Swiss Days

In the week before the festival, the beef for Saturday’s dinner goes into the ground on Midway Town Square. Randall Ercanbrack brings several tons of tart cherry wood from his orchards in Payson. Family and community members bury the meat in a cured pit, and it smokes there for two days. The festival committee calls the burial “a favorite Swiss Days tradition.” On Saturday at four o’clock it comes up as the BBQ dinner: slow-cooked beef, baked potato, corn, a roll, and a drink, on an $18 ticket.

Swiss Days fills the square on the Friday and Saturday of Labor Day weekend. The 2026 festival ran September 4 and 5, and a local real-estate broker’s guide counted it as the 79th. Admission is free. Three bodies run it: the Swiss Days Committee, the Midway Boosters Committee, and Midway City. The sources count the booths differently. The city describes hundreds of artisans and vendors “from across the country.” The Heber Valley tourism site counts more than 200 purveyors of arts, crafts, and food. The broker’s guide counts more than 180 juried artisans and boutique vendors. The tourism site says the market has grown past the square, and booths now set up across the surrounding streets. The broker adds that downtown shops keep longer hours over the weekend and put pop-up booths outside their doors. Both sources say the festival draws tens of thousands of visitors. The committee calls it “one of the largest events in the state.”

All of the work is done by unpaid volunteers. The committee lists some of it: “the Kraut Pound in late spring, Swiss bread & Bratzeli baking all summer, months of organizing major logistics, and endless hours of set up/take down along the square.”

Bread from the old social hall

Much of that baking happens at 71 East Main Street, in a building with pot-rock walls 22 inches thick. It went up in 1898 as the Social Hall. Until the early 1940s it held Midway’s plays, operas, speeches, concerts, box socials, and Saturday night dances to the Midway Orchestra. In 1941 the Mormon church began using it as a cannery and welfare storage center, and it served as a cannery and Bishop’s storehouse until 2011. Since then, according to the Heber Valley walking tour, it has been used mainly for making the dough for the Swiss bread and scones sold at the festival.

Volunteers sign up months ahead to mix the dough and later bake the bread and Bratzeli cookies. Their shifts run from early morning into the evening. The broker reports some bakers starting as early as 5:30 a.m. In 2026 Leslie Wasden was in charge of the Relief Society baking. The committee notes that she once ran her own bakery back east. The goods are sold at the Relief Society Bakery booth, and the committee warns that “they sell out quickly.” The scone line has become part of the festival. In the weeks before the 2026 festival, the committee asked its followers how long they had waited in it.

The Utah Division of Multicultural Affairs lists the other food: bratwurst, locally produced raclette cheese, and Swiss chocolates. On Saturday the day begins at seven o’clock with a $10 chuckwagon breakfast.

Alpenhorns, yodelers, and William Tell

Music runs on two stages from morning to the close of market. The Town Square Stage is outdoors, and Kristen Lloyd was master of ceremonies there in 2026. The Town Hall Stage is inside, with Morgan Murdock at the microphone. The 2026 program included Kerry Christensen, billed as Master Yodeler, on both days. It also had the Utah Alpenhorns, Accordions Aloud, the Swiss Bells, the Swiss Chorus, the Swiss Children’s Choir, the Beehive Statesmen, the Puppet Players, the Heber Valley Harp Symphony, and Wasatch Back Irish Dance. Each day there was a staging of the William Tell play, and on Saturday a local talent show. The Swiss Miss and her four attendants appear on both stages throughout the weekend.

Visitors are asked to come dressed for the occasion. The committee suggests “a head wreath, goatsbeard hat, or the full sha-bang dirndl or lederhosen.” At two o’clock each day, adults in costume line up for photographs at the Boosters merchandise booth behind the main stage, and three winners are announced from the stage at three. Friday’s winners get a meal ticket and Saturday’s get a BBQ ticket. On each day, the first fifteen children to reach the booth get a snow cone. The same booth sells enamel hat pins and sterling silver charms, and the proceeds go back into the town. The city points families toward a children’s area with a bounce house and a climbing wall.

