Moxee Hop Festival

In Moxee City Park, on S Rivard Road off Highway 24, a metal hop sculpture stands in honor of the farmers and pickers who first worked the crop here. Primo Villalobos, a local metal artist, designed it, and it went up in August 2019. On the first full weekend of August the grass around it fills for the Moxee Hop Festival: three days of bands, food trucks, bingo, and a Saturday parade. The East Valley Community Enhancement Association and the City of Moxee put it on. The 2026 festival ran August 6, 7 and 8, and the association has set August 5, 6 and 7 for 2027.

Pancakes, a footrace, and the parade on Iler Street

Saturday starts at 7 a.m. with breakfast in the park, served by the Wine Country Crushers and the Rotten Grapes Junior Roller Derby teams. The plate holds pancakes from Mel’s Diner, bacon and milk from Springbrook Farms, sausage, and coffee or juice. The Yakima Herald-Republic gave the price as a minimum donation of $5. At 8:30 the Hop Fest 5K run and walk leaves from the park. The 2026 race had 209 finishers, the most yet, and the association posted that it was “thrilled that the air quality let us host this race.” The proceeds go to Moxee Elementary School, whose principal, Brandon Hauver, runs the race. The race page says the money buys school shirts for new students who enroll during the year.

At 10 a.m. the parade forms at Postma Road and heads south onto Iler Street through downtown Moxee. Iler Street was the town’s main street when residents laid its first wooden sidewalks, early in the last century. Entries include tractors from the farm equipment dealers, fire and police departments, car clubs, bands, military units, and royalty. The 2026 parade had more than 33 entries. Krista Bier sang the national anthem, and the association wrote that “the streets were silent as her beautiful voice rang through the whole city.”

The 2026 grand marshal was M. A. “Mel” Tanasse. He grew up on his parents’ small hop farm outside Moxee and joined the Navy after his sophomore year of high school. He then spent 41 years with Teamsters Local #524, rising to head the local. He started Moxee’s first Little League and kept the league’s equipment at his own house. He also served 16 years as mayor, a time in which the town secured more than $6.5 million in infrastructure grants.

The family stage and the beer garden

The Yakima Federal Family Stage in the park is free all three days. In 2026 the program opened Thursday with Rod Giles, line dancing with Keshia, and DJ Nahum Ray. Friday brought Root Biscuit Revival and the Aphrodisi-YAKS, then karaoke with DJ Stache. Saturday had Banda La Palmera, the East Valley High School cheer team, the Captain Squirrel Magic Show, the singer Ava Lin, and Lena & The Bear. Wiseblood played before a last round of karaoke at 10. On Friday evening the Terrace Heights Grange judges its apple pie baking contest at the family stage, in divisions for 17 and under and 18 and over, with $100 for first place.

Mr. & Mrs. Giggles and Dave Ettl Magic roam the grounds around Saturday noon. Children’s games cost a $20 wristband, sold at the gazebo near the school playground, and the band covers more than fifteen inflatables from 509 Jumpers for the whole weekend. A dunk tank raises money for East Valley Jr. Red Devils Youth Football and the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office Foundation. In 2026 bingo returned, “after being away for the past few years,” for the band and wrestling boosters.

The Herald counted more than 75 vendors of food, crafts, and merchandise. The 2026 list included:

• huli-huli chicken and kalua pig from Hawaiian Kine Grindz
• brisket and burnt ends from Rollin Smoke Catering
• spicy fruit, funnel cakes, and fried Oreos from Antojitos Yanyo
• elephant ears and deep-fried macaroni and cheese at Hazel’s
• kettle corn and churros at Gabby’s
• hamburgers and red, white and blue lemonade at the main gazebo, sold by the Yakima Amateur Hockey Association for the Yakima Hawks youth team
• dry-hopped seltzer mocktails from Virgil Gamache Farms
• hop décor and gifts at the American Hop Museum booth

Blueline Equipment, Burrows Tractor, and Roy Farms park farm equipment on the grounds.

The Budweiser Beer Garden is 21 and over, with legal ID required and no weapons of any kind. It pours more than 20 drinks, among them Bale Breaker’s Field 41 and Top Cutter, No-Li’s Big Juicy, and wine slushies from Rider Cellars. Thursday has no cover charge. Friday and Saturday carry a $20 cover after 6 p.m. In 2026 James Beam played Thursday. Rival Band and the American Honey Band played Friday, and the association posted that Rival Band was “warming us up to 99 degrees in the beer garden.” Genevieve and Cody Beebe & The Crooks closed Saturday. A Think Twice booth inside the garden offers free voluntary breathalyzer tests before the drive home.

