Wee Bit O'Ireland

The Great Green Parade forms near the Green Feed Store at the north end of Heppner, follows Main Street through town, and ends at May and Chase streets. In 2026 it stepped off at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 14, with leprechauns, candy, floats, and horses among its entries. The parade anchors the Wee Bit O’Ireland Celebration, which the Heppner Chamber of Commerce holds on the weekend closest to St. Patrick’s Day, with most of the activity in and around downtown. The 2026 festival was the 43rd annual. The East Oregonian gave its dates as March 13 to 15. The chamber’s own listing gave March 12 to 15.

Saturday at Shamrock Central

The 2026 Saturday began at 8 a.m. with the O’Brunch at St Patrick’s Senior Center, a fundraiser served by the Heppner High School Technology Student Association until 11. Ewe-Do-Bingo ran from 8 until noon. At the Elks Lodge, the Irish Coffee Hour filled the two hours from 9:30 to 11:30. On Main Street there was a Cruz-In Car Show from 10 to 2 and a welly toss from 10 to 12:30, where contestants throw rubber boots for distance. The rest of the day held an O’Ducky Race, face painting, the Golden Nugget Treasure Hunt, laser tag, inflatables, and an O’ Planky Team Race open to all ages. A Leprechaun Run went at noon and the bed races at 12:15, ahead of the parade. After the parade, the Blue Mountain Old Time Fiddlers played from 2:30 to 4:30.

Many of these events raise money for someone. Madison Rosenbalm, the chamber’s events director, told the East Oregonian that community groups, 4-H clubs, and sports teams plan fundraisers around the crowd. “This celebration is great for the Heppner economy and locals look forward to hosting visitors each year,” she said. “It’s great for our restaurants and small businesses.” She had no firm figures but said “a lot” of money comes into town that weekend.

One morning event serves a different purpose. For nearly two decades Friends Helping Friends has held a Remembrance Walk & 5K Run. It leaves the Heppner United Methodist Church at 9 a.m., after a social hour that opens at 8. The suggested $5 donation goes into a “pot of gold” that helps pay for health care needs in the community. Walkers wear green or pink, and strollers and leashed dogs come along.

Around town, a commemorative button sold for $3 at Market 87, the chamber office, City Hall, and the weekend information booth. The chamber runs Market 87, a shop at 133 N. Main that carries local vendors. The 2026 button was designed by Charlie Mullins, an eighth grader at Heppner Jr/Sr High School. Every button was a ticket in a $100 drawing held Saturday evening at the Elks Lodge.

A 2021 account from the Eastern Oregon Visitor’s Association adds the sheep dog trials, which it says open and close the weekend. It also gives the weekend’s motto: “You may not be Irish when you come, but you’ll be Irish when you leave!”

Supper at the Elks, breakfast after midnight

On Saturday evening the crowd moves to the Elks Lodge at 142 N. Main Street. The Irish Supper is served at 5 p.m., and the evening’s entertainment is free to everyone. In 2026 that meant Chantelle Padden, an Irish country singer-songwriter from County Mayo, who played from 7 to 9. According to her biography, she has performed professionally since she was 7 and recorded her first album two years later. She studied at the BIMM Music Institute and won the All-Ireland Singing Title in 2014. In 2018 she placed fourth in Glór Tíre, a long-running Irish country music talent show, and that result led to a contract with Legacy Records. She toured Nashville with Hot Country TV, appeared on “The Voice UK” in 2021, and sings with Women of Éire, an all-female collective whose debut single, “Ireland’s Call,” came out February 1, 2026.

While their parents were at the lodge, children went to Kids Movie Night from 5 to 9 at the Gilliam & Bisbee Event Center. Heppner Jr/Sr High School cheerleaders ran it with a film and snacks, and the Morrow County Unified Recreation District paid for it.

The chamber’s festival listing also includes Murray’s Beer & Blarney. In 2025, Beer & Blarney and A Wee Bit o’ Wine, presented by Murray’s Drug, ran from 6 to 10 p.m. at The Hub, 188 W. Willow Street, then the chamber’s new space. Children were welcome, drinks were sold by the token, a baked-potato bar fed the room, and a band called Musically Unstable played. The same building, under the name Willow Street Innovation Hub, ends the night with the Wee Hours o’ the Morning Breakfast, a free pancake breakfast served from 10 p.m. Saturday until 2 a.m. Sunday.

A bubbleologist and a busker from Dublin

The 2025 edition, held March 13 to 16, shows how the program shifts from year to year. That year Whiskey for Breakfast played the Irish Coffee Hour, which ran three hours and included the introduction of the grand marshal and a céilí, a traditional Irish social gathering. Lucky Leprechaun Kid Night was held Friday at Sage Garden Preschool. On Saturday afternoon a children’s rodeo at the Morrow County Fairgrounds offered a petting zoo, goat tail tying, stick horse races, and dummy roping. Louis Pearl, known as The Amazing Bubble Man, performed his bubbles at the Gilliam & Bisbee Event Center. “After the parade, it kind of dies down for families, so we tried to pack the afternoon with things for kids,” Rosenbalm said.

The 2025 headliner at the Elks was Sina Theil, a friend and musical collaborator of Padden’s. Her biography says she was born in Germany, began composing songs at 7, and moved with her family to Spain at 10. She later left a job in finance, sold her belongings, and busked on the streets of Dublin to pay for her studies at BIMM. “I used to dread going into work every day,” she said. “My dream was to carve out a music career for myself in Ireland.” She opened with an Irish buffet at 5 p.m., and Morrow County’s Joe Lindsay played after her at 8.

East of Willow Creek

“It started in the 1980s when a group of people wanted to preserve the town’s Irish heritage,” Rosenbalm told Go! Eastern Oregon. The chamber’s listing gives 1982 as the founding year. The chamber has existed since 1940 and also runs the parade for the Morrow County Fair and Oregon Trail Pro Rodeo and the Celebrate Heppner Christmas event.

The heritage the festival marks goes back to the 1870s. Heppner sits on Willow Creek along Oregon Highway 74, between the Blue Mountains and the Columbia River, and calls itself the “Gateway to the Blues.” The townsite was first called Stansbury’s Flat, after George W. Stansbury, who bought a claim there in 1869 and was for several years the only permanent white settler. In 1872 Col. Jackson Lee Morrow and Henry Heppner, a Jewish businessman, built a store at the corner of what are now May and Main streets. The town took Heppner’s name.

Most of the early settlers were Irish or Swedish, according to the Oregon Encyclopedia. The Irish farmed the east side of Willow Creek and the Swedes the west, and over time the Irish became the main cultural group in the area. Morrow got a county created in 1885 and named for him. Heppner won the county seat in a close election with Lexington and was incorporated in 1887. A railroad spur reached town in 1888, and by 1900 the population was 1,146.

On Sunday, June 14, 1903, a cloudburst sent a flash flood down Willow Creek. The Oregon Encyclopedia describes a forty-foot wall of water that destroyed about a third of the town and killed 247 people. Wikipedia’s estimate is 238 drowned, about a quarter of the population, and it calls the flood the deadliest natural disaster in Oregon’s history. Residents fled to the new county courthouse, built of locally quarried dark blue basalt. Many survivors left town, and the population took decades to recover. The Army Corps of Engineers built the Willow Creek Dam at the edge of town between 1981 and 1983, the same years the festival began. The 2020 census counted 1,187 people, slightly more than in 1900.

Rosenbalm says many descendants of the original 1800s settlers still live in the area. “It’s nice to remember and honor why Heppner became Heppner,” she said.