Oroville Salmon Festival

The salmon come up the Feather River to a fish ladder on Table Mountain Boulevard, just below Lake Oroville. The Feather River Fish Hatchery, run by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, raises Chinook salmon and steelhead there. Its grounds lie on both sides of the road. On the east side are the fish barrier dam, an observation platform, and underwater viewing windows, where the department says fish are best seen from mid-September through June. On the west side are the spawning room, the hatchery, and the rearing ponds. On the fourth Saturday of September the hatchery and the downtown streets across the river hold the Oroville Salmon Festival, a free day built around the fish’s return. The 2026 festival fell on Saturday, September 26, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

The ladder and the spawning room

The hatchery is where the festival began its explanations. Anna Kastner, the hatchery manager, said in 2019 that the facility is mainly responsible for the educational portion of the day. “To show what we do with salmon, we have tours on how we process the fish to get their eggs and fertilize them,” she said. That year the tours ran every half hour and filled quickly. People lined up to watch wildlife technicians slit open salmon and scoop out the orange eggs. The Chico Enterprise-Record photographed Franky Hackett scooping eggs and Jeff Cutuli sorting fish and watching one slide through a water rinse. At the ladder a four-year-old, Aubrey Gonzalez, leaned in to look at the salmon swimming past. Local agencies and nonprofits set up booths on the grounds. “We’re informing people on a lot of things,” Kastner said.

The 2026 program kept the same core: free tours, educational booths, food, and the chance to watch Chinook work their way up the ladder. Outside festival day, the department says salmon spawning can be observed Monday through Friday from mid-September until mid-November.

Salmon Court and Huntoon Street

Downtown, the center of the festival in 2026 was Salmon Court in Parking Lot A on Myers Street, hosted by the Oroville Economic Alliance. It had a food court, vendors, seating, and a beer garden pouring Feather Falls Brewing Company beer. The stage schedule ran Tyler Duvall at 10:00, Strung Nugget Gang at 11:15, Those Two Dudes at 12:30, and Hot Flash at 2:00. The Optimist Club of Oroville served smoked salmon there, and participating downtown restaurants put salmon dishes of their own on the menu.

A few blocks off, Cub Scout Pack 29 ran a gravity-powered Soap Box Derby on Huntoon Street between Arlin Rhine Drive and Montgomery Street. The festival’s opening ceremonies took place at the finish area at 10:00, and racing began at 10:15. The Oro Dam Cruisers filled Historic Downtown Oroville with cars, trucks, motorcycles, classics, customs and hot rods for Salmon Festival Motor Mania. At 1:00 in front of the Oroville Convention Center, Pro Championship Wrestling staged the fourth annual Slammin’ at the Salmon Festival, a free outdoor show. Around the Convention Center a Kids Zone held bounce houses. The Saturday farmers market set up at Kingdom Community Church on Lincoln Street.

Inside the Oroville State Theatre there were free tours, and Department of Water Resources short films ran on a loop of about 40 minutes. The films covered the hatchery, the salmon lifecycle, spawning restoration, fish monitoring, the Feather River Floating Classroom, and the Oroville Dam Spillway reconstruction. Admission was free that day at the Chinese Temple on Broderick Street, the Pioneer Museum on Montgomery Street, and the Feather River Nature Center on Old Ferry Road. Free shuttle buses from the Thermalito Elementary School District linked the parking areas, downtown, and the hatchery. Within the downtown grounds, visitors rode the Rawhide Express, a handicap-accessible trackless train.

Paddles, chalk, and a week of preparation

The 2026 day started on the riverbank at 8:00 a.m. with the second annual 3K Salmon Run, hosted by Feather River Elite Gymnastics. It ran from the Riverbend Park Amphitheater along the bike path by the river to Centennial Park. At color stations along the way, runners were showered with colored powder and slime. Later the Feather River Center put paddlers on the water for Salmon Tours. They launched at 9:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. from the Historic Green Bridge near the hatchery and finished at the Riverbend Park boat ramp, moving with the Chinook headed upstream. The festival page says these tours continue on Saturdays throughout October.

The festival week also had smaller events. On Sunday, September 20, the Feather River Recreation and Park District held a river cleanup at Riverbend Park. Volunteers got a free lunch, and the Feather River Chapter of Trout Unlimited led twenty-minute “Walk & Talk” tours on the life cycles of Chinook salmon and steelhead. Eagles Aerie #196 held its first annual community mixer on Thursday. On Friday evening the Birdcage Theatre gave out its Season 42 Birdie Awards at the State Theatre.

Twenty-five Septembers

The Chamber of Commerce’s Lake Oroville site describes the festival as an education fair with food, music, crafts and a farmer’s market. It honors a journey that, in the Chamber’s words, salmon born in the Feather River have made “for thousands of years,” the “exhausting trek from the Pacific Ocean back to their spawning grounds in Oroville.”

The 25th annual festival was held on September 28, 2019. The park district wrote that year that the festival had “grown so much throughout the years” that booths and entertainment would stretch all the way to the hatchery, and that its dance instructor, Mrs. Gabby, would perform in the morning. Event coordinator Ray Laager said a new layout and a simplified shuttle system helped ease congestion at a festival that draws about 25,000 people a year. In 2019 Salmon Court stood in the Oroville Municipal Auditorium parking lot. It offered salmon dishes, live music, and a beer and wine garden, and Scott Lawrence worked a grill there. Oroville Hospital gave free flu shots and health screenings.

Morning rain kept the 2019 crowd down. “Little rain this morning, so it gave us a little slower start,” Laager said. He added that the festival is “here to stay and it’s going to continue nice and strong.” Thousands walked the half-mile ladder that Saturday anyway. Asked his favorite part, seven-year-old Bryson Reeser had his answer ready: “The fish jumping.”