Mossyrock Blueberry Festival

The parade starts at 10 on Saturday morning and runs east down State Street through Mossyrock. At the 19th annual festival, a pair of classic John Deere tractors rolled slowly down East State Street. A man played trumpet on the back of the Salkum’s Brown Shack Tavern float as it was towed along, and members of the Mossyrock Garden Club marched in fruit costumes. Along the route, Panamerican Berry Growers handed free blueberries to the crowd. Afterward the farmers, their families and friends posed with the farm’s berry harvester.

The Mossyrock Area Action League puts on the festival. The league is a grass-roots 501(c)(3) nonprofit that works on community asset building, economic development and poverty reduction in East Lewis County. Its partners are the City of Mossyrock, the Mossyrock School District, the Road Rebels Car Club and many local and regional groups. Admission is free. The 20th annual festival ran July 30 through August 1, 2026. Before it opened, the league announced on its Facebook page that the festival was “officially leveling up to SUPER status this year.” The league holds the festival at the peak of the local blueberry season and points visitors toward the farms to buy fruit.

Bingo, then music in the park

The 2026 festival opened on Thursday with bingo inside the Mossyrock Community Center at 219 E. State St. It was a fundraiser for the Mossyrock Area Historical Society, with cash prizes and a minimum age of 18. The Chronicle gave the start time as 7 p.m. The festival’s own Facebook post said 6:00.

On Friday the festival moved to Klickitat Prairie Park, behind the community center. A vendor and food truck market opened at 3 p.m. Music played at the park amphitheater: country and blues from Cody Bartels at 4, songwriter and acoustic guitarist Noah Delos Reyes at 6, and the Todd Seals & Baird Creek band at 8. The festival’s page suggested a seasonal 3 Dog Blueberry Cider for the middle set.

A Saturday on Klickitat Prairie

Saturday started early. From 7 to 10 a.m., the Mossyrock Assembly of God cooked a blueberry pancake breakfast and served it at the church, by donation, to raise money for Mossyrock youth. Classic and custom cars and motorcycles of the Road Rebels show filled the Mossyrock High School field from 9 a.m. The parade followed at 10.

By 11 the park was full. It had bounce houses, a mobile fishing pond, food and craft vendors and a beer garden. In the Mossyrock Area Action League’s booth, boxes held blueberry tarts. The Wenatchee Youth Circus, billed as “The Biggest Little Circus in the World,” performed at noon, 2, 4 and 6. Its program included high-wire work, flying trapeze, acrobatics and juggling. At the 19th festival, circus members turned on ropes above the grass and pulled the audience into a dance.

The blueberry pie-eating contest was at 1 p.m. At 2, the family fun dog show and wiener dog races took over the amphitheater. The show’s categories were smallest, biggest, best dressed, best trick and people’s choice. In the 19th year, Lorea Craig walked her 15-year-old dog, Honeybear, in the show while dachshunds raced nearby. Home bakers brought blueberry entries to the league’s booth that afternoon. The rules said each entry had to contain real blueberries, be made from scratch and need no refrigeration. Awards were announced at 4:30.

Indoors, the community center served as the festival’s official cooling-off center. The Historical Society set up displays there and shared stories. The festival’s site said the society would also bury a time capsule. Two classes met in the hall. At 11, WSU Lewis County Master Gardener Mary Jean Marsh taught “Blueberry Basics,” covering varieties for the region, site selection, soil, irrigation and common diseases. At noon there was an introduction to beekeeping. The festival’s Facebook page credited it to Brandon Stokley of the Lewis County Beekeeping Association. The festival’s website listed the Washington State Beekeeper’s Association. The festival’s site also listed a dunk tank and a skydiving demonstration. The rock band Runaway Fire closed Saturday night with a set from 8 to 10.

A hay field and a spaghetti dinner

The park the festival fills is new. The Klickitat Prairie Park project began in the summer of 2009 under the Mossyrock Area Recreation Committee, a volunteer group sponsored by the city. Its members went door to door with surveys. Residents asked for trails, a swimming pool, a playground and fields. The committee then invited the town to dinner, and about 200 people worked out a plan over plates of spaghetti. Community dances, dinners and tree auctions raised the matching money for state grants. The city bought the land next to the community center. The county tourism site gives the park’s size as 29 acres, and the city gives it as “30+.” Work began in the summer of 2012, turning a hay field into Mossyrock’s first city park. The project added community gardens for more than 50 families, public restrooms, a grass parking lot, and a playground built from recycled plastic set on mats made from recycled tires. In the city’s words, that was “fake wood” in “this long time timber area.”

Mossy Rock to Mossyrock

The park takes its name from the prairie under it. Klickitat Prairie lies in the homelands of the Cowlitz Tribe, between the Cowlitz River and Klickitat Creek. At its east end stands a steep rock about 200 feet high, covered with green moss in winter, which gave the settlement its name. Laura Winston became the first postmaster of Mossy Rock in 1875. In 1895 postmaster George W. Jerrells changed the name to one word. The town incorporated on January 2, 1948, with 337 people. Two decades later, in 1968, Tacoma finished Mossyrock Dam, 606 feet high and the tallest in Washington, which flooded the old settlements of Riffe, Nesika and Kosmos under Riffe Lake.

An acre of blueberries in wartime

The festival’s fruit came to Mossyrock through one family. Neal Allen Aldrich and his wife, Marjorie, bought 20 acres in Mossyrock in 1933, while she was teaching in town. Around 1940 Neal planted blueberries in the garden. Within two or three years the family was eating the fruit. In the fall of 1944 they planted an acre. They would have planted more, but the war had made blueberry plants scarce. In the spring of 1945 they bought more plants from a family friend and set out another third of an acre. These were the first commercial blueberries in Mossyrock and in all of Lewis County. In 1963 their son Glenn and his wife, Wisten, took over the Aldrich Berry Farm.

Other growers followed. In 1952 the Anderson farm, later Pan American Berry Growers, was planted, along with a small field by Frank and Alice Grose. Frank Hamilton planted another field in 1954. The growers found what the Aldriches had found: the local soil, Mossyrock silt loam, suits blueberries. Most of the 155 acres of blueberries growing in Mossyrock as of 2021 are on that soil.