Selah Community Days

On the third weekend in May, a carnival goes up in Wixson Park in Selah. The 2026 festival ran from May 14 to May 17 under a red, white, and blue theme for America’s 250th birthday, with rides, a stage, and fireworks. Selah is a city in Yakima County, Washington, just north of Yakima. Because of its orchards and juice plants it is often called “The Apple Juice Capital of the World,” and the 2026 festival opened on Thursday afternoon with an apple pie baking contest at the Selah Civic Center.

Four days at Wixson Park

Friday evening’s stage in 2026 went to Melody Lanes, then line dancing with Keisha, then a band called the Aphrodisi-Yaks until ten. Saturday morning brought the parade on Jim Clements Way. The 2018 parade started at 10 a.m. and ran south along that street with more than 100 entries. Barb Petrea, then president of the Selah Community Days Association, told the Yakima Herald-Republic that the elections that year had swelled the count. A pancake breakfast at the Civic Center came first that morning, cooked by C C Catering, which took the job over after the Selah Kiwanis Club disbanded. The proceeds went to repairs at the civic center.

On the 2026 Saturday the park program held Armed Forces Appreciation, a set by FootLites, and the apple pie awards. Gin Mill Preacher and the Under the Covers Band played into the night, and the fireworks went up at 9:45. Sunday began with Church in the Park at 10 a.m. Broadway Bound Dance Academy followed, then a talent show the association billed as “15 minutes of fame.” Through the whole weekend, local organizations and businesses run vendor booths on the grounds.

The festival’s hold on Wixson Park has not been steady. In 2018 Petrea announced that the year’s festival would be the last in the park. That festival had a beach theme and was the first to fill the park entirely, with photo booths hidden around the grounds to draw visitors past more of the vendors. Construction was planned for the nearby Lince Elementary School, work on the Selah Aquatic Center might begin that fall, and the next festival was to move to Carlon Park. “We will not be coming back to Wixson Park,” Petrea said. The 2026 listings put the festival at Wixson Park again.

The float and the court

Each year the association designs and builds a parade float that travels to parades in nearby communities. The Miss Selah pageant is open to all Selah girls of high school age, home schoolers included. In 2018 a Mini Miss Selah contest was added for girls in kindergarten through second grade. The court chosen in the pageant rides the float through the season’s parades and works at local fundraisers. The 2026–27 court is Makayla Hitchcock as Miss Selah, Ryleigh Hayes as Jr. Miss Selah, Anastasia Couch as 1st Princess, Destiny McKee as 2nd Princess, and Alayna Applegate as Jr. Princess. In September 2026 the association posted its thanks to Prosser and to Naches after their events.

Volunteers run the festival, and individual and business donations pay for it. In September 2026 Petrea stepped down after a decade as president. Missy Maki succeeded her, and Rita Nelson took over as secretary from Stetson and Catherine. The association’s website keeps a line for its Grand Marshal, Milt Brown, 12/11/61–1/24/2022: “Thank you for all you did for Selah’s community, you were a bright light.”

A picnic for a new high school

Selah was incorporated on March 17, 1919. To reach the 300 residents the state required, its boosters waited for the fall harvest and signed up itinerant orchard and alfalfa workers until they had a tally of 310. The town’s first high school class, nine students, had graduated from a brick school in 1914. By the 1920s so many families had come that a new high school was needed, and when it opened in 1926 it held 154 students.

The new high school’s opening led to the first Community Day. At the end of that school year a parade of floats, flower-festooned autos, and children on decorated bikes went through town to the high school grounds, where a picnic was held. HistoryLink, which tells the story, records that the town-wide gathering continued into the twenty-first century.

Still water, or a pause

The name the festival carries has two accounts. Wikipedia and HistoryLink say it comes from an indigenous word meaning “still water” or “smooth water.” HistoryLink adds that early missionaries may have liked it for its likeness to the biblical word. The City of Selah says the name is biblical, but close to an ancient Indian name for the salmon fishery river of the region. The city credits Father Charles Marie Pandosy, Oblate of Mary Immaculate, who in the early spring of 1850 entered the area under the protection of the Yakima Chief Ow-hi. In the city’s account, Pandosy felt that the Indian name, meaning calm and peaceful, was very close to the “Selah” of the Psalms, which one translation gives as pause and meditate. The city traces the name back further, to October 17, 1805. On that day the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with help from the Chem-na-pum tribe, made a map in charcoal on a buffalo robe that showed the region as the Selatar, spelled Selartar on the map. The city calls the spelling an error in translation, since the early local dialects had no R.