Sage-N-Sun Festival

Sage-N-Sun spreads across the lawn and streets around the Grant County Courthouse in downtown Ephrata for three days each June. The Ephrata Chamber of Commerce runs it. The 2026 festival opened on the evening of Thursday, June 11, with the Ephrata Rotary Club Youth Parade, and its main program ran June 12 and 13 beneath flags and bunting hung across town for the nation’s 250th birthday. “Everything is patriotic-themed,” said Britney MacLeod, the Chamber’s director. “From our bands to the decoration of the town and the parade, the festival (will be) red, white and blue.”

Around the courthouse stood market and food vendors, food trucks, a beer garden, games and a kids play zone. The Columbia Basin Herald gave the festival’s age in 2026 as 116 years and called it possibly the oldest continuously held festival in Grant County. A 2018 report from iFiber One called that June’s gathering the 108th edition, then billed as the Sage-N-Sun Family Festival. It opened with a Chief for a Day event at 2 p.m. Thursday and the Rotary youth parade at 6. MacLeod said in 2026 that the crowd was reaching past Ephrata. “We’re finding we’re getting more foot traffic from lake-goers who are coming through town or people who are hearing about it in neighboring counties,” she said.

Saturday on Basin Street

Saturday began at 8 a.m. with the Ephrata Lions Club fun run from Ephrata Middle School. By the Herald’s count it was the 36th in Ephrata’s history. The Grand Parade then assembled in the streets near Ephrata High School and wound up C Street Northwest and down Basin Street. In the line were cars, trucks, tractors, horses and vintage cars. The Ephrata High School band and cheerleaders marched, and a mariachi band played. Roller skaters rolled past, and a dirt bike rider popped a wheelie. A kiddie train carried riders, and the floats bore giant horns, giant chickens and a giant guitar. A water truck sprayed the onlookers. For nearly an hour candy and bubbles went over the sidewalks, and children darted out for what was thrown, some of it by the Ephrata Baseball team. Dick Russell waved from a tractor. Kaylee Stump, the Miss Moses Lake Roundup queen, chose “a different form of horsepower,” in the Grant County Journal’s phrase.

The grand marshals were military veterans and those still serving, and they rode on a float. “We’ve partnered with the American Legion and they’re bringing in quite a few people on a couple of semi-trucks,” MacLeod said before the parade.

Mayor Steve Oliver walked his first Sage-N-Sun parade in office with his son, Brooks. “I had to talk him into it, but he did like it once we got started,” Oliver said. “He had a blast. All his friends were seeing him, and he was smiling – a little embarrassed – but having a great time.” He credited parade organizer Susy Anderson and the Chamber. “It was full all three days,” he said. “Usually, people burn out after the first day, but everyone was there, experiencing it the whole time.”

On nearby courts, teams played through the midday heat in the 3-on-3 basketball tournament run by Ephrata Parks and Recreation. The tournament had fallen by the wayside for a number of years until the 2025 festival revived it. “We had lots of out-of-towners, a lot of local teams in the elementary groups,” MacLeod said.

Two nights of music and a hundred drones

The evening concerts play to the courthouse lawn, and the Chamber advises bringing a lawn chair or blanket. Friday’s 2026 program ran under the title “Stars, Stripes and Country Nights.” It opened with Hell on Heels of Seattle, an eight-piece tribute to the queens of country. Its promotional materials name Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert. Levi Blom followed. He is a singer-songwriter from Butte, Montana, who played semi-pro hockey before turning to music and has released two EPs.

Saturday’s program was called “Red, White and Blue Revival.” Soul Siren played hits of the 1970s and ‘80s, and ‘90s Rewind carried on into the 1990s and early 2000s. “You didn’t see people leaving,” Oliver said.

After the last set, about 100 drones rose over the courthouse. They formed smiley faces, soaring eagles and red, white and blue “USA” letters above the town. “I’m always impressed with those,” Oliver said. “It’s something newer for us, and I’m glad we’re bringing those kinds of attractions here.”

A schoolmarm and a bank robbery

The same weekend, the Grant County Historical Museum held its annual Living Museum. Donna Anderson kept the one-room schoolhouse as schoolmarm. With a smile, she cautioned visitors to behave or they might end up in a dunce cap with their nose against the wall. In the print shop, Dennis Buchmann worked a collection of old calculators, and 19-year-old Zenda Hoskins tried out a manual typewriter. Two gunslingers tested their quick draw in mock shootouts on Main Street. Afterward, 80-year-old Ray “Ephrim” Carvo rested on the museum boardwalk with a six-shooter and a bag of gold, or a facsimile of one. The town marshal had just foiled his mock bank robbery.

Springs in the sagebrush

The town grew up around a set of cool springs in arid sagebrush country. The region’s tribes called the place Tahtahitan or, by some accounts, Antuhippum. The Columbia band under Chief Moses camped there for its camas roots and good hunting. Beginning around 1886, the rancher Frank Beezley turned the land around the springs into hay fields, orchards and gardens, and the place became Beezley Springs. In 1893 Ellensburg lawmen arrested the bank robber Matt Warner, who had holed up there in a cabin on land leased from Beezley.

The Great Northern Railroad arrived in 1892 and named its stop “No. 11.” Sometime in 1893 the railroad renamed it Ephrata, a variation on the biblical Ephratah, meaning “fruitful,” the ancient name of Bethlehem. No one knows who chose it. According to town lore, an anonymous railroad employee had lately been to the Holy Land and thought the land resembled it.

Jesse Cyrus had bought most of Beezley’s land, and he platted the town site on July 10, 1901. He came to be called the Father of Ephrata. In 1909 the legislature carved Grant County out of Douglas County and named Ephrata the seat, though state law required a county seat to have at least 300 people. W. Gale Matthews, a pioneer, recalled in 1955 that the town had claimed a little over that number. “I think they counted some sheep dogs, however,” he said. The 1910 census counted 323.