Mosquito Festival

The parade in Paisley has an official mosquito. A Lake County Examiner photograph from the 2018 parade shows the costumed Paisley Mosquito high-fiving a young fan, and another file photograph shows a giant mosquito in a parade from some earlier year. The Mosquito Festival is always held on the last full weekend of July. The 2026 festival ran July 24 through 26 in a Lake County town of 250 people. Paisley sits on Highway 31, the Oregon Outback Scenic Byway, 45 miles west of Lakeview and 130 miles south of Bend. The town stands at 4,374 feet, between Summer Lake and Lake Abert, and the Chewaucan River runs through it. The city’s motto is “Home of the Mosquito Festival.”

OPB described getting there as “a trek.” The country is arid high desert, hot in summer and cold in winter, with rock formations, hot springs and seasonal lakes across open ground. In 2026 the vendor booths went up on Friday and stayed through Sunday. That Friday evening a band led by local musician Travis Riddle played the Pioneer Saloon. OPB reported in 2023 that the saloon had recently marked its 140th anniversary, which makes it one of the oldest continually operating taverns in Oregon. The Oregonian that year called it the “(possibly) oldest bar in Oregon” and noted that it was for sale.

Saturday on Mill Street and at the community center

Saturday opens with the Mosquito Stomp, a set of fun runs that start at the 1-mile marker on Mill Street. In 2026 the 10K went off at 7:30 a.m., the 5K at 8 and the 1-mile at 8:15. Runners paid $10 cash at the start line, and there were prizes for all ages. The parade follows the runs. After it come kids’ games, a cornhole tournament, a duck race, a car show, a quilt show and chicken poop bingo.

A barbecue lunch is served Saturday afternoon. In 2024 the plates held pulled pork, ribs or a grilled hamburger, with sides and a drink, at $8 for a small order and $11 for a large. That year the children had a bounce house, a slide and a dunk tank. The 2023 festival had a splash pad and served its barbecue at City Park.

Saturday night is a dance at the Paisley Community Center, 705 Chewaucan Street, with a beer garden open during the dance. In 2026 Riddle’s band played. In 2024 the Grizzly Mountain Hounds played from 8 to 10. On Sunday the pace slows to a pancake breakfast and the raffle drawings at the community center. In 2024 the Paisley Community Church sponsored the breakfast, served from 7 to 11.

Roping at the rodeo grounds

Rodeo runs all weekend at the Paisley Rodeo Grounds. The rodeo events are traditionally held by the Paisley Rodeo Club, which operates separately from the festival. When the festival’s future was in doubt in 2023, OPB reported that the rodeo would continue regardless.

In 2026 the rodeo began Friday at 5 p.m. with a ride-in horse roping jackpot. Breakaway roping started Saturday at 8 a.m., with two full rounds and a short go, and more ride-in horse roping followed it. The main event came Sunday at 8 a.m. This was the Skeeter Fest Ranch Rodeo, sanctioned by the Western States Ranch Rodeo Association, with branding, doctoring, stray gathering and horse roping. The 2024 program listed team branding, ladies breakaway roping and dally calf roping. That year the festival also ran a trap shoot at the Paisley Gun Club from Thursday through Sunday, open to competitors and onlookers.

Contests on horseback in Paisley go back a long way. In 1939 Sara B. Wrenn of the WPA Federal Writers’ Project interviewed Gus Schroder, an old Lake County cattleman who had come into the country in 1878. Schroder remembered a race on the mile track at Paisley. Dick Sherlock drove a sheepcamp team hitched to a buckboard, and Uncle George Duncan drove a span of bays hitched to a buggy. “Everybody in town — ‘bout two or three hundred people — was out yellin’ their fool heads off,” he said. “Even the women was out, yellin’ ‘Come on, Uncle George! Come on, Uncle George!’ Uncle George beat by ‘bout 60 feet.”

The marsh and the swarm

Schroder knew Paisley as the nearest town, sixty miles from his place at Silver Lake. In his words it “had only about 200 people, but it had saloons. When the boys wanted them a time they went to Paisley.”

