Old Lewiston Peddlers' Faire

On the first Saturday in June, from 9 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, the streets of historic downtown Lewiston fill with tables. About 100 antique, art and craft, and food vendors come in from around the north state. The town’s page for the Old Lewiston Peddlers’ Faire asks visitors to walk across the Lewiston Bridge and take in the rushing Trinity River below. The 34th annual faire was held June 6, 2026. Lewiston lies about 45 minutes west of Redding on Highway 299, in Trinity County.

Both sides of the one-lane bridge

The Trinity Journal’s preview of the 33rd faire, on June 7, 2025, described the layout. Vendors with crafts, collectibles, antiques and vintage items lined the streets in the historic heart of town. Food and beer vendors stood on both sides of the old one-lane bridge. On the west side, the Moose Family Center held a car show with the High Country Cruisers. On the other side, live music was scheduled every hour. Dogs were welcome, though the paper warned that the pavement gets super-hot and suggested leaving them at home. There was no entrance fee, and donations were accepted.

In 2026, Josh Cozine of the Journal reported that the faire “once again brought out the whole town and many of its neighbors.” Several booths showed gemstones, rocks and jewelry made from them. Others sold cool treats to children, who were handed free fire hats from the Lewiston Fire Department and the Lewiston Sparkies. The paper puts the crowd at thousands every year. Organizers print a food and music map that marks food booths, seating, performance spots and the schedule. A parking map shows road closures and one-way traffic. The 2026 faire added handicap parking and an ADA shuttle, the shuttle courtesy of the Golden Age Center.

Breakfast at the Moose

Katie Quinn’s “Lewiston Sluice Box” column in the Journal previewed the June 3, 2023 faire, held the same day as the Lewiston Moose Car Show. “There are so many vendors, I lost track,” she wrote. Her advice began with breakfast at the Moose Family Center, where the Sparkies cooked and volunteers of the Lewiston Fire Department served. The meal was scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits and gravy, juice, fruit and coffee for $12, or $7 for children 10 and younger. On the town side of the old bridge there were breakfast sandwiches, cinnamon buns and coffee.

Parking, she noted, “is always tricky.” Ryan, at the Old Lewiston Bridge RV Park & Resort, let the faire use the back of the grounds. Dewey and Nonie Cain opened their lot next to the old “Dewey & Nonie’s” on Lewiston Road, at the corner of Schoolhouse. “Just stay in the mowed area,” Quinn wrote, “as that is what belongs to Dewey and Nonie Cain.”

Merchants, a community association, the Sparkies

The same column traces who has run the faire. By 2023 it had been put on 31 times by various groups. Lewiston’s businesses started it as the Lewiston Merchants Association. “When that group wore out, the Lewiston Community Association put it on. When that group had only two to three volunteers, they asked the Lewiston Sparkies to take it on.” Quinn explained that the Sparkies, as the only recognized nonprofit to run the event, were bound by their IRS agreement to raise money for the fire department. She answered those who said the money should go to the community: “in my opinion, that is exactly what it is doing.” She wrote that one set of turnouts cost $2,500 to $3,000, and radios that work down in a ravine cost more than $1,500 each.

Then the faire changed hands again. The Sparkies’ website states that they no longer sponsor or organize the faire, and that a new group, the Lewiston Community Association, took it on starting in 2024. That association was established February 8, 2024, by community members. It is a registered 501(c)(3) whose stated mission is to revitalize Lewiston, and its board meets monthly at the Community Center on Texas Avenue. Trinity County’s October 2024 draft community plan for Lewiston records the same change. The Journal’s preview of the 2025 faire, however, still described it as a Sparkies fundraiser for fire department volunteers. By 2026 the paper reported that the faire was run entirely by the association’s nonprofit volunteers, with Tania listed as the contact.

A town from 1851

The faire’s streets lie within the Lewiston Historic District, which is listed on the National Register along Deadwood Road, Schoolhouse Road and the Lewiston Turnpike. The county plan dates the town to 1851, when Thomas Palmer and his son Frank B. Lewis established it on the Trinity between Shasta and Weaverville. The first developments were a trading post, a river ferry and the Lewiston Bridge, the first bridge built across the Trinity. A post office followed in 1853, a general store in 1860, and the Lewiston Hotel and a schoolhouse in 1862. The plan says many of these buildings are still in use. Sometime between 1870 and 1900, a steel bridge went up across the river at Lewiston Road, and it still stands. Lewiston remained a gold mining town until World War II. After the war, construction of the Trinity and Lewiston dams brought new work. Lewiston Lake, about five miles long, formed behind Lewiston Dam in 1963.