Round Valley Blackberry Festival

The arbor on Howard Street

The booths at the Round Valley Blackberry Festival stand under a wooden arbor built in the shape of a horseshoe. It wraps around a bandstand on the festival grounds, called The Walnut Grove, on Howard Street in Covelo, in northern Mendocino County. Wisteria covers the arbor and shades the vendors. The festival’s history page calls the grounds a “park-like back yard,” planted over the years with trees and shrubs. Admission is free. The festival is held the third weekend in August and is a project of the Friends of the Round Valley Public Library.

The 2026 festival, the 43rd, ran August 15 and 16. Gates opened at ten each morning. More than 30 artisan vendors sold crafts and food. There was Mendocino County wine tasting, children’s activities, and live music on both days, streamed all weekend over KYBU Radio 96.9 FM. An art show hung in the Round Valley Library Commons next to the grounds. On Saturday at 6:30 in the evening the committee added something new, “Line Dancing for All.” Sunday began with a pancake breakfast. The Feather Dancers then performed the Feather Dance at the festival grounds, which the festival’s own posts called “the traditional Feather Dance.” A vintage car and motorcycle show filled Sunday afternoon. The Sunday footrace has been run for years, but the festival’s website said it needed “an organizer – someone willing to take this on entirely!” No source shows whether a race was held in 2026.

When the weekend ended, the festival’s page wrote: “And once again, for the 43rd time, The Best Little Blackberry Festival in the World has come to an end.” It thanked the volunteers by first name, from Steve W and Howard to “Kids Korner Organizers,” and set the next dates as August 21–22, 2027.

A reporter for The Willits News described the 2017 festival this way. Young and old dressed in shades of purple. Kids ran with snow cones, adults waited in line at the food vendors, and artists sold jewelry. Teresa Aguilar and Christina Luna drove up from Ukiah and Laytonville for one thing, blackberry pie. “We got it from the FFA,” Aguilar said. “My kids did 4-H.” Booths that year included KYBU, Saraba African Arts, the Paperback Cafe, the Pickle Man, and the California Indian Manpower Consortium. Cal Fire gave fire demonstrations. Bethany Soulliere, who sold jewelry from her Recycled Vintage booth, counted the crowd: “We got hippies, wine tasters, foodies, upper scale jewelry makers, political party booths. It somehow comes together in this beautiful thing that can only be called Covelo.” Committee member Sharon Durall estimated about 500 people came each day.

A parade and a downpour, August 13, 1983

The first festival opened with a parade on August 13, 1983. It was led by the grand marshal winners, Helen Herman and her husband, the town barber. The festival’s history page spells his name Charley. The Ukiah Daily Journal, printing the same account in 2007, spells it Charlie. In mid-afternoon dark clouds came over the valley, and a downpour soaked the visitors and the wares. The organizers’ account says the “fearless leaders did not despair, but instead engaged in the first and only wet T-shirt contest.” The rain passed.

That first program had arts and crafts booths, musicians, scarecrow decorating, square dancing, a blackberry pie-eating contest, a pancake breakfast, a Lions Club barbecue, and a library footrace.

The idea had grown out of talk in the early eighties about a town center for Round Valley, with a farmer’s market, a gallery, and other things to draw people to one place. According to the festival’s history, “perhaps sparked by that vision,” Shirley Martion proposed an annual blackberry festival. She formed the first committee with Barbara Wyre, Rose Baschal, Susan Wilson, and Joyce Weisman. The committee worked under the nonprofit umbrella of the Round Valley Chamber of Commerce and started with a $1,600 grant from the Mendocino County Chamber of Commerce. It raised more money at an ice cream social and other events, and local businesses and individuals donated materials.

The committee wrote down three goals: to boost Round Valley’s economy by promoting tourism, to give local people a place to sell their handiwork, and “to unite the citizens in a common cause.” The history page says those goals still guide the festival.

Many of the founders, the same account says, were followers of Alan Chadwick, who had created the Round Valley Garden Project in the 1970s. In the early years, to advertise the festival, some of the women covered themselves in purple balloons and marched in parades in Willits and in Round Valley. The history page closes with a long roll of “original dreamers and doers”: Shirley and Bob Martion, Rosemary and Carl Baschal, Joyca and Robert Cunnan, Barbara and Robbie Wyre, Stephen and Gloria Decater, Lew Chichester, the Town Band, “and many, many others who lent a hand and believed.”

Building the bandstand and rebuilding the horseshoe

Robert Cunnan drew the original design for the bandstand. Volunteers built it, along with the arbor for the booths, in time for the first festival. A 2012 notice in The Willits News called the bandstand the gazebo. Richard and Susan Wilson owned the land until 1995. The history page names John Marshall and Russ Segure as the owners who followed. Under them, trees and shrubs were planted across the grounds, and the wisteria grew until it covered the whole arbor.

The 2007 account in the Daily Journal said the original structures were “still standing,” needing little maintenance. By 2017, at the 35th festival, the committee had decided otherwise. “It’s run its course,” Durall said of the old wooden loop. Mendocino Forest Products donated toward the first phase of a replacement. Willits Redwood, Conrad Lumber, Redwood Empire, and Mendocino Redwood Company pledged lumber for the second. Durall said the project had raised up to $10,000 and would yield 31 new booths for the following year.

Some parts of the program have lasted a long time. The 2007 account says the Blackberry Jammers had opened the festival on Saturday for nearly twenty-five years, playing their original score, “Blackberry Jam.” In 2012 they started at noon in the gazebo, with Mickey the Clown back as master of ceremonies and a square dance on Saturday night. Sunday that year brought a 5K and 10K run and walk, a country-style breakfast, and an antique car and motorcycle show. In 2007 the car show went by the name Classy Chassis.

A drink from Thanksgiving

Myrna Rountree has come to every festival since the first. The festival’s history page says, “we all have slurped blackberry slushes while enjoying the talented musicians.” Rountree is the one who makes them. In 2017 she worked under the arbor with her daughters and grandchildren, making blackberry slush, tea, and pie.

She told The Willits News how the slush began. Thinking about what to bring to the first festival, “I decided to make the frozen blackberry drink. Which is something my mother always had at Thanksgiving.” Her mother helped her make it at the festival for many years, and she has made it every year since. “We think this is fun, I don’t know why,” she said, laughing.