Napavine Funtime Festival

Children line the curb on Second Avenue Northeast holding open bags. On Saturday, July 18, 2026, the Napavine Police Department’s tiger mascot worked down the line giving high-fives, and firefighters from Lewis County Fire District 5 threw candy from their engine as the Napavine Funtime Festival parade came through downtown. The Tiger Parade steps off at 11 a.m. In 2026 the festival around it ran from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Its organizers hold it on the third weekend of July.

Floats, horses and a Ghoul Bus

The Chronicle’s photographs of the 2026 parade open on royalty. McKenzie Von Seggern, Miss Napavine Princess 2026, stood on top of the festival float and waved. Beside her, the 2025 princess, Isabella Eskola, and court member Eliana Clark tossed candy. Royalty from neighboring towns followed:

• Kylee Smith, the 2025-2026 Lewis County Rodeo Queen, on her horse Poco
• Winlock Egg Day Queen Georgia Sayler and her court on an egg carriage
• 2025 Morton Loggers’ Jubilee Queen Fairlane Armstrong atop the Jubilee float
• Miss Lewis County 2026 Hannah Murphy, walking with the Miss Lewis County Washington Pinecone

The rest of the line ran to local trades and local whims. Pennywise walked alongside the “Ghoul Bus” of The Huntting’s Pumpkin Patch & Haunted Forest. A child threw candy from the Dirty Fir Tree Service float. Caleb Thompson drove his tractor behind the Olsen Field Progress Days banner, with his dog Remington standing on top. Jack the dog walked in an Uncle Sam hat. Dan Anderson, owner of Jen’s Place Frozen Yogurt, marched with the South Lewis County Chamber of Commerce float and handed one paradegoer an extra big piece of candy. Retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 Dave Anderson drove his military truck down Washington Street. Peter Lahmann, director of America’s Team Military Museum, led a string of classic military vehicles in a vintage Army Jeep. The festival’s site also listed a marching band and 3 Dog Cider among the entries.

It was an election year, and the candidates walked too. Lewis County Sheriff candidate Danny Riordan carried a Captain America shield behind his entry. Children in fish costumes threw candy from the float of another sheriff candidate, Matt McKnight. State Rep. Peter Abbarno, R-Chehalis, held up a re-election campaign rubber duck. A mini-Jeep carrying a sign for state Sen. John Braun’s run for Congress drove up and down Washington Street.

Trophies followed:

• Grand Trophy, Best American Theme: Lewis County Commissioner Scott Brummer
• Most Entertaining: the pumpkin patch
• Best of Community: PNW Steel Soldiers
• Best of Commercial: Dirty Fir
• Best Set of Wheels: Cowlitz River 2 Cylinders
• Best of Country Living: Kylee Smith
• Best Youth: 2025 Little Miss Friendly Kimber Serl
• Best Senior: Hope Grange, whose #155 float came down Second Avenue Northeast beside the chamber’s

Cornhole, laser tag and the fire hall

The rest of the day spreads out on either side of the parade. At 9 a.m. the car show opens at Annie’s Grocery store in Napavine, with cars, trucks, tuners, rat rods and motorcycles. Signups for the Napavine Wrestling cornhole tournament open at the same hour.

For children there are games, a bounce house and face painting all day. The 2026 festival added laser tag, which its site announced in capitals: “LAZER TAG! NEW LAZER TAG, come play!!” A food and vendor alley sells treats and drinks.

At noon the Napavine Fire Department opens its emergency vehicles for children to look through. In 2026 the fire hall also gave tours of its new building at 10 a.m., before the parade. The Rebekah Lodge announced a sale for both days, with lunch served.

The festival begins the night before. The coronation of the new Princess Napavine was held at 7 p.m. July 17, 2026, in the Napavine grade school gym. A June post on one of the festival’s Facebook pages laid out the plans and added, “Things this year are going slow so bear with us.”

A Jaycees chapter project

The City of Napavine tells the founding this way. In December 1973 the newly formed Napavine Jaycees asked the Washington State Jaycees for permission to hold a three-day celebration as a Chapter Project. A committee chose the dates July 12 through 14. It asked the Napavine K-12 student body to name the event and picked the entry submitted by Val Gruver: Napavine Funtime Festival. The committee planned a Princess Napawinah coronation, a teen dance, a carnival, a parade, a logging show, a dunk tank, concessions and a street dance. The city’s account calls the first festival a success.

