Slippery Gulch Celebration

The Slippery Gulch Celebration begins out of sight, along Hangman Creek. In the week before the 2026 festival, the Whitman County Gazette reported, youngsters were working hidden spots along the creek, trying to catch “monster” perch. The youth fishing derby opens on the second Saturday in June and closes on the third Friday. It runs on water between the Washington–Idaho line and the Fairbanks road north of Tekoa. In 2018 the Gazette described children carrying their catch to Tekoa Hardware to be weighed. In 2026 fish were measured on Thursday and Friday afternoons, and winners were announced after Saturday’s parade.

Tekoa is a farming community of 817 people at the 2020 census, in the northeast corner of Whitman County, among the rolling fields of the Palouse. The celebration falls on the third Saturday in June. The 2026 edition, on June 20, was billed in the festival’s newsletter, the Slippery Gulch Bugle, as the 97th annual event. General admission is free. Friday night belongs to the teenagers, who have a lock-in from 8 to 11. In 2013 organizer Melinda Wilkins described what the next morning does to the place: “Our town of 900 swells to at least double, sometimes triple in size that day.”

Breakfast, the market, and the Grand Parade on Crosby

On the 2026 Saturday the golf course and a tractor show ran all day. The Chamber Breakfast was served at Tekoa High School from 7:30, and at 8 the Trestle Fun Run set out from the same school on a two- or five-mile course. The run takes its name from the Milwaukee Road trestle north of town, a steel bridge 975 feet long and 115 feet high. HistoryLink dates it to 1909; Wikipedia gives 1908. It now carries the Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail. A car show and a truck show filled out the morning.

Vendors set up in three places. One is an indoor market at the Tekoa Community Center, in the former Jaycee Club building at 120 S. Crosby St. Another is a street-side market in a covered open-air vintage building at 147 N. Crosby. The third is an open-air market at the Gymkhana Grounds, where the kids’ games are held. Fresh produce must be grown in Washington, Idaho, or Oregon by the person selling it. The market’s page carries a line attributed to someone’s grandfather: “once in your life you need a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, and a preacher. But every day, 3 times a day, you need a farmer.” For food, the Bugle listed C&D’s Bar & Grill, Palouse Pizzaria, Tekoa Market, Tobra Coffee, Trestle Coffee, and food trucks. The 2026 shirt showed a classic grain elevator, and during the parade shirts were sold next to the post office.

The Kiddie Parade stepped off at 10:45 and the Grand Parade at 11, on Crosby. The 2026 grand marshals were Nick and Hillary Lawson. The Bugle says they turn up in the gym and at the show ring wherever their grandchildren compete. Riding as “Tekoa Roots” were several couples:

• Randy and Darlene Wise. Randy spent 48 years as a John Deere mechanic at Cash Hardware Co. He retired in 2019 and still makes the occasional service call “to keep green iron running.” Darlene decorated cakes for weddings, graduations, and birthdays across town.
• Don and Rebecca McHargue. Rebecca began teaching in the same first-grade classroom where she had been a student. She stayed as teacher and principal for 36 years.
• Kenny and Michelle Hay. They have put in years volunteering for Slippery Gulch.

The Class of 1976 came home as fifty-year graduates. The honored veterans were Bruce McGuigan, who retired from the Navy as a Senior Chief in 2007 after more than 26 years, and Master Sgt. Derrick Haxton, an aircraft mechanic on KC-135 refueling planes at Fairchild Air Force Base. Queen Alex Taufen rode the new float, “Small Town Big Heart,” waving to country songs. The float committee and royalty court build a new float each spring and take it to at least seven parades a year. By the Bugle’s account, it is the last community float in Whitman County.

Eggs, kids’ races, and Captain America

The egg toss follows the awards. Two-person teams compete to be the last to break an egg. The record distance is 93 feet, set in 2014 by Jeff Bruce and Gabe Smith. The Gazette called the 2026 contest the area’s largest. A bike challenge course also opened after the parade.

At 1 p.m. the kids’ games and races began, along with a scavenger hunt titled “Unearth the Heart of Tekoa” and a showing of a Tekoa history movie. The Tekoa Museum, at 139 S. Crosby St., opened for tours from 1 to 5. It keeps turn-of-the-century displays on the town’s railroad and farming past and otherwise opens by appointment. At 2:30 came a free showing of “Captain America: Brave New World.” Live music for adults began at 7:30, and the fireworks went up at 10. That afternoon, the celebration’s Facebook page posted a single line: “Glasses found at car show.”

A Fourth of July show at the Empire

The town got its name, according to city lore, from a porch. The settlement on Hangman Creek was first called Fork of the Creek, which no one thought fit for a post office. Daniel Truax’s wife looked out over the tents pitched as temporary housing and suggested Tekoa, Hebrew for “city of tents.” The celebration’s own name has no such story. “There are several theories as to why it is called Slippery Gulch Days,” Wilkins told the St. Maries Gazette Record in 2013. “One idea is that Tekoa is a railroad town built on mud roads, but nobody knows for sure. Not even the history books tell us.”

The festival once belonged to Independence Day. A photograph held by the Whitman County Historical Society shows people lined up at the Tekoa Empire Theater in the late 1950s for the annual 4th of July Slippery Gulch Show. The Empire had opened as a movie house in 1940 and closed in 1958. Residents renovated the Art Deco building in 2000. In 1976, the nation’s bicentennial year, Slippery Gulch Days began on July 3. The Spokesman-Review wrote that it “produced one of the best parades ever,” with “spectators three deep in some places along the six-block parade route.” In the early 1980s the celebration moved to the third week in June.

Wagons, bicycles, and high water

The 85th annual edition, June 13 to 15, 2013, opened with a “Royal Tea” on Thursday evening. Saturday brought a small-town idol contest, a watermelon-eating contest, and a duck race.

In 2015, trail advocates rode the length of the John Wayne Trail from North Bend, timing their return to Tekoa for Slippery Gulch Days. The town’s float that year carried riders on a four-seat bike. One of the grand marshals was trail advocate Monte Morgan. “The whole thing is to get people to come to Tekoa,” he told the Spokesman-Review.

The Gazette opened its 2018 preview with a pun: “Ninety years of solid footing will be in peril once again in Tekoa for its 90th annual Slippery Gulch Festival.” Scott and Paula Nelson were the grand marshals that year. A horse-drawn wagon sponsored by the Tekoa ambulance gave rides and carried the 70-year graduates of 1948 in the parade. Runners in the “Turn Back Time Fun Run” wore old Slippery Gulch shirts. At 2:30 the lights went down at the Empire for “Big Al’s Speakeasy,” a 1920s-themed musical show.

COVID canceled the region’s festivals in 2020, according to Avista’s “Local Treasures” column. In 2021 the Slippery Gulch board weighed the question for months. “We went back and forth for months, following COVID restrictions that changed all the time,” Wilkins said. “A couple of weeks ago we decided to just go ahead and do something.” They lengthened the parade route so people would not gather too closely together.

The next June brought a different problem. High water on Hangman Creek postponed the fishing derby for 2022, which Mary Marsh, committee member and treasurer, said would reopen to children under 12 once rescheduled. “I expect the water levels to go down in the next few days if it doesn’t continue to rain,” she said. “It’s Tekoa’s celebration day. This is our 93rd annual event.”