Pioneer Days

At ten in the morning on Saturday, July 4, 2026, the Pioneer Day Parade started down First Street in downtown Cle Elum, between Pennsylvania and Peoh avenues. The theme was America’s 250th anniversary. The Cle Elum Downtown Association, which ran the weekend, asked the crowd to come in red, white, and blue. On the corner of First and Pennsylvania the Soul Brigade band played while the entries went by, and that evening the band played again at the Cle Elum Eagles hall on North Pennsylvania from seven to ten.

Along the route, the storefronts fed the curb. Miner’s Pizza sold slices and otterpops at 121 East First from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mule and Elk Brewing put pulled pork sandwiches on special at eleven and served drinks outside. Pioneer Coffee Roasting Company marked 25 years in business with Fourth of July drink specials all weekend. The 509 Bake House, at 207 East First, had spent the Friday before celebrating its tenth year. Tuckaway Antiques and The Barn Door held basket drawings at 220 East First. Mike’s Tavern had opened the weekend with a Friday-night Rainier Revival party and held another from open to close on the Fourth. After the parade, the year’s Pioneer Queen met visitors at Glondo’s Pocket Park.

Wye Park and the firefighters

The rest of the Fourth went on at Wye Park, where the Pioneer Village market of first responders and rustic makers ran from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Its stalls offered Debra’s sourdough and quilts, sno-cones, kettle corn, Bator’s Pickle Powder, and a miniature horse kissing booth. The Cle Elum Volunteer Firefighters Association sold sausage and peppers on a bun, hot dogs, and T-shirts by donation, and in the evening it handed out glow sticks the same way. Dock diving dogs competed at the park from Friday through Sunday.

The fireworks were shot from the field at Memorial Park. The park was closed entirely that night so the fire department could reach its emergency points, and because of the height of the shots. People watched from Wye Park, from Railroad Avenue, and from South Cle Elum.

On Sunday, July 5, the firefighters served the Fireman’s Pioneer Breakfast from seven to noon at Fireman’s Park on Grant Street in South Cle Elum. Children fished the Kiwanis Youth Fishing Derby at Hanson Ponds from seven to nine. At Suncadia’s Nelson Farm, the 42nd Runner Stumbles sent a 5K and 10K over paved paths and single-track trails through forest, with free races for children and the proceeds going to new uniforms for the Cle Elum Roslyn High School cross country team. At one o’clock Susie Weis of the High Country Artists held a Queens Tea Party at the Carpenter Memorial House on West Third Street. That 1914 mansion, with its alcoves and third-floor ballroom, holds the story of Cle Elum’s first successful banker and his family, and the Red Barn Piecemakers hung a quilt exhibit there every weekend in July.

The weekend spread up the valley. The Roslyn Friends of the Library held a book sale on Saturday and Sunday, and the Roslyn Riders ran a family play day at their club grounds. Later in the summer, the Roslyn Ronald Cle Elum Heritage Club held a Croatian picnic with music and dancing at Roslyn’s Pioneer Park on July 18. On August 1 it held a bocce tournament at Fireman’s Park in South Cle Elum, in partnership with the Cle Elum lodge of the Order of Sons and Daughters of Italy in America.

Queens of seventy-five and over

A Pioneer Day Queen must be at least 75, must have lived more than 40 years in Upper Kittitas County, and must have a strong record of community involvement. She is crowned the Saturday before the parade at the Upper Kittitas County Senior Center. In 2026 that was June 27. The first queen, Kate Micheletto, was crowned in 1969.

