Yamhill Derby Days

At half past twelve on the Saturday of Derby Days, the crowd in Beulah Park gathers around the derby track. It is a steep ramp, repainted white in 2024–25 and ringed at the bottom with hay bales to cushion any car that cannot stop. The racers are children 8 to 11 years old in cars they built at home, and the News-Register reported in 2025 that many of them are the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of earlier racers. At the 2025 festival the track was dedicated as the Lonnie Strode Memorial Raceway.

The ramp in Beulah Park

The races are only the end of the work. On the Tuesday evening before the 2025 races, a News-Register photographer found Oren Cates at the ramp, listening to his grandfather, Mark Pendergrass, explain how to drive his car. Eight-year-old Ben Blatner of Yamhill took his first test run that night with his father, David, as crew chief. He made a couple of short runs to learn the downhill track, then went several times from the start gate at the top. Emma Womack, also 8 and also entering her first derby, kept her eyes on the finish line as her car came through the bottom section of the course.

The festival is held on the third weekend of July. The 2026 edition ran Friday and Saturday, July 17–18, under the theme “Tiger Pride,” after the Tigers of the local school. It opened Friday at 4 p.m. with vendor booths in the park. At 6:30 the Derby Days ambassadors’ court was crowned: Aubrey Mortimore, Saige Hinckley and Johnny Hernandez-Rubio. In 2025 the court members were Yamhill Carlton High School students who had spent weeks promoting the festival. Live music followed the coronation, and bingo, played in the park’s Bingo Hall, filled the Friday evening.

Frogs, tricycles and elephant ears

Saturday begins in town with the parade and returns to the park by late morning, when about 30 vendor booths open. The 2025 count was about 30. The Yamhill Community Club lists the food as barbecue, corn dogs, elephant ears, shave ice, fresh lemonade and cotton candy. A 2003 history page on the club’s site also counts the Broncos eaten over fifty years, a Bronco being a hot dog on a stick. A beer garden serves those 21 and over, from a trailer supplied by Fireside Tavern. The park has no ATM. A children’s area offers games and, some years, a dunk tank.

At noon the flag goes up in the center of the park. In 2025 a quartet sang the National Anthem as it rose. The pole is new: a fallen branch brought down the old one one winter, and its replacement, in place by 2023, is lit at night by solar power. The silent auction opened at 11:30 in 2026. The club’s examples of the donated goods include a basket of Reeser’s jerky, a Tonka truck and a hydrangea. A live auction follows at 2 p.m., and bingo runs all afternoon.

The frog jumping contest starts at 3. Young entrants bring their own frogs and coax them to leap as far as they can. The club’s advice to spectators: “Frogs like it wet, so watch out the Yamhill Fire Dept’s hose!” At 4:30 comes the tricycle race, open, the club says, to riders “from 4 to 104,” with a warning to slow down before the big turn. In 2025 the News-Register billed it as an adult race. Live music closes the evening at 7. Hucklebuck Highway played in 2025. On Sunday, by local custom, residents come back to help clean up the park.

The parade past T&E

The Saturday parade steps off at 10 a.m. The News-Register gives its route as running from Yamhill Carlton High School along Highway 47 through the center of town to the park. The Community Club describes it passing T&E General Store downtown and ending around 2nd Street. The club recommends the corner by the store as the best place to sit, since the announcer and loudspeakers are set up there. Horses still walked in the parade in 2026. In 2025, under the theme “Liberty and Legends,” veterans rode as grand marshals. The honorary grand marshal was Charlie Bauer, a former longtime resident who served in the Air Force in the early 1960s. Murray Paolo, home from a church mission in Italy, announced from the center of town.

The store on the parade route, on South Maple Street, is where Derby Days started. Daniel Trullinger and his brother-in-law Charles Eustice, the original T and E, opened it in 1903. Bob Landauer has owned it since 1976. His daughter Mary Landauer manages it and runs the Derby Days auction. A 2022 Oregonian account found bread, milk and ground beef on the shelves alongside furniture, a bugle, a stepladder, a vintage Coke machine and a radio from the 1940s. Most of the curiosities come from Bob’s estate-sale finds. “You walk around the store, it’s almost like a museum,” he said. Of the founder, Mary said, “He literally brought electricity to Yamhill.” The town’s 1983 Derby Days booklet went further, claiming Yamhill was the first small town with electric lights and concrete-paved streets.

Hamburgers on Main Street, 1954

The sources disagree about the first year. The Oregonian and the News-Register date Derby Days to 1953 and the store’s 50th anniversary. The News-Register’s 2026 account adds that the derby races were so popular they were scheduled again the next year. The account the Community Club uses comes from the 1973 souvenir book given out at the 20th annual Derby Days. In that version, the 1953 celebration was the spark: a public day with a breakfast and prizes that included a refrigerator and twenty-dollar gold pieces. The festival itself was organized the following year.

In May 1954, according to the souvenir book, a group of Yamhill businessmen began preparations: Frank VanLoo; Joe Allyn, manager of the T&E Store; RJ Wulf of Wulf Fuel Co.; the barber Don Mahar; and the Rev. John H. MacDonald of the Methodist Church. The celebration took its shape from Mahar’s interest in soapbox derby racing. MacDonald collected $135 from the community for prizes and expenses. Five hundred black derby hats went out at T&E and VanLoo Grocery to advertise the day. Allyn and Wulf put together $10 to hire Heck Harper, a radio and television personality. He played western music and talked from a flatbed truck in front of T&E, while the store, then in its 51st year, held a prize drawing.

About 2,000 people watched the parade and the antique display. Miss Yamhill, Barbara Jean Strode, rode in a 1928 Ford driven by Richard Wade. Clubs and churches ran food booths along Main Street. Mrs. Arlene Reiner and Mrs. MacDonald later recalled nearly burning up the electric skillets making hamburgers all day. The derby ramp was built near the Methodist Church with lumber donated by Frank Stiller. With the street blocked off, the cars sped down the hill past the old fire hall and were, in the souvenir book’s word, “hopefully” stopped by helpers at the bottom. Twenty-two boys raced. Harold Thies took first prize, Larry Belt second and Dennis Mahar third. The day raised $35 for the community, and the book records that it was considered an outstanding success.

A queen and court were added in 1955, along with a free merry-go-round from Davidson’s Bread Company and a firemen’s dance at the Masonic Hall. In 1956 came the chug-mobiles, small hand-built cars with engines that raced in the Main Street intersection behind bales of hay. The souvenir book calls those races spirited and always noisy. In later years a kickoff breakfast, a talent show and the souvenir booklet were added, and the chug-mobiles disbanded.

Keepers of the ramp

The Oregonian reports that Derby Days has been held every July since 1953, except for a brief interruption during the pandemic. It reached its 30th anniversary in 1983. The Community Club’s history page notes how little was recorded of the 50th in 2003. By 2023, the 70th, a quilt had been sewn from Derby Days shirts of past years. The club, a volunteer-led nonprofit with no membership dues, runs the festival and maintains Beulah Park with the city. It names Bob Landauer and Jim Phillips as the two men most responsible for keeping Derby Days going from the late 20th century into the 21st.

Jim Phillips died in 2026. On August 30 a procession carrying him entered Yamhill on Main Street, turned south onto Maple and then onto Second, and drove into Beulah Park. More than 500 people gathered there, and he was given full fire service honors for his 50 years with the Yamhill Fire Protection District. Three weeks later, on September 21, the club met in the park’s Bingo Hall and spent part of the meeting on the 2027 Derby Days, set for July 16 and 17.