Long before that, the place was a seasonal settlement. A historical marker at the byway kiosk on Chewaucan Street records that Northern Paiute and Klamath people came to the Chewaucan Marsh and River to harvest wapato. Wapato is a plant with arrowhead-shaped leaves and an edible tuber. The Klamath called it “chewa,” and the Chewaucan country is named for it. The Paisley Caves, five miles from town, show human activity dating back at least 14,000 years, according to OPB.

M.M. Gillespie brought cattle into the valley in 1871 and started its first ranch, and ranching and logging became the early residents’ living. There are two accounts of how the town got its name, both pointing to Paisley in Scotland. One holds that Charles Mitchell Innes, a Scot, named it in about 1873. The other credits Samuel G. Steele, also a native of Scotland and the first postmaster. Wikipedia dates his post office to 1879, while the “Ranching - A Way of Life” marker places it three years after 1870. Paisley was incorporated on November 18, 1911, and it is one of only two cities in Lake County.

The same water that drew people breeds the mosquitoes. In 2023 city recorder Missy Walton, one of the city’s two employees, explained the problem to The Oregonian. “All of this valley is built on a marsh, so you have that, and then a lot of the ranchers around here will flood irrigate, and then we had a wet spring.” She summed up the insects in two words: “They’re wicked.” Amy Davis, the festival’s organizer, added her own account. “About the time the sun goes down, they start to swarm. You’ll look down, and there will probably be 30 mosquitoes on your legs.” Her advice to festivalgoers was repellent at “40% DEET or above.”

A fogger, a truck, and Ms. Quito

According to OPB, residents Larry and Bev Hill came up with the festival after a particularly bad mosquito outbreak. Local journalist Toni Bailie of the Community Breeze wrote that Paisley held its first Mosquito Festival in August 1984. The aim was to raise money for mosquito control, which until then had been paid for out of a local levy. The city, OPB and the Lake County Examiner all give 1984 as the founding year. The Oregonian dates the festival to 1983.

The money went to equipment. An OPB “Front Street Weekly” report from 1987 found that the early festivals had paid for a truck, a fogger and chemicals, and several bug zappers. The odd name drew national attention, and the city took up “home of the Mosquito Festival” as its own. The first years included the crowning of a mosquito queen, called “Ms. Quito” by OPB and “Miss Quito” by The Oregonian.

Davis grew up in Paisley in the 1990s, when thousands came to the festival. She remembered a car show, a 10K, a dance and volleyball tournaments, and people wearing homemade mosquito costumes. The town also formed a “SWAT team” that marched in Army fatigues carrying fly swatters.

The festival is no longer the main source of money for vector control, but it still contributes. The 2022 festival raised $12,000 toward the city’s spraying. Weather permitting, the city tries to spray twice a week when the mosquitoes are at their worst. By the summer of 2023, though, there had been no spraying at all. The city owned a pumper truck but had no one certified to run it.

Forty years and a near ending

Attendance thinned over the years, and the two newspapers tell the next part a little differently. The Oregonian says that in 2019 the city decided it no longer wanted to run the festival, and Davis stepped up. “I remembered how fun the Mosquito Festival was when I was a kid,” she said, “and I wanted to ensure that my children got to enjoy it just as I did.” OPB says the city first planned to cancel in 2020, and that Davis and a few others then took over the planning.

The 2020 festival was cancelled after the COVID-19 pandemic and a devastating fire season. It came back in 2021, but lingering restrictions kept the crowds small. Davis was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2021. After the 2022 festival weekend she was hospitalized. “I just did too much trying to make the festival happen,” she said. She was also running the Chewaucan Station food cart, and she and her husband had taken over the gas station and laundromat that belonged to her father-in-law. “It takes an army,” she said, “and unfortunately there’s just not enough people around here willing to help with that.” The city decided 2023 would be the last year.

It was not. In July 2024 the festival returned for its 40th anniversary, running Thursday through Sunday, July 25 to 28. It came back again for July 24 to 26, 2026. The Lake County Examiner announced the 2026 festival with the line: “With the same tenacity as the pest for which it is named, the Paisley Mosquito Festival is back again.”