The 55th was Babs Ballard, crowned in 2025 at 88. She was born in Kendrick, Idaho, in August 1936 and came to Cle Elum as a baby. Her parents, Robert and Minnie Ballard, were ranchers, and she was riding horses by age two. As a girl she mended fences, ran farm equipment, and herded cattle, and in school she played drums in the marching band. She learned to fly a plane and flew solo to all of the western states. She drove a school bus for many years and drove long-haul trucks. Committee member Sena Lanphere described her as an accomplished water dowser. Ballard had been Queen of the Cle Elum Riding Club before, and she kept a weekly pinochle game with friends. Her motto, as the Skagit Valley Herald gave it: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

The crown carries a year of duties. Ballard’s began with the Fourth of July parade and a meet-and-greet for past queens directly after it. She was expected at the Firemans’ Pioneer Day Breakfast, the quilt exhibit, the Croatian Picnic in Ronald, and the Triple Shot 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament. Her duties could also take her to the Ellensburg Rodeo Parade, Roslyn’s Coal King Parade, the Thorp Community Days Parade, Christmas in Cle Elum, and the Easton Memorial Day Parade.

Fire engines, an ox, and little red cars

The Daily Record called the parade of Saturday, July 2, 2011, the 42nd annual. Scott Ferguson, chief of the Cle Elum-Roslyn-South Cle Elum Police Department, led it along First Street. Behind him rode that year’s Pioneer Queen, Olga Newton, with past queens around her. “Continuing a tradition,” the paper reported, Babe the Blue Ox came right after the royalty.

A Cle Elum southwestern gift shop, Mac-A-Bee, entered a float titled “First Americans,” with elk, deer, coyote, frogs, butterflies, turtles, and a cow skull standing in for a buffalo skull. “It represents the four directions — the winged ones, stand talls, the two legged and four legged,” said Stephanie Stehl, who worked on it. Shriners drove miniature cars. “I’m with the guys in the little red cars and funny hats,” said Roy Hatfield, secretary of the local group. Fire engines from Cle Elum, Roslyn, Kittitas County, and Mount Vernon came through with sirens going. Water fights broke out along the route, and one lasted several minutes and held up the parade. The crowd got sprayed too. That weekend also had a Ping-Pong Ball Drop, a street fair, a 1900s steam-powered log-sawing display at Wye Park, horseshoes, bocce, and tug-of-war, and it closed with fireworks on Monday night.

In 2016 the parade ran on First Street between North Oakes and Peoh avenues under the theme “Red, White and Blue Pride.” Wye Park held an “Inland Idol” talent competition and a gospel concert, the Rangers Band played on the Fourth, and aerial fireworks went up at ten from Memorial Park. The 509 Bake House was newly established that year, and the coffee house on First was marking its fifteenth anniversary.

In 2021 the Kittitas County Chamber of Commerce put on the parade on July 3, running west on First Street at 11 a.m. The next day the chamber held the first Independence Day Celebration at Wye Park, with a kid zone, a bounce house, food trucks, a beer garden, rotating music, and fireworks at ten.

The 2022 parade lasted 90 minutes. Karl Holappa of the Daily Record wrote that the crowd thronged every block of what he called Main Street. “We went into the day with 72 parade entrants, and then we had some walk ins,” said Matt Anderson, the chamber’s director of tourism. “At the end of the parade, I believe we had around 80 entrants.” The weekend also had markets, a basketball tournament, a water fight, and the Seattle Cossacks Motorcycle Stunt Club. Afterward the proprietors of Mike’s Tavern told Anderson it was the best parade the town had ever had. “It was high fives around,” he said.

Swift water and brick

The Kittitas band of the Yakama fished salmon, steelhead, and trout from the Yakima River here. In the spring of 1886, Northern Pacific surveyors Virgil Bogue and Herbert Huson came through to set a station and named the depot Clealum, after the Kittitas name Tle-el-Lum, “swift water,” for the Cle Elum River. The spelling became Cle Elum in 1908. Walter Reed and Thomas Johnson of Ellensburg laid out a 65-acre townsite, dedicated on July 26, 1886, and Johnson moved his sawmill to it. The town was incorporated on February 12, 1902.

On June 25, 1918, fire burned 29 city blocks. It was later judged most likely to have started from a cigarette butt thrown into garbage behind a theater. Thirty businesses and 205 houses were lost, and more than 1,800 people were left homeless, though no one died. The Cle Elum State Bank Building of 1906 was one of the few downtown buildings to survive. The rest of downtown went up again quickly in brick, and many of those buildings still stand.