Swiss Days

All through September, wooden cows stand in front of homes and businesses along the tree-lined streets of Santa Clara, in Washington County, Utah. Each is painted and dressed by whoever ordered it, and they come in two sizes, Cow and Calf. The St. George News describes the display as a decades-old custom. It recalls both the town’s farming past and the Swiss practice of bringing alpine herds down into the villages for winter, often hung with flowers and bells. The sponsorships also raise money for community projects. “The herd keeps growing like crazy every year; there’s got to be over 100 cows now,” said Lainee Frei, the Swiss Days coordinator. “Everyone in the community has really taken the cows to another level.”

The cows come before the festival itself. Santa Clara City runs Swiss Days over the last weekend in September, Thursday through Saturday. The 2026 festival ran September 24–26. Most of it takes place at City Hall, 2603 Santa Clara Drive, and in the grass field across the road.

Three days at City Hall

The first evening opens with a community dinner at Town Hall. In 2026 the plate cost $7: a hamburger or hot dog with beans, salad, chips and dessert. At seven o’clock the opening ceremonies present the Grand Marshal, the Volunteer of the Year and the Santa Clara Royalty, followed by Swiss dancing. The 2026 grand marshals were Mimi McKenna and Darin Bird, co-chairs of the town’s America250 committee. “They’ve done so much,” Frei said. “We’ve had monthly activities to celebrate America250, and a lecture series where different people teach our community about the Constitution and America’s birth.”

Friday morning begins at Sunbrook with the Santa Clara Kiwanis golf tournament, whose proceeds go to the city and area charities. In the afternoon the entertainment tent opens near City Hall. The 2026 program began with Santa Clara Elementary and the Vista School for the Performing Arts, then the McDonald Siblings, then Swiss dancers with an accordion. At 5:45 came the mooing contest. At six the Swiss Miss & Mister introductions presented children of the town, ages two to ten, on stage in Swiss dress, along with their favorite things and hobbies. At seven the free concert began. In 2026 the band was Music City Groove, a seven-piece party band. In 2017 it had been Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband.

Food and craft vendors work the grounds through the afternoon, and there are inflatables and a three-point shooting contest for children. The Santa Clara Historical Society holds a silent auction and sells a jigsaw puzzle of the town by the folk artist Eric Dowdle. In 2026 the puzzles sold from the white tent in front of Town Hall. Booths for the founding families are staffed by genealogy volunteers who help visitors trace their lines back to the first settlers. The America250 display in 2026 showed historic flags tracing the stars and stripes from 1776. From four to six on Friday, Heritage Square at 3020 Santa Clara Drive holds a free puppet show and hands-on pioneer activities for children.

Below City Hall is the Samuel R. Knight Santa Clara History Museum, in the basement of the town hall. It stays open through the festival and holds items that belonged to the first settler families.

The parade from the Hamblin Home

Saturday starts at 6:30 with the warm-up for the 5K, and the race goes off with a shotgun start at seven. The pancake breakfast runs from 7:30 to 9:30 at $4 a plate. At 9:30 the parade sets out along Santa Clara Drive from the Jacob Hamblin Home to City Hall. A 2017 notice listed what it carried: royalty, antique cars, the grand marshal, local businesses, schools, live animals and homemade floats. The St. George News reported that in 2026, again, “a special surprise will be dropped from the sky” as the parade got under way. The 2026 theme was “Where Freedom Rings!”

Afterward the tent fills again. In 2026 it opened with the George Staheli Oompah Band. At noon came the yodeling contest and the parade winners. Later sets included the Tuacahn Center for the Arts, the Bar None Wranglers and the G Bar C Band. The royalty held a meet-and-greet, and bingo was called in the Council Chambers at 1:30. The festival closed at four.

Ninety Swiss and a New Year’s flood

The names on the oompah band and the founding-family booths go back to 1861. That October, at the church’s general conference, Brigham Young called a company of Swiss converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to go south and raise cotton and grapes. The Daughters of Utah Pioneers marker No. 1639, erected in 1939, says about 93 pioneers came under Daniel Bonelli and arrived November 28, 1861. The city’s history counts fifteen Swiss families. Redrock Media’s account says many of them hitched rides south from Salt Lake City because they could not afford wagons of their own. The town museum’s roll of the company includes Bonelli, Blickenstorfer, Bosshard, Ence, Frei, Graf, Gubler, Hafen, Hug, Itten, Moosman, Reber, Staheli, Stucki, Tobler, Willi and Wittwer.

Others had come before them. In 1854, according to the museum, a missionary party sent south reached the Santa Clara River on June 10, a stream the Indians called the Tonaquint. They met with many Indians there and smoked the peace pipe. When the others went back to Harmony on June 17, Jacob Hamblin and William Henefer were assigned to stay. A letter to Brigham Young dated December 22, 1854, reported two log cabins built that winter, one for the missionaries and one for the chief and his friends. The missionaries cut the logs and the Indians carried them, along with the rock for the chimney. The city dates Santa Clara’s founding to that year, with ten missionary families of the Southern Indian Mission. Those families built a 14-foot dam in 1855 and grew, carded, spun and wove their first cotton the same year. The city gives 1856 as the year Fort Clara was built. The marker places the fort one mile west of the present townsite. The river had been named long before. In 1776 the Domínguez and Escalante expedition called it “El Rio Sulfureo de los Piramides,” and the city traces the name Santa Clara to the Old Spanish Trail years.

The Swiss lived inside and around the fort, mostly outside it in dugouts and makeshift huts. On New Year’s Day 1862 the creek rose. According to the marker, the fort, the dam, the ditches and many other buildings washed away. The museum adds the gristmill, most of the homes, and the gardens and orchards. The townsite was moved to where it stands now. The marker says lack of food, shelter and clothing “tested their endurance for years.” Yet the first Santa Clara church went up that same year, and the Jacob Hamblin Home was built in 1863 at 3325 Santa Clara Drive. Vineyards and orchards followed. Redrock Media writes that some of the grapes were for sacramental wine. By the 1870s the Swiss were selling produce and wine in Pioche, Nevada.

The town was incorporated in 1915. The State of Utah restored the Hamblin Home in the 1960s and opened it to visitors. In 1973 the Virgin River Gorge freeway opened and traffic bypassed Santa Clara.

Flood, mud and helping hands

Redrock Media reports that Swiss Days began in 1990 as a way to raise money to preserve several of the town’s historic buildings. Over time it became a way to keep the Swiss heritage alive and to have some fun. In 2011 the festival marked 150 years since the settlement. In 2013, which the St. George News called a weeklong festival, the theme was “Flood, Mud and Helping Hands.” The year before, on September 11, 2012, the dike at Laub Pond Dam had breached and flooded homes and businesses. An earlier flood had come in 2005.

That year Denise Laswell Webster told the St. George News about her great-grandmother, Barbara Staheli Graf. She was born December 25, 1861, the first baby born to the Swiss settlers in Santa Clara. One week later came the New Year’s flood, and Jacob Hamblin rescued her and her mother from it. “We never could understand how a flood could wash away the fort until 2005 when we saw it firsthand,” Webster said. “I felt I touched history that day.”