Washington State Autumn Leaf Festival

The leaves hung on the downtown gazebo in Leavenworth for the Washington State Autumn Leaf Festival are real. Association volunteers decorated the gazebo before the 2026 festival opened and reported that they “had the opportunity to visit with lots of people that thought we were putting up artificial leaves.” The Royal Bavarians, who call themselves the festival’s official host, describe the season around the Bavarian village this way: “The mountains and hillsides are bursting with color. Fresh fruit is being harvested and ready for market in the local fruit stands.”

The 2026 festival ran September 25, 26 and 27, with activities and events scheduled across the weekend. The Leavenworth Echo reported sunny skies and large crowds for the activities, the music and the Saturday parade. Afterward the association thanked “the thousands that joined us.” Collector’s pins for each year go on sale months ahead at shops downtown, most of them on Front Street: the Nutcracker Haus at 707, the Wood Shop at 719, the Hat Shop at 725, Mountain Country Corner at 843, and the Willkommen Center at 645. The 2026 pins were in the shops by mid-May. On festival Saturday in 2026, the Kris Kringl shop marked its 40th anniversary and invited the public to join it and the Royal Lady.

Front Street at noon

The Grand Parade begins promptly at noon on Saturday and travels Front Street. A Kid’s Parade goes first. In 2026 the Veterans of Foreign Wars led the main parade. Behind them came the grand marshal, Henry Hettick, a longstanding leader in the town’s arts and theater community, waving from a vintage car, and then the Royal Lady of the Autumn Leaves, Jenny Evans. Veterans waved from a 1957 Shore Patrol Jeep. Visiting royalty came from other festivals. Queen Lauren represented the Penticton Peach Festival, a harvest celebration in Penticton, British Columbia. Princess Ava rode the Spokane Lilac Festival float. More royalty rode the Heart of Cashmere float, and the Portland Rosarians also took part. Judy Derpack walked for the Greater Leavenworth Museum.

The parade was the end of a long trip for the Royal Lady, who had spent the summer representing Leavenworth at festivals across the Pacific Northwest.

The Royal Lady’s summer

The association has chosen a Royal Lady every year since 1964 and names her each March at a Royal Lady Gala: March 4 in 2025, March 3 in 2026. Sandy Houston, the 2025 Royal Lady, was described as the 60th appointed. Her schedule shows the circuit. She began at the Washington State Apple Blossom Festival in Wenatchee and then went to Leavenworth’s Maifest. After that she traveled to Spokane, New Westminster, Portland, Marysville, Cashmere, Olympia, Seattle and Penticton, and she finished in September at home. “I’m excited to spread and share the beauty of the mountains, the fresh air, the town, and the spirit of its people with everyone,” Houston said when she was crowned.

Jenny Evans followed a similar route in 2026. The association posted from the Apple Blossom Grand Parade on May 2 (“Finally starting to move in the parade!”), from the Maifest parade, where she rode with her family, and from Spokane, where the entry was “Rose planting in Spokane then judging at Lilac Festival.” In June it posted from an honorary knighting in Portland. For Evans, the association wrote, the role was a chance to give back to a community that had supported her family across generations. Each year the association designs and builds a new float to carry Leavenworth’s Royal Lady around the region.

The Royal Lady is an older woman, called “mature youth.” Arleen Blackburn, the 1987 Royal Lady, explained the choice to the Echo in 2009: “People like that the Royal Lady is an older person. They feel they can relate to an older person inviting them to Leavenworth.”

The association, known as ALFA, describes itself as a founding member of the Northwest Festival Hosting Association. Its president, Jessie Swider, started as a parade walker in 2016. Her board biography lists the highlights since then: being knighted by the Royal Rosarians, “giving out endless high-fives at the Spokane Lilac Festival and an exciting ride in the shuttle in Olympia (if you know, you know).”

In the week before the 2026 festival, the association posted notices of two deaths: the 2022 Royal Lady, Sharon Waters, and the 2000 Royal Lady, Judy Wagner. The association’s own roster spells her name Wagoner.

A railroad town and its first festival

The Leavenworth Chamber of Commerce tells the town’s history this way. A rail line arrived near the turn of the century, and logging and sawmills followed. When the railroad rerouted out of town, Leavenworth almost became a ghost town and “scuffled along for more than thirty years.” In the early 1960s, town leaders decided to change the town’s appearance to draw visitors. They renovated downtown in the Bavarian style and created a series of festivals, including the Autumn Leaf Festival, Maifest and the Christmas Lighting Festival.

The association gives the festival more credit. It calls Autumn Leaf “the village’s original festival,” founded in 1964. In its account, the festival and the city’s adoption of the Bavarian theme together turned a dying logging and railroad town into a tourist destination. The University of Washington Libraries list the Mai-Fest, the Autumn Leaf Festival and the Christmas Lighting Festival as the only festivals at the start of the Bavarian transformation. The library’s collection holds a photograph of an Autumn Leaf parade float dated “probably between 1964 and 1979.” According to the same source, Leavenworth held no Oktoberfest until 1998, because some townspeople believed it might hurt the town’s family-friendly atmosphere. The event was first called simply the Autumn Leaf Festival. It marked 60 years in 2024.

In 1964, a committee formed to choose a Royal Lady for the first festival asked Martha Jensen, and she accepted. Her obituary records that she traveled the state advertising the festival and later helped set the planning and policy for the Royal Ladies who came after her. She was born in Skykomish in 1917 and moved to Leavenworth in 1932, where she played center on the girls’ basketball team at Leavenworth High School. She spent 28 years as secretary and office manager of the Leavenworth School District. She sang and acted with the Pink Garter Theater, played the organ for many years at St. Joseph Catholic Church, and sometimes played piano in the Starlight Room at the Tumwater Café. After she retired, she worked with Neva Zachow, the 1975 Royal Lady, to organize the photographs of the town’s high school graduates. Jensen died at Bremerton on December 13, 2008, at 91.

From pioneer dress to Bavarian

In September 2009 the Upper Valley Museum put the Royal Ladies on display: scrapbooks, photographs and nearly all of the dresses. Eight past Royal Ladies helped set up the exhibit. “From the beginning, the royal ladies did their own scrapbook page,” Blackburn said. “So we have the scrapbook with all of the ladies, starting with the first year in 1964.” Her book of Autumn Leaf buttons, sold in support of the festival, was also shown.

The dresses record a change. Jensen wore a pioneer-style dress. Later Royal Ladies wore flower and leaf prints, and only in the 1990s did the dresses become Bavarian. “The first one, she was more of a pioneer type and then it grew to be Autumn and fall colors,” Blackburn said. “But there is a criteria. Now they have to be Bavarian. The lady gets to chose the dress from there.”

Anne Koenig, the museum’s program coordinator, also spoke about the exhibit. The Echo identified her as the 1983 Royal Lady, but the association’s roster places her in 1991 and lists Sophie Green for 1983. “A lot of people don’t know much about the royal lady, they’ve just seen her on the float or in the parade,” Koenig said, “so now they get to look through this and really get the history of all of the past royal ladies.”

Blackburn once kept the dresses at her own home. By 2009 they were stored at the museum.