EDMONSTON: The very first Old Fashioned Festival

Published 7:00 am Thursday, July 24, 2025

The town’s annual summer festival has been known by many names over the past century

By George P. Edmonston Jr.

Tucked away at Brian Love’s Newberg business, Krohn’s Appliance Service, is an old banner with special significance for today, July 24, the opening of our city’s Old Fashioned Festival. It represents a rare surviving remnant of Newberg’s very first Old Fashioned Festival, held on Saturday, July 9, 1921.

Back then it was called the Berry Festival.

Love, co-organizer each year with his wife, Missy, of the Old Fashioned Festival parade, says of the banner:

“It was passed to me from my uncle, retired Newberg Fire Chief Al Blodgett, who collected items of local history. We don’t have a museum or a place to display these things, so to have this banner still available is amazing.”

The Berry Festival was planned, managed and financed by an organization known as the Berrians, a civic-minded group considered today as a precursor to the chamber of commerce. Its members were many of Newberg’s most prominent citizens.

Instead of activities held over several days, which is the present format, it was a one-day affair, starting with a parade at 10 a.m. The Berrian Band led the parade, which featured floats, decorated autos and the queen’s car.

The Newberg Graphic newspaper reported the start of the parade was “near the Baptist church on Sheridan street.”

It concluded on Fifth Street in a westerly direction to the city’s “Tourist Park,” which is today’s Memorial Park, the center of the current festival.

Visitors enjoyed a wide range of activities, including agricultural exhibits, tug-of-war contests, a competition known as a “motorcycle broad jump,” a dog and pony circus, a merry-go-round, a “Hawaiian show,” water fights pitting the Newberg fire department with that of McMinnville, “