The association that brought it back

The East Valley Community Enhancement Association is a volunteer not-for-profit. It was created, in its own words, with the primary goal of “bringing back the tradition of the yearly Moxee Hop Festival.” Its board meets monthly at Moxee City Hall. Festival profits fund two $2,000 scholarships each year for East Valley graduates, a Christmas parade that ends with a visit to Santa, and donations to dozens of local clubs and causes.

“For us, it means more than just having an annual tradition, it’s about bringing the community together,” Jordan Hemp, the association’s vice president, told TriYakNews in 2026. “We raise some money and we pump it right back in our community.” After the 2026 festival the president, Robert Poteet, wrote: “This event doesn’t happen by accident. It takes a year of planning, countless meetings, and an incredible amount of volunteer effort.”

Hemp also told TriYakNews: “We are the hop capital of the world, and we have the hop farmers right here, so it’s as homegrown as it can get.”

Tules, an edible root, and the hop harvest

Sources differ on the town’s name. HistoryLink says the local Yakama people called a large warm spring on the Thorp property “Moxee,” a word meaning “edible root,” and that the settlement took the name in 1867. The City of Moxee follows a 1970 booklet by Alice M. Toupin. In that account the Yakama named the valley MOOK-SEE, “land of the tules,” for the reeds used to weave baskets and mats, and the name changed over time to Moxie and then Moxee.

According to HistoryLink, Charles Carpenter brought hops to his Ahtanum homestead around 1870, about 15 miles west, using rootstock from his father’s farm in Constable, New York. HistoryLink says Moxee became the hops capital of the world before 1930. The city dates the title to the 1930s, when local farmers grew more hops per acre than anywhere else in the world. Picking was done by hand, and the harvest needed hundreds of people from across the state to bring in the crop within about 30 days. Moxee City incorporated on April 27, 1921, with just over 300 people, and elected Arthur J. Toupin mayor.

A swimming pool for the canal children

In 1946 the mayor called the town’s businessmen to dinner meetings at Woody’s Cafe. After three or four meetings Arthur Cain proposed a swimming pool. In 1947 the Moxee Commercial Club was formed and incorporated, with E. L. (Bill) Duke as president. The club cleared weeds from a point of land south of Shakopee Avenue, now Park Avenue, between Iler Street and the Rivard Road, with help from the American Legion, the Knights of Columbus, and the Terrace Heights Grange. They laid water pipe and planted grass and trees.

In 1948 volunteers built a bath house, and the club decided to pay for the rest with a festival in early August, once most of the hop-farm work was done. Jack Bledsoe was the first chairman. Candidates for queen sold tickets, and the one who sold the most won; the first queen was Marie Bergevin. Her name was kept secret until the coronation ball in the Moxee High School gymnasium, where she led a grand march with her princesses. W. E. Rivard chaired a three-mile parade, and many of its floats showed the old hop-picking days. He and his committee ran the parade for more than 15 years. Visitors toured the valley’s hop fields and kilns, and there was horse racing and a teenage baseball game. Guests included Congressman Hal Holmes of Ellensburg and Paul T. Rowell of the U.S. Hop Growers Association, from San Francisco. Mrs. Arthur Toupin opened her home, and more than 150 people came to it.

Toupin’s history says about 3,000 people were expected at that first festival and an estimated 8,000 came. TriYakNews tells it as roughly 3,000 at the first festival, growing to about 8,000 a few years later. A carnival was added after two or three years, and Bledsoe and Pete Seibol ran the “refreshment” tent for many of them.

Ticket and concession money came in slowly. The pool had to meet Washington Athletic Association specifications to host competition, and it would cost at least $50,000. The club took up an insurance policy program to raise the rest, and built a pool 75 by 30 by 40 feet. After twenty-three festivals Annette Pryor, the club’s secretary-treasurer for ten years, announced that the pool was paid for. An outdoor kitchen and a wading pool followed. Toupin’s account closes in capitals: “OUR BIGGEST REWARD WAS TO HAVE TAKEN THE CHILDREN OUT OF THE DANGEROUS IRRIGATION CANALS.”