Pioneer Days Picnic and Celebration

On the morning of Saturday, June 6, 2026, the Umatilla County Pioneer Association posted a short notice: “Come on down to Weston’s Elliot Memorial Park. Breakfast is ready.” Serving had started at 6:00. East Umatilla Fire & Rescue puts on the Fireman’s Breakfast, and the menu the association announced was pancakes, eggs, ham, sausage and coffee. The breakfast opens the Saturday of the Pioneer Picnic, held the first full weekend of June in Weston. Weston is a town of about 650 at the base of the Blue Mountains in Umatilla County. The 2026 picnic, on June 5 and 6, was counted the 132nd.

The park goes by several names in the record. The association’s event pages call it Elliott Memorial Park, its vendor form calls it Elliot Park, and a 2022 newspaper account calls it Charles Elliott Memorial Park. It lies on South Water Street, and most of Saturday happens there or along Water Street.

The parade from the Highway 204 stop sign

Children go first. At 9:45 a.m. a short children’s parade walks from Suzi’s Market, at 211 North Water Street, to the park. An East Oregonian photograph from 2007 showed kids dressed for the occasion as Superman and Raggedy Anne.

The Pioneer Picnic Parade steps off at 10:00. It forms at the north end of town, at the stop sign on Highway 204, and runs south about a mile and a half through the center of Weston. The entry form asks that horses and buggies be unloaded on either side of the road and not at Smith’s Warehouse. In 2022 an announcer’s stand was set up at the corner of Main and Water streets.

Park games, Kees Cemetery and Memorial Hall

At 11:00 the crowd moves to the park for free games for children, kids’ races, a barbecue lunch, entertainment, and vendor booths open from 9 to 4. The association’s 2026 announcements also listed a rooster crowing contest.

The 2022 picnic shows what fills those hours:

• Lunch: barbecue beef, coleslaw, corn on the cob and soft drinks.
• Booths: face painting, wooden toys and demonstrations of old-time crafts.
• Games: a dunk tank and sack races.
• Music: the Coyote Howler String Band, featuring Dan Emert, played from the stage.

“They are absolutely excellent,” said Greg Phillips, the coordinator that year. “We are very lucky to get them.” Yard sales ran through town from Friday through Sunday.

In the afternoon the weekend goes out to the Blue Mountain, or Kees, Cemetery, established in 1875, on Kee’s Cemetery Road. Quiet Neighbors is a free guided tour starting at 1:00 p.m. It is run jointly by the Weston Public Library, the cemetery and the Umatilla County Historical Society. The tour covers occupants of note, the cemetery’s history, and its resident plants and animals. For 2026 the library announced it would remember Nancy Osborn Kees, “survivor, pioneer, and part of the story that shaped our community.” “This is an opportunity to tour the historic Kees Cemetery and meet figures from Weston’s interesting past,” said organizer Heather Culley. “This is a respectful view of their lives; humanizing but not insulting.”

The day closes at Weston-Athena Memorial Hall on East Main Street with a potluck alumni dinner. It is for anyone who attended Weston Union High School or Weston-McEwen High School. Doors open at 5:00 for visiting, and dinner is at 6:00. At the 2022 dinner, special recognition was planned for the oldest graduate in the system, Duane Warner of the Weston Union High class of 1942.

A queen, a grand marshal and four stout oxen

Memorial Hall also opens the weekend. At 6:00 on Friday evening the Pioneer Queen is crowned and the Parade Grand Marshal introduced, and everyone is welcome. The association publishes the honorees’ family histories. The 2026 queen and grand marshal were Suzanne and Larry Coppock, whom the association’s Facebook announcement called the picnic’s king and queen. Their oldest son, Daren Coppock, was to tell the family’s history at the coronation.

Suzanne’s line in Oregon begins in 1871, when her great-grandfather Levi Tulley and two brothers settled at Cove, in Union County. In 1874 Levi and his wife, Alma Stewart, moved to the Wallowa Valley and homesteaded near the junction of the Wallowa and Lostine rivers. The Tulley brothers were the first to cut hay in the valley. One of her grandfathers, Oscar Maxwell, was born in Wallowa in 1888. His family had arrived there on July 6, 1880, traveling with five other wagons from Nevada. Another grandfather, Spencer Lozier, came from Wisconsin by wagon train to Joseph in 1885 and ran sheep on Hells Canyon for many years.

Larry’s line begins with Aaron Coppock, an Iowa farmer who went to the California gold fields in 1849. He found gold and sent for his family, telling his wife, Marry, to sell the farm, buy four stout oxen and drive the cattle west. At Jim Bridger’s trading post the family was told feed was scarce and the cattle would starve if they went on to California. They turned toward Oregon instead and settled near Clackamas six months later.

In 1860 the Coppock men crossed eastern Oregon on their way to the Orofino gold fields in Idaho. They liked what they saw, came back in 1872, and bought land in Rawhide Gulch, southeast of Athena. Larry’s maternal grandfather, Josiah Lieuallen, came west on the Oregon Trail in 1862 and settled in Weston. In 1872 he chose a claim a mile south of present-day Athena. Descendants of both families still own those sites.

A reunion planted in 1892

The Umatilla County Pioneers started the picnic in 1892 to honor the memory of the early settlers who helped forge and develop the county. Weston itself began as a stage station, established as early as 1863, where the Thomas and Ruckles road crossed Pine Creek a mile below the present town. That road was the route from Walla Walla to Baker City and the Boise mines. At the station Taylor Green kept a hotel for teamsters, packers, emigrants and travelers. An 1886 directory placed the town 22 miles northeast of Pendleton and counted 600 residents.

Noma Tucker, in a recollection collected by the Historic Weston, Oregon site, described the founding in a farmer’s terms: “Every farmer knows that if you plant weed seed you get weeds but if you plant a good seed you raise a good plant. In 1892 the Umatilla County Pioneers had an idea that has carried on for 106 years – An annual reunion.”

The program has changed over the years. In 2009 a sign along Highway 11 announced the picnic, and the parade went off at 9:30 a.m. The Lions Club held a poker walk, and the day included the Marilyn Jensen Memorial Bike Ride and historical tours starting from the park. That year’s king and queen were Jack and Sherron King, married in 1958, whose grandparents had settled in the foothills of the Blues.

After two years off for COVID-19, the picnic returned June 3–5, 2022, pared down. There was no car show and no walking tour of the historic buildings, and the children’s and adults’ parades were combined for the year. “I think people are tired of masks and COVID-19 and ready to get out and celebrate,” Phillips said.

The 2024 picnic was the 130th. Its grand marshal, Sheldon Delph, first worked the picnic in 1957, at six years old. His parents sat him at a card table outside their store, the Weston Market, at Main and Water, selling candy. By the association’s account, the parade and the barbecue both began in the early 1960s, and Delph worked on both until he moved to Packwood, Washington, in 1985. His father, Bob Delph, served with the association from 1952 until his death in 2010, and Bob and Lyn Delph were queen and grand marshal in 1996.

The 2024 queen was Mari Sams Tester. She was born in 1943 on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, descends from a line of chiefs on her father’s side, and graduated from school in Weston in 1961. “I have known this year’s Queen my entire life,” Delph said, “and while my ancestors settled here nearly 145 years ago, Mary’s ancestors precede mine in this region by nearly 25,000 years.” Tester remembers the races, setting up the pavilion, and getting out of school to attend the show.