Winlock Egg Days

The egg stands on a ten-foot steel pole in Vern Zander Memorial Park. It is 1,200 pounds of fiberglass over chicken wire, and “World Largest EGG” is lettered on the pedestal beneath it. On Flag Day, Sunday, June 14, 2026, Emily von Flotow gave it a new coat of paint for the America250 observance. That afternoon a Union Pacific diesel in U.S. flag livery passed it, and flags set out by Winlock Patriotic Citizens volunteers lined the streets. Five days later Egg Days began.

The festival falls on the third Saturday in June in downtown Winlock, a town of 1,472 at the 2020 census. The Lions Club of Winlock and the Egg Day Committee run it with other volunteers. In 2026 the committee was headed by Lesa Givens, whose title was CEO, for Chief Egg Officer. Alexis Besio submitted the 2026 theme, “Eggstra Patriotic,” and Brittany Warren drew the artwork for the festival button, which sold from April for $2.

Breakfast at seven, chickens at one

The 2026 festival opened Friday, June 19, with the Friends of the Winlock Timberland Library book sale at 300 NE First Street. A non-perishable item for the food bank bought a free book, and a drawing gave away a gift basket that included books on raising chickens. A “flock of vendors” set up at Winlock Miller Elementary School from “10ish ‘til done,” on Friday and again on Saturday.

Saturday, June 20, began at 7 a.m. at the Winlock-Olequa Senior Center on SW Kerron Avenue. Ten dollars bought eggs, sausage, fruit and drinks, with a choice of pancake or biscuits and gravy. The Rowdy Rooster Café on NE First Street served a short breakfast menu and its full lunch sandwich menu until 2. At 9 the 5K run and walk started just north of the elementary school, and its $30 entries went to the WMES Cross Country team. At the same hour classic and custom cars filled East Front Street between Fir and Walnut for a show put on by Small Acts of Kindness, which ran until 3.

The committee’s schedule set the parade for 11 a.m. The Daily Chronicle reported that the Tenino Motorcycle Drill Team would kick it off at 10:30. The route ran north on Northeast First Street through downtown, turned west on Fir Street, and ended at the elementary school. The committee asked spectators to “keep a close eye on your little chicks so nobody gets their eggs scrambled!”

After the last float, events spread across town. A nine-hole mini-golf course and inflatable Zorb balls filled the elementary school gym at $5 a person. At the Winlock Community Building, the Reptile Road Show from Longview set out its exhibits around 12:30. At 1:30 the children’s entertainer Mr. Twister gave a free magic show there, then spent the day going between the building and the school making balloon animals.

At 1 p.m. chickens raced on the elementary school field, an event brought by Sacred Heart. Sacred Heart also kept a rummage sale and a strawberry pie sale going all day and held Sung Vespers at 5. The Winlock Historical Museum, housed in a 1914-era firehouse and jail on a downtown corner, opened from 10 to 2. By the committee’s schedule, its beer garden opened after the parade. At 3 the Department of Washington American Legion Band played inside the Community Building, and the committee sold its fundraising cookbook during the concert.

A queen named Georgia

Friday night belongs to the royal court. The committee calls its royalty program a 90-year lineage, and applicants propose a platform: a local program, such as a food bank or a senior center, that they would help during their reign. At the 2026 coronation, held at 7 p.m. in the Community Building, three contestants stood for queen: Dakota Fox, Kailie Lang and Georgia Sayler.

The court rides in the parade, and in 2026 it took the trophy for best use of the theme. The committee gave Best of Parade to Brandy Stevens and “The Hen House,” a 2005 Mini “Coop”er with an “estimated cap” of four eggs. Winlock Living Stone Assembly of God won Judge’s Choice, Morton Loggers’ Jubilee won Crown’s Choice, and the Winlock High School Class of 1986 won Chairman’s Choice. Hope Grange received the Legacy trophy, and Toledo’s Cheese Days received the “EGG adjacent” trophy.

The reign lasts a year and moves from town to town. On July 18, 2026, Queen Georgia and her princesses rode in the Napavine Funtime Festival parade. On the way home they stopped at the Winlock fire station, where, as Josh Sayler wrote, “Your Queen tried her hand at manning the fire hose!” Ahead of the Hoquiam Loggers’ Playday parade on September 12, the committee asked for help with candy to throw, which it said cost “on an average $200 plus per parade,” gas aside. In late July it posted condolences for Nettie Jungers, a longtime volunteer with the royalty program.

