Planters Days

At five o’clock on the Thursday of Planters Days, the Woodland Senior Enrichment group sells strawberry shortcake at the gazebo in Horseshoe Lake Park for $5. The carnival has been running since three. On Davidson Avenue the Children’s Parade steps off at 5 p.m., and the Pet Parade follows at 5:30. In 2026 the pet parade was coordinated for the first time by Beau & Lola’s Dream, a local nonprofit working to establish a community dog park. The day also brings face painting and live music. At 8 p.m. the Planters Days Queen is crowned at the gazebo, and at 10 p.m. fireworks go up over the park.

The park is a 6.5-acre lawn on the north bank of Horseshoe Lake. It is the largest developed city park in Woodland, with covered picnic areas, playgrounds, a covered “clogger’s” pad, open ground for field games, and the Rolling Freedom Skate Park. Hoffmann Memorial Plaza adjoins it. The lake is posted no-wake. It is open for swimming, with no lifeguard on duty, and for fishing, canoeing and kayaking. According to the celebration committee, the carnival on the grounds is run by Cowlitz County Fire District #1, and its proceeds support the district’s programs and services.

Four days between the lake and Davidson Avenue

The 2026 edition, the 104th, ran Thursday, June 18, through Sunday, June 21, under the theme “Woodland Washington - A Legendary Spirit. America 250.” Thursday’s coronation is the event the committee president, Keith Bellisle, names among his favorites. “I cry at weddings, but I also cry at coronations every year because to see this community event happen, it touches my heart,” he said. Early the next morning the committee’s page congratulated “Miss Woodland 2026 Maia.”

Friday is lighter. Planters Days Bingo opens at 6:30 p.m. in the Woodland High School Commons. “Usually we have it filled up with about 600 people, so you’ll need to get there early,” Bellisle said. “There are hundreds of prizes.” In 2026 a strength contest called Woodland Strongest ran the same evening at 943 Park Street, with spectators invited to watch.

Saturday begins with two breakfasts on Davidson Avenue. Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1927 serves at 7 a.m. at number 434, and the Woodland Moose Lodge serves at 8 a.m. at number 133. The grand parade, which draws the largest crowd of the four days, starts at 11 a.m. at Fifth Street and Davidson Avenue and runs to Goerig Street and on to Woodland Middle School. At noon Clark-Cowlitz Fire & Rescue holds the Fireman’s Bar-B-Que in the park. The bed races take Davidson Avenue at 4 p.m.; the 2026 running was the 22nd. A cruise-in fills Goerig and Davidson from 7 to 8 p.m. The 2026 Saturday also listed live music by Sunflower and a Paul Davis live burn demonstration at 100 Davidson Avenue. On Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m., the Woodland Rotary Club runs a market of local vendors and businesses in the U.S. Bank parking lot at Bozarth and Goerig.

Between the barbecue and the bed races comes the Frog Jump, held from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the park gazebo; 2026 marked its 59th year. One results sheet posted by the committee counts 111 contestants. First place went to Everett Livingston, 9, whose frog covered 10.5 feet. Ribbons also went for smallest, largest, prettiest and ugliest.

Sunday belongs to the Northwest Corvette Association Car Show in downtown Woodland, with awards at 1:30 p.m. on the Hoffmann Plaza Main Stage and the Planters Days raffle drawing at 3. In 2026 the raffle tickets sold out on Saturday. On Sunday the committee postponed the drawing fifteen minutes “due to an emergency downtown.” Prizes were handed out in the following days at the Woodland Historical Museum, behind the Moose Lodge.

A small board at the VFW hall

The 2025–2026 board has seven members. Bellisle is president, Jade Bourke vice president, Angela Chun secretary and Monty Hansen treasurer. Alesha Wenger and Lesa Beuscher serve as court chaperones, and Kim Blower handles tickets. The committee meets at 6 p.m. on the third Tuesday of each month at the VFW hall, and the meetings are open to the public. Two days after the 2026 festival closed, the committee posted this description of itself: “Not a paid staff. Not a large organization. Not a government department. A small group of volunteers.”

Volunteers ran short in 2026. For the first time in four years there was no beer garden at Horseshoe Lake Park. Regulations require a nonprofit to organize one, and the Chamber of Commerce, which had run it the two previous years, lacked the hands. “The biggest challenge with Planters Days for me is having to do just what we can when I know that we could do a little more if we had a little more people involved,” Bellisle said. The committee’s site lists the next celebration for June 17–20, 2027.

The dikes and the firemen

Planters Days began in 1922, after the diking of the Lewis and Columbia rivers. A 2012 Reflector article called it “the longest continually-running civic celebration in the State of Washington.” Coverage in 2026 put it, more cautiously, among the longest continuously held celebrations in the state. At first it lasted one day and helped usher in summer. “For the first decade or so, it was just a little local celebration,” said Walter Hansen, a long-time Woodland historian who had attended and worked on the festival since the 1950s.

From 1932 to 1972 the Woodland Volunteer Fire Department planned and ran it. “At the time, they were really the strongest group in the city,” Hansen said. As the town and the festival grew, the work became too much for the department alone. “Eventually, it became necessary to form a proper committee to help put it together.” In 2012 the firemen still held their barbecue and a Fireman’s Muster competition.

Queens, a pioneer couple, and a bag of money on a pole

Fifteen years passed before the first Planters Days Queen was crowned, in 1937. Until 1981 several of the city’s fraternal groups chose the Royal Court. After “some controversy marred the 1981 court,” in the Reflector’s words, the committee took that over as well. In 1953 the festival marked the centennial of Washington Territory differently. In place of a high school student, it chose one of four adult couples as Pioneer King and Queen, and the honor went to Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Guild.

The 75th queen was crowned in 2012. Former courts were invited back for that coronation, and the oldest living queen, Eleanor Weisenfluth Sorter, crowned in 1940, planned to attend. “It says a lot about how special a town Woodland is, when 42 queens live within 30 miles, and 22 have addresses in the city limits,” said the court chaperone at the time, April Chumm.

Other contests have dropped out of the program. “There was a pole-climbing contest for a bag of money at the top, along with sack races and other stuff,” Hansen recalled. “There also was a baseball game staged between Woodland and Kalama, and that was one of the highlights.” The Saturday of 2012 had radio-controlled hydroplane races on Horseshoe Lake and an evening concert by the Catillacs. That year the frog jump reached its 45th running.

By the turn of the millennium, some in town felt the festival had lost part of its community character. Janice Graham, wife of former mayor and police chief Jim Graham, was president of the planning committee in 2000. “I went back to the fraternal orders and to local business owners and asked them to come back into the fold,” she said. The Lions Club and the Moose Lodge returned. Graham also invited back the local farmers, the people the first Planters Day had honored when the dikes were finished. As of 2012, they brought their antique equipment into town to display on the Sunday.