Snoqualmie Days

On the Saturday morning of Snoqualmie Days, the fire station on Snoqualmie Parkway opens at seven for pancakes. The Snoqualmie Firefighters Association, a nonprofit, puts on the breakfast with the City of Snoqualmie Fire Department. The 2026 breakfast ran from 7 to 11 a.m. on August 22, at $15 for adults. Firefighters and EMTs pose for family photographs beside the emergency vehicles, and T-shirts and bike helmets are for sale. A raffle and a silent auction run alongside. The association calls the breakfast a “Zero Waste Event” and serves on recyclable and compostable goods only. The proceeds buy special equipment for the department and pay for fire education, high school scholarships in the health and fire sciences, and the upkeep of Snoqualmie’s original Engine 1.

The parade on Railroad Avenue

At 11 the Grand Parade steps off at Newton Street and Railroad Avenue in Historic Downtown Snoqualmie. It follows Railroad Avenue to King Street. The line holds marching bands, drill teams, floats, antique vehicles, and local businesses. The fire truck whose arrival started the festival rides in it every year. The organizers advise arriving early for a seat. The parade has been the festival’s central feature since 1939.

In 2026 Vendor Row lined Railroad Avenue from 10 to 4. The UNW Model Railroad Show set up in City Hall. Dan the LEGO Man ran a LEGO show and activities in the freight room of the Snoqualmie Depot, and Operation Lifesaver took the depot’s back lawn. The Encompass Kids Field of Fun filled Railroad Park from noon to 4. From the depot, the Northwest Railway Museum ran train rides at 11, 1, and 3, offering, in its words, “the sights and sounds of a working railroad.” The Snoqualmie Valley Record has noted that the museum’s passenger trains use the same line that brought the first regional tourists to Snoqualmie Falls on July 4, 1889.

Wine on the rails, music on Falls Avenue

The festival opens on Friday evening with the Snoqualmie Valley Wine Train. On August 21, 2026, riders checked in at the Snoqualmie Depot at 4:30 and took a first pour in the freight room. The train left at five and ran 5.5 miles of historic railway to the museum’s Railway History Campus. There a second tasting came with hors d’oeuvres and live music. The train was back at the depot by 7:30. Wineries of the Snoqualmie Valley and of Washington State pour, and riders must be 21. That same evening the Chase Rabideau Band played The Bindlestick from 7 to 9, at $10 a head.

On Saturday the Music Crawl, billed “Live From Snoqualmie’s Falls Avenue!”, moves from room to room between 3:30 p.m. and midnight. Morgan Henley Presents books it. The 2026 lineup:

• Jimmy James and the Sure Things at The Bindlestick
• Caveman Dave at Buckshot Honey
• Mountain Ear at The Black Dog
• Lucia Flores-Wiseman at Snoqualmie Brewery
• Steel Beans, back at The Bindlestick
• Eldridge Gravy at The Eagles Club, from 10 until midnight

Railroad Days and the band that kept playing

For years the festival went by Snoqualmie Railroad Days. In 2019 the Valley Record reported it marking 80 years of “trains, timber and tradition” over the third weekend of August. That year brought the festival’s first pub crawl, from The Black Dog Cafe to Smokey Joe’s. There were a Kiddie and Grand Parade, a firefighter’s competition in Sandy Cove Park, TimberSports, Art in the Park, and train and speeder car rides. The Legend’s Car Club Car Show filled the Sunday. Saturday night closed with the Big Band Dance, the Maple Valley Big Band playing from 6 to 8. The dance had been absent for 20 years.

Cole Van Gerpen, a longtime volunteer serving that year as assistant to the coordinator, explained the dance’s return. “We’re very excited to be bringing it back because there was a time where it was the only event Railroad Days had,” he said. “During WWII, when none of the rest of the festival was put on, the dance continued on and is part of the reason we still celebrate today.” He added, “It’s important to have a reminder of Snoqualmie’s history.”

The festival now carries the name it was given at the start.

Two hose carts and a church bell

Before 1939, Snoqualmie fought fires with two hose carts. When someone spotted a fire, a volunteer ran to sound the fire siren, which is still heard downtown each day at noon. The first volunteer to arrive grabbed a hose cart and ran to the blaze. Martin Fringer, a volunteer firefighter and later fire chief, recalled that even an “average fire meant a completely burned building.” By the 1930s the town was working toward an official fire district and a community fire truck. In March 1939 voters passed a $5,000 bond measure for new firefighting equipment.

The truck had not yet come when, in the early afternoon of May 10, fire broke out in the woodshed of the downtown church. Its origin has never been determined. A group of boys was seen running from the woodshed as the fire spread, which caused speculation.

Margaret Hackney rushed into the burning church to save the hymnals. Her husband, volunteer firefighter Frank Hackney, arrived with the hose cart. The “water pressure…was not strong enough to break the windows to get water in the church,” he recalled. “We had to use rocks.” Charlie McGarrigle, an ex-firefighter from Renton and manager of Puget Power, ran toward the fire in a “nice new grey suit with a grey fedora hat.” According to Frank, Charlie “grabbed the [hose] nozzle and…went so fast I tripped on the step, and the only thing that kept me up was hanging on to hose.”

Lorna Jean (Wallace) Young was in her second-grade arithmetic class. At shouts from other students she looked out the window and saw “smoke billowing up over town.” Her teacher, Miss Peggy McKay, sent the class back to their desks to work the ten minutes left until lunch recess. Running home afterward, Young was “stopped dead in her tracks.” She heard yelling inside the church. “Then, I saw the men run out just a fraction of a second before the [church] bell came crashing down.”

The Snoqualmie Valley Record reported on May 11, 1939, that “five volunteer firemen of the Snoqualmie fire department narrowly missed death when a 400-pound church bell plunged down from the burning steeple – barely five feet from the firemen.” The bell was so hot, it was said, that it sizzled in the water collecting on the church floor. The structure was saved and rebuilt six months later. The old bell went back up in a new steeple.

Red hats on July 29

The new fire truck arrived two months after the fire. On July 29, residents turned out for the first Snoqualmie Days. Volunteer firefighters sold red cardboard fireman hats for 25 cents to raise money for the department. Any man caught without a red hat was said to owe a 10-cent fine. There was a parade, a street dance, a carnival, and a water fight between the Snoqualmie and Issaquah fire departments.