Old Fashioned Tokeland 4th of July Parade & Picnic

Entries gather in the morning at the Tokeland Marina: cars, floats, children, animals. Each one receives a number for the judges and a participation ribbon. At 10:45 a.m., Tokeland Road closes to car traffic. Spectators follow signs to extended parking lots, because the few spaces at the Tokeland Hotel are held for its guests and for handicap parking. In past years the parade has stepped off at 11 a.m.

The event is held on the Saturday closest to the Fourth of July, so the date shifts with the calendar. It fell on Saturday, July 6, in 2019, Saturday, July 3, in 2021, and Saturday, July 5, in 2025. In 2026 it fell on the holiday itself, Saturday, July 4, and was billed as the 50th annual. Line-up that morning ran from 9:30 to 10:30, and the Tokeland Food Bank hosted. In earlier years the Tokeland-North Cove Chamber of Commerce sponsored it. The Chamber says its events are designed to help fund the Ocosta School District arts and other local causes.

From the marina to Kindred Avenue

Tokeland sits on a small peninsula on the north shore of Willapa Bay. In 2003 the Chinook Observer described the approach: State Route 105 runs west out of Raymond along the bay, crosses the North River bridge, and turns sharply left at the Shoalwater Bay Casino. The town is named for Chief Toke of the Shoalwater Bay Tribe, and the road into it passes first through the reservation. That year the paper counted 194 full-time residents. The town had no gas station and no tavern. Its one restaurant was inside the Tokeland Hotel, which William Kindred built in 1885 as a home and expanded in 1889 to take guests as the Kindred Inn.

The parade route ties the marina to the hotel. GraysHarborTalk gave the 2019 route this way: from the marina down Kindred Avenue to 7th Street, left at Fischer, back onto the road at the Y, then past the hotel and back to the marina. The Chinook Observer in 2018 described the parade as traveling up from the marina to the hotel.

Judges award trophies for best animal entry, best children’s entry, best car, and best float, plus a judges’ choice and a grand prize. The 2026 list named the car category “Best Car (Club).”

Hot dogs on the back lawn

After the parade, the crowd moves to the hotel’s back lawn at 2964 Kindred Avenue. The hotel listed the 2026 picnic from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The 2025 announcement gave 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Lunch is by donation. In 2019 it was hot dogs, chips, cookies, beans, and several kinds of drinks, water among them. In 2018 the Observer called it a barbecue lunch, served while a band called Country Mile played. The Pacific County Tourism Bureau’s description has visitors throwing down a picnic blanket to listen to live music.

The games are the sack race and the water balloon toss, which the organizers’ own pages call “famous.” In 2018 there was also a three-legged race. Bob Merrill, who helped organize the event that year, said the picnic usually drew up to 500 people.

In 2003 Melanie Gerber, then president of the Tokeland Chamber of Commerce, told the Observer that the celebration more than tripled the town’s population. “It’s the most fantastic little parade a person can find,” she said. She described the classic cars and jimmy-rigged floats, followed by games and food for all ages at the hotel. The crowds made the only traffic jam of the year. “Being a peninsula, there’s only one way in and one way out,” Gerber said. “Last year it took them two hours to get out of here.”

Neighbors in 1976

The sources give two accounts of the beginning. The Chamber and the hotel say the first Tokeland parade was in 1976, when neighbors came together to celebrate the country’s independence, and that the family picnic and field games were added a few years later. The Chinook Observer reported in 2018 that the event started in the 1970s, when a local family, the Moores, put the first one together. According to the paper, the Moores had worked with the Tokeland Chamber of Commerce to hold it every year since.

Merrill gave his view of what the founders had in mind. “I think that they wanted to make an event that was family oriented, with few rules, and have a picnic and games afterwards for the community,” he said. “It turns out that it was very successful. The whole thing kind of takes you back to the early 1900s.”

The parade has not always come with the picnic. In 2021 the parade was on again, with sign-up at the marina at 10 a.m., the road closed at 10:30, and the start at 11. That year the Tokeland-North Cove Chamber of Commerce scheduled no picnic.

A Corvette, a land speeder and a Democrats’ float

The Observer covered the parade on the Saturday before the Fourth in 2018. Hundreds of people came to town, and the paper wrote that the event officially opened Pacific County’s week-long Independence Day holiday. Area emergency responders led more than 70 entries. American Legion flag bearers came next, then a group of unicycle-riding children from Westport, then a life-size replica of Luke Skywalker’s land speeder from “Star Wars: A New Hope.” The grand marshal, Shirley Robinson, rode in a Corvette.

One entrant, McClain, had borrowed his entry from people who were about to take it apart. “I thought, before you do that, let me borrow it and use it in the parades,” he said. He planned to drive it in as many local parades as he could that summer. He was still deciding how to use it at the Ocean Park parade the following Wednesday, because the Ocean Park Area Chamber of Commerce had barred candidates and political party entries that year.

Tokeland had no such ban. The Pacific County Democrats brought a large float, candidates from several parties took part, and some spectators shouted “Make Pacific County great again!” as entries passed. Merrill stated the rules. “The only thing we require is that the float/entry not be offensive to the viewing public and that it be safe,” he said. “Other than that, no rules.”