 in prize money. “I think you can’t call yourself a local unless you’ve been to see mucking and drilling,” Wright said in 2025. After the contest the drilled rock goes to auction, with a base bid that covers the crane and hauling. “Nothing makes you look like a local than having a big Miners Day stone in your front yard,” she said with a laugh.

Miners’ Union Day, June 13

According to Summit County’s history, Park City’s rush began in 1869, when three soldiers found ore that assayed at 96 ounces of silver per ton. Organizers say silver mining went on here until a few decades ago. In the early mining years, the Park City Museum writes, miners held parades and contests twice a year: on Labor Day and on Miners’ Union Day, June 13. The mine companies usually gave the men that day off. In 1904 the Park Record announced a “State Excursion to Lagoon,” with a parade, a band, a baseball game between Park City and Eureka, and an evening dance. The paper described the day as one “set aside for him to rest from his work and enjoy himself…The mines and mills were practically closed all day.”

In 1906 Miners’ Union Day was held in Salt Lake, where drilling teams from the Ontario, Kearns-Keith, Alliance, and Silver King mines competed for prize money against teams from Bingham, Eureka, and Mammoth. When the 1910 celebration went back to Lagoon, the Record complained: “Are we ashamed of our town—or merely too ‘tired’ to make an effort?”

The 1911 celebration stayed home. Blythe Fargo Co. advertised men’s oxfords marked down to $3.45 for the occasion. On June 13 the parade formed in front of Miners Union Hall and stepped off at 9:00 sharp behind the Park City Military Band. Dr. LeCompte led the union men, their friends, and many children. The men wore decorated ribbons showing which union they belonged to. The route went down Main Street to Park Avenue, south to Woodside, and back up Main to the hall. Concerts, sports, and a boxing match filled the day, and a grand ball closed the evening. By the 1930s the Record no longer mentioned a separate Miners’ Union Day, and Labor Day carried on the parade and the contests by itself.

The organizers date their parade to 1896. “We traced the start to 1896,” Kelly said in 2021. “We don’t know if it has been continuous or not, but it goes back to a tradition the miners started.” He counted the 2021 event as the 125th. The Park Record called the 2025 celebration the 130th anniversary, and the organizers’ 2026 pages also call that year’s event the 130th.

A bronze miner at Treasure Hill

COVID-19 cancelled the 2020 festivities. That year the Running of the Balls was held online: people bought balls and watched a video, and the race raised $30,000 for grants. When Miners Day returned in person on September 6, 2021, the mucking and drilling contest was replaced by demonstrations. Presenters in costume showed “what it took, physically, to actually do the mining,” in event chairwoman Forsling’s words. Kelly said skilled miners had grown harder to find over the years. “I do think this shift will educate new generations about the heritage of Park City,” he said.

At 3 p.m. that day, the city and the Martinez family dedicated a statue of the late Rich Martinez at the Treasure Hill trailhead, just up the slope from High West Distillery. Tom Martin of Luna Bronze made it. Martinez lived in Park City for 82 years and came from five generations of miners. He graduated from Park City High School, worked in the mines, and served 16 years on the City Council. He helped organize the Miners Day mucking and drilling competition and competed in it for more than 20 years. He also built some of the town’s first chairlifts and a merry-go-round for what was then Marsac Elementary, and he owned The Cozy bar on Main Street.