Eileen Owens remembers it differently. She told The Chronicle in 2023 that the festival was created in 1973 by herself, her husband Jerry, and two “full-blooded Cherokee Indians.” She said Jerry is a quarter Cherokee. As she recalled it, one of the two was dressed in a gunny sack and crowned Princess Napawinah.

The Chronicle named the Owenses as two of the founders and “the reason it’s still around.” Jerry Owens was board president in 2012, the year the board brought back a 5K walk or run. By 2023 both were around 80. They seldom left Lewis County, between the festival and their work as 4-H leaders at the Southwest Washington Fair. Their Facebook pleas for volunteers were rarely answered.

The festival nonprofit put up the sign that greets drivers leaving Interstate 5 at Exit 72: “Welcome to Napavine: for a day, or for a lifetime.”

The festival also sponsors a December parade with Lewis County Fire District 5, on the first Saturday of the month. The city’s page calls it “Christmas on Parade,” says it has run for 26 years, and says it includes the lighting of the city center on 2nd Avenue. A festival post from October 2025 called that year’s event the “2nd Annual Lighted Christmas Parade,” starting at 6 p.m. The post said the previous year’s parade ended with visits with Santa at the fire hall, and coffee, cocoa and cookies.

Princess Napawinah

For most of the festival’s life its star was Princess Napawinah. She was usually a Napavine girl of 13 to 15. The Chronicle described her costume in 2023: a feather headdress, braids, a beaded faux-leather dress and a sash bearing her title. On the float behind her stood a faux-leather teepee, and sometimes hand-painted posts meant to look like totem poles.

The year 2023 was the 50th, and nobody signed up to be princess. Owens said the interested girls would be away at basketball camp. The Owenses invited all 49 past Princess Napawinahs to serve as the parade’s grand marshals.

That summer the custom drew open objection:

• Signs: Until 2022 the nonprofit had posted signs showing a Peter Pan-style Indian caricature holding a tomahawk. Mayor Shawn O’Neill said the signs were banned from city property once concern became “obvious” on social media.
• The petition: On June 27, Tiera Garrety, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation, started a petition to end or modify the custom. It had 264 signatures by July 4. “Every single item associated with the princess is incredibly culturally inappropriate and inaccurate,” she wrote.
• A proposed change: Garrety’s mother, Mary Dupuis, wrote a 200-page thesis on the Chehalis tribes’ history. She asked organizers to change the costume and the float backdrop to a prom-style dress, and said the princess could keep her name. “When you talk to the people who are being ‘honored,’ and they tell you that it’s not honoring, I think that’s where the opinion should count the most,” Dupuis said.

Owens held her ground. “I still don’t think there’s a problem with it because we’re not degrading,” she said. “It’s just a fun thing.” She also said, “We’re trying to honor our town. It’s not a history lesson.” After that year, she said, she did not see herself working on the festival again.

Owens said she learned of Napawinah as a real historical figure from a Cowlitz tribal member 50 years earlier. In her account the girl was a chief’s daughter, and the town was named for her or she for the town. The Napavine Historical Society held a painting of her in a headdress like the one the costume copies, and the painting once hung in City Hall. Its caption reads: “An Indian Princess: Crowned Queen Napawyna of the Newaukum Tribe, Presented by J.W. Cutting in 1872.” Cutting is said to have founded the town of “Napawyna.”

Others, among them the Lewis County tourism website, derive the town’s name from “Napavoon,” a Cowlitz word for small prairie. Tanna Engdahl is a Cowlitz elder, junior historian and the tribe’s spiritual leader. “Was she a real person in history? We don’t know,” she wrote. If the princess had been Cowlitz, Engdahl said, she would have worn finely woven cedar.

One of the festival’s Facebook pages still describes the event as “a community event to honor Princess Napawinah the indian princess who Napavine was named for.” A newer page, which calls itself the official one, gives the festival’s theme as “Tiger-Pride.”