Saturday starts early. The 10K leaves Centennial Park at seven, and the organizers call it “one of the State’s Most Popular 10K Races.” At ten the parade starts at 300 East and moves west along Main Street to 200 West. For the 2026 parade, held during America’s 250th anniversary, entrants were asked to decorate with patriotic and Swiss themes together. The parade rules forbid throwing candy from floats, so treats must be handed out by walkers alongside. The broker describes candy thrown to children along the route. He also describes a World War II aircraft flyover during the parade. The state’s Multicultural Affairs office reports that as the festival grew, residents began camping out to hold the best viewing spots. Before the 2026 parade the committee asked its followers: “Do you stand or chance setting up a chair?”

Harvest Days and the hot pots

The Town Hall Stage sits in a building made of pot rock, or tufa, a limestone deposited by the geothermal waters under Midway. The building went up between 1939 and 1941. The lime in its mortar was burned locally, and its lumber was cut from nearby mountains and milled by the Michie Brothers. It was dedicated in June 1941 as the Midway Recreation Center. The Swiss Glockenspiel was installed in 1987.

The same hot water had supported the town’s resorts since the 1880s, among them Schneitter’s Hot Pots and Luke’s Hot Pots. In 1947 the owners of Luke’s, Joseph B. and Pauline S. Erwin, worked with a group of local supporters to start an annual celebration called Harvest Days. The sources differ on what became of the resort. The Heber Valley tourism site says it is now Ameyalli Resort, while the city history names it the Mountain Spa. The broker describes Harvest Days as a celebration of the end of the growing season in a farming community settled heavily by Swiss and German immigrants. The tourism site says the founders saw a chance to honor the first Swiss settlers. The Multicultural Affairs office says the harvest festival drew on that Swiss heritage gradually, “over the years.”

The Erwins’ supporters formed a club that became the Midway Boosters. The club still exists and backs city improvements and activities beyond the festival. The sources describe the proceeds in different ways. The tourism site says the money goes to improvements on the town square and in public parks. The committee names town events, activities, and local and global humanitarian charities. The broker’s account is the most detailed. He reports that half the proceeds after expenses, typically around $50,000, go to Latter-day Saint Charities. The other half returns to the Boosters for town beautification and for scholarships for Wasatch County high school seniors. He puts the volunteers at 2,000 to 3,000 a year. Their pay, he writes, is a free meal, a t-shirt, a ballcap, and what the chairman calls “the joy of serving.”

The 10K came later. In 1978 Courtland Nelson was hired as a full-time ranger at Wasatch Mountain State Park, and Mitzi Nelson began teaching fourth grade at Midway School. Soon after they married and moved to town, Roy Kohler recruited them to organize registration and routing for the newly created 10K Fun Run. That job began nearly five decades of volunteer work in Midway. The Boosters named the Nelsons 2026 Citizens of the Year.

Swiss families on Snake Creek

Midway is older than its festival by nearly ninety years. A wagon road through Provo Canyon was finished in 1858. In 1859 families settled along Snake Creek in two clusters, an upper and a lower settlement. One of them was later called Mound City, after the limestone formations left by the hot springs. According to the city history, in 1866 territorial governor Brigham Young urged settlers to build forts as hostilities with Indians grew. The two settlements agreed to build theirs halfway, or midway, between them. The tourism site’s timeline dates the fort agreement to 1858. In another entry, the same timeline says the settlements moved to the present site during the Black Hawk War of 1865 to 1867.

In the 1860s and 1870s a large number of Swiss families arrived, with names such as Gertsch, Huber, Kohler, Probst, Zenger, Durtschi, and Abegglen. The tourism site says these pioneers were “stunned by its similarity to their homeland,” and that the view of the Wasatch Back and Mount Timpanogos “felt like home.” The town incorporated on June 1, 1891. Some of those family names are still found in Midway. One of the attendants to the 2026 Swiss Miss was Kaylee Kohler. Her pageant page says she lives on her family’s dairy farm, where she is “a master sprinkler changer, cow chaser, and calf feeder.” It also says she “hopes to honor her ancestors by being a part of Swiss Miss!”