Multnomah Days Festival & Parade

On the third Saturday in August, Capitol Highway in Multnomah Village, in Southwest Portland, is closed to traffic and lined with tents. The 2025 festival shut the highway from the bridge at Southwest Garden Home Road to 31st Avenue and put more vendors on Southwest Troy Street between 35th and 36th avenues. The 2026 festival ran from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on August 15, with an art fair and over 170 vendor booths, and admission was free. The Multnomah Village Business Association has set the 2027 festival for August 21.

Food comes from street vendors, from the Village restaurants, and from the food carts in the Multnomah French Quarter at Southwest Multnomah and 35th. Parking is scarce because the festival takes the street, so organizers ask people to walk, bike, or ride in. TriMet’s 44 and 45 buses, which serve the neighborhood, are rerouted for the day. Coverage of the 2023 festival noted that dogs are welcome.

Forty entries, no engines

At 10 a.m. the Community Parade starts and runs for an hour. No motorized vehicles, motorized floats, or equipment are allowed. In 2026 each entry had to fit within an 11-foot-wide space. The route was narrower than in past years because of a car show on the viaduct, sidewalk and street work, and outdoor dining areas.

Forty entries were listed that year. Healthy Pets Northwest’s Pet Parade came fourth. Farther back were the Multnomah Historical Association, the Lewis & Clark Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, Friends of T-Rex, Kim’s Taekwon-Do, a Push Mower Drill Team, the Multnomah Village Singing Resistance, and Cub Scout Pack 254. Couch Brass came last. A Portland Tribune photograph shows children running for thrown candy at the 2024 parade. Another shows Darcy Molloy of Spinspiration hula-hooping in an earlier one.

The viaduct and the two stages

The historic Capitol Highway Viaduct carries part of the festival. In 2026 it held the first Extrauto Multnomah Days auto show, with cars parked on the viaduct to benefit the Meals on Wheels People. In 2023 the Main Stage stood on the bridge and viaduct. Peter-Tolin Baker, co-owner of the home goods shop JP General, said his store’s spot near it gave “a front-row seat to enjoy the live music and great people watching throughout the day.” His booth that year set out the shop’s Multnomah Village Market Bag, scented candles, and organic teas.

The 2026 music ran on two stages. The Village Park Stage, at Southwest 36th and Troy, opened at noon with Ms. Vee and went on to Fox & Bones, Lexi Tucker, and Nafisaria Mathews at 4:15. The Tent Stage, at Capitol Highway and 32nd, began at 11:30 a.m. with Nebula Pines, followed by Naomi Tatsuoka, Marilyn Darrell, and Mykel Illa.

Away from the stages, the Multnomah Arts Center at 7688 SW Capitol Highway holds the Kids Zone from 9 to 4, with arts, crafts, activities, and a family rest area. In 2026 the Creative Metal Arts Guild, Echo Theater Company, the Portland Handweavers Guild, the Guild of Oregon Woodworkers, Southwest Portland Martial Arts, and the Portland Police took part. The woodworkers had offered birdhouse building there in 2025. The center has the restrooms and water fountains, and it holds its own arts and crafts sale on festival day. Down the street, Annie Bloom’s Books keeps a Bookstore Romance Day with author meet-and-greets.

Chief Multnomah Days

The district grew up around an Oregon Electric Railway depot in 1909, according to Your Oregon News. The festival’s start is less certain. The Oregonian put it at sometime about 1920. Tim Lyman, president of the Multnomah Historical Association, told the paper in 2012 that it began “sometime in the 1910s or ‘20s.” The Portland Tribune gave the 1920s. Everyone agrees merchants started it. JP General’s account, as the Tribune reported it, is that it began as a citywide promotional event for local merchants.

Patti Waitman-Ingebretsen grew up in Maplewood and has lived in the village since 1976. “The business district looks pretty much the same now as it did in the ‘20s and ‘30s,” she said in 2012. Of the early festival: “They didn’t even close the streets.”

The celebration went away during World War II. Lyman said it came back afterward as Chief Multnomah Days, when “merchants all dressed up in highly politically incorrect Indian garb.” There was often a small parade of children, carts, pets, and bikes, and in the ‘60s it grew to include some floats. The historical association keeps a photograph of the 1966 parade. By the late ‘70s, Lyman said, the commercial center was full of vacant buildings and the event had essentially died.

The business association revived it in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s, and it slowly grew into a civic event. The association is a nonprofit run entirely by volunteers, and its members run the festival the same way. After three years of pandemic restrictions, the Community Parade returned in 2023.

A house built of toilet paper

In 2012 organizers expected between 8,000 and 10,000 people on Capitol Highway between 31st and 39th avenues. There were 135 vendors, a wine and beer garden, a traditional pancake breakfast, an energy fair, and a dog wash. Pet dogs in fancy dress led the parade, and Timber Joey, the Portland Timbers mascot, was grand marshal. Waitman-Ingebretsen captained the 33 baton twirlers of the Beat Goes On adult marching band, which had marched for at least 15 years. “It’s a party for the people of Southwest Portland to say thank you for supporting (village businesses) throughout the year,” said Joan Steinbach, the event organizer and owner of Thinker Toys.

That year the association first partnered with Neighborhood House, a social services agency based in the village. Festivalgoers built a house-shaped sculpture, the SNAP Gap house, out of donated toiletries and cleaning supplies. The sculpture pointed to essentials such as toilet paper, diapers, laundry soap, and toothpaste, which SNAP benefits cannot buy. Instead of an entry fee, parade organizers asked marchers for a cash donation to Neighborhood House.

In the 2026 parade, third in line behind the lead-off banner and the sponsors, the grand marshal was Neighborhood House.