Prairie Days

At nine on the Saturday morning of Prairie Days, the parade starts down Yelm Avenue. In 2026 it ran from 9 to 10 a.m. on June 27, led by the Rainier High School marching band. The Yelm Chamber of Commerce set the theme as “Red, White and 250 Years” for the nation’s semiquincentennial. City Councilor Joseph Richardson called the entries from the side nearest Yelm Cinemas. Line Roy, the city’s communications and recreation coordinator, and Public Works Director Cody Colt took the microphones near the end of the route. Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders walked it and waved.

The parade is the center of a summer festival this Thurston County town holds each late June. The city calls it one of the longest-running community festivals in the county. Around the parade, the City of Yelm, the Chamber, the Lions Club and a number of other groups have built a four-day weekend. The 2026 edition ran June 25 through 28.

Bingo, foam, and mushball

The weekend opens Thursday at 5 p.m. with bingo in the Yelm Community Center, sponsored by the Yelm Lions Club. Prairie Days bingo began in the 1980s, when people played it in the city park. It lapsed and was brought back in 2024. “It’s super cool that we get to bring that back and let that be a highlight for the people who remember it and have that nostalgic feel towards Prairie Days Bingo, especially,” Roy told the Nisqually Valley News.

Friday evening belongs to Party on the Prairie. In 2026, its third year, Dakota Poorman and the Olsen Brothers played the Centennial Stage at 5 p.m., with food trucks, a beer garden, and the splash pad running for children. The stage was added to Yelm City Park in 2024. The park, at 115 Mosman Avenue SE, was the city’s first public park. The community center stands beside it, its garage doors opening onto 2nd Street and onto a terrace above the grass.

On Saturday, when the last float passes, spectators walk to the park. Carnival rides run there, free to ride, among inflatables, activity booths, food trucks, a magic show, and a touch-a-truck put on by city Parks and Recreation. The Yelm Farmers Market sets up nearby. Saturday also brings the contests: a photography exhibit and contest, chalk art presented by the Yelm Arts Commission, and pie baking hosted by the Yelm Rotary Club and Castle Realty. Awards for all three are given at 1:30 p.m. The afternoon ends with what the program calls the Crazy Fun Foam Party. “We’re going to transform the park, right in front of the stage, into a bubble zone and we’re going to get all covered in bubbles,” Roy said before the 2026 festival. The entertainment in the park is free. New in 2026, the Lions Club opened its Movies in the Park series during the weekend, showing “Encanto” at Longmire Park at dusk.

Sunday is the charity mushball tournament, also at Longmire Park, hosted in 2026 by One Net Yelm and Dancing Needles Tattoo. The first pitch is at 9 a.m. and the last game ends about 2 p.m. Every dollar of team registration fees goes to charity. The winning team chooses which local nonprofit or cause receives it.

The program has grown about as far as the ground allows. “We can’t go much bigger because the space just doesn’t allow for it,” Roy said. “How can we cram even more fun into a couple days?”

Floats on Yelm Avenue

The city describes the parade as military units, local businesses, civic organizations and youth groups, with spectators lining Yelm Avenue. In 2024 the route began at the corner of Prairie Park and Yelm Avenue, ended on Washington Avenue, and pushed on to the end of Third Street. Newspaper photographs from that year show the Yelm High School cheerleaders performing and a drummer playing with a band for Crossroads Community Covenant Church. In an earlier parade, the newspaper photographed men from J&I Power Equipment raising red Solo cups to the late Toby Keith.

Tina Richardson, executive director of the Chamber and sister to the emcee, set out to rebuild the parade. “When I first came on, one of the things I wanted to do was rebuild the Prairie Days Parade,” she said. She brought back the float competition and awards for costumes. For 2026 she reached two goals she had long held: a local marching band at the head of the line, and the Nisqually Indian Tribe marching as a participant and supporting the parade as a sponsor. About 50 entries had registered a week ahead, and space capped the count. Thirteen sponsors signed on, where six to eight is usual. Richardson also hinted at talk of a pirate ship float. Mayor Joe DePinto afterward called the turnout one of the strongest in recent memory and credited the 250th anniversary.

DePinto remembers the parade from his childhood: “That’s probably the coolest thing that I remember growing up as a kid — all of the candy that was handed out and all of the cool vehicles you saw at Prairie Days.”

The city lists its grand marshals back to 2012:

• 2012: Ed Bergh
• 2013: Barrie and Susan Wilcox
• 2015: Jason Witherow
• 2016: Debbie Caudill
• 2017: Kim Proffit
• 2018: Tracie Choate
• 2019: Tess Faughn
• 2022: Todd Stancil
• 2023: Heidi Smith and Jeevan Anandasakaran
• 2025: Mike Kempinski

A carnival, a button, and a bus barn

The accounts of how Prairie Days began do not agree. Gene Coulter, a member of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, said that he and a couple of other Yelm residents made the town’s once-popular carnival into Prairie Days in 1971, after visitors began losing interest in the carnival. “The first year was great. Everybody in town turned out for it, and all the businesses got behind us. The Prairie Days princesses and queens were in pony carts,” Coulter told the Nisqually Valley News. “We decided in a meeting that we would have something to designate Prairie Days, so we came up with a button, and we had 50 of them for the members. Well, everybody that saw them wanted them, so we went and got 500 of them. They sold right away, so they had to get another 500.”

DePinto gives a vaguer date. “I feel like it started in the 80s, and that’s always the date that I hear, but I think it dates back a little further than the 80s,” he said in 2026.

A carnival stayed part of the weekend for decades. For DePinto as a boy, Prairie Days was “all about” the rides and games. By his account, the last carnival came in 2018, at the old Yelm Middle School bus barn, where the new school now stands. The Yelm Lions Club put it on under a profit-sharing arrangement with the carnival company. DePinto, then a council member, opposed the way it was ended. He said much of the reason was that the city park, filled in over the years with the community center, splash pad, playground and stage, could no longer hold a carnival. “If you read the Facebook comments, people will say ‘it’s not the same,’” he said. “Yeah, it’s not the same as when you and I were kids.” His administration returned two small rides in 2025 and three in 2026, all free. “It used to be a small carnival. It wasn’t a big carnival — it was a small carnival, but it was cool,” he said. “It’s more inclusive now.”

In 2021 the state reopened at the start of July, leaving organizers Brianna Feller and Michael Malek less than two months to put Prairie Days together. That year the Nisqually Valley News reported the parade canceled for lack of participation.

Three years later, in 2024, the city’s centennial year, the Parks and Recreation Department and the Chamber named the Historic Preservation Commission grand marshal. Its five members, Coulter, Sandra “Sandy” Story, Austin Gray, Jesse Kellems and LouAnn “Hap” Hansen, led the parade on June 22 and threw the ceremonial first pitch at the mushball tournament the next morning. “Back in the day, you saw these people coming down the street in a car or a horse and buggy, and you never thought you’d ever be a part of that,” Coulter said. “Then time goes by so fast that pretty soon, you are.”