A concrete road to Cowlitz Corner

Work began in 1920 on a concrete road from Winlock to Cowlitz Corner. It cost $140,000.00 and was built under the Donahoe road law, according to C. C. Wall’s A History of Winlock, Washington, written in 1952. The road was completed and dedicated on August 13, 1921, and about 1,000 people came to the celebration, with Otis Roundtree as General Chairman. “Since Winlock was becoming quite a famous poultry center,” Wall wrote, “they decided to call the celebration ‘Winlock Poultry and Egg Day.’” The road is known today as State Route 505, and Cowlitz is now an extinct community.

The Chronicle announced the event on August 5, 1921: “Final plans have been completed for a celebration in Winlock on Aug. 13th marking the opening of the Winlock-Cowlitz-Toledo Highway. The event will be called ‘Poultry and Egg Day’ in honor of Winlock’s biggest industry.” In 2026 the same paper gave a second reason. It wrote that Winlock chicken farmers joined the Washington Co-operative Egg & Poultry Association in 1921, built their own co-op egg processing building, and held the first Poultry and Egg Day to celebrate that success. Wikipedia dates the Winlock branch of the association to 1920. Its building, which housed grain storage bins and poultry processing, still stands at the north end of town near the railroad tracks.

The industry it honored had begun around 1887, when William Warne sold eggs to railroad crews. In 1913 John Marcotte opened the Cowlitz Produce Company in the Leonard Building to sell eggs from local farmers, and by the 1920s its sales had reached $2,000,000. In 1920 Jacob “Jake” Erving, a Finnish immigrant, started the town’s first hatchery, using automatic egg turners and temperature-controlled incubators that held 40,000 eggs. He was one of 175 farmers in the co-op.

In 1922 the Lewis County Advocate noted that only Petaluma, California, out-produced Winlock among American cities. In a single weekend in 1923, Winlock shipped 38,400 dozen eggs to New York state. That year the Cowlitz Produce Company took an order for 60 train cars of eggs bound for New York over two months. One producer’s contract with Hawaii required that the eggs be sold on the islands “under the trade mark of Winlock Egg.” Boosters called the town the “Egg and Poultry Capital of the World” and “the egg nest of the West,” and before the decade was out it had seven hatcheries.

Canvas, plastic, fiberglass

The first big egg was made of canvas in 1923 for a float in the inauguration of the new Pacific Highway, whose parade route stretched from Olympia to Salem, Oregon. That year Winlock farmers shipped 260,000 cases of eggs from more than half a million hens. After the celebration the canvas egg went on display in the town center. A plastic one replaced it in 1944.

About two decades later, the Egg Day Committee recounts, “the platform for the plastic Egg fell and the Egg broke.” The replacement went across the street and “was shaped somewhat like a football.” Vern Zander (1904–1993), a poultry man whose family had owned Standard Hatchery, paid for the present egg in 1991. It was finished with eight cans of Bondo, seven gallons of white exterior coating and wax, and a time capsule was sealed inside. After Zander died, his fellow Lions named the park for him.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the egg was painted as an American flag. By 2004 its back read “God Bless America” in hand-painted script, and visitors saw it hung with yellow ribbons. Later in the decade it went back to plain white, and by 2015 it carried a Seahawks logo.

Egg Day from 1937 to the centennial

The sources disagree on the festival’s early years. Wall wrote that the 1921 crowd decided to make the celebration annual, “which was done.” According to The Chronicle, interest and attendance waned through the Great Depression. Wikipedia says the festival was held “sporadically” until it became annual in 1937.

All three agree on 1937. That year the co-op dedicated a new addition to its building before an estimated 800 people, and the festival was revived in August under the shorter name “Egg Day.” The Chronicle of August 21, 1937, reported that “Miss Olive Washburn, selected by employees of the Washington Co-operative Egg & Poultry Association, was ruling over the fete as queen.” She and her attendants rode in the parade and later presided over a program on the Winlock school grounds. Lewis County Commissioner Guy M. Balfour spoke, and free egg sandwiches were served. The Toledo and Ryderwood teams of the Timber League played baseball, and local farmers pulled against local businessmen in a tug-of-war.

Egg Day has been held every year since, except during World War II. The Chronicle says it missed a few years; HistoryLink says four. Meanwhile the egg trade slipped. Backyard flocks spread across the country in the 1930s, and trucking, larger hatcheries and larger processing plants took business away. By the 1950s Winlock’s egg farms had considerably waned. The co-op shuttered in 1963. Three hatcheries and six producers were still operating in 1971, and by 1996 one hatchery remained in the Winlock area.

The 100th Egg Day was held June 18–20, 2021. It had a car show, a book sale, live music, a parade, egg-salad sandwiches and a hard-boiled-egg-eating contest. The royal court arrived in a Royal Egg Coach, and Mayor Brandon Svenson rode as one of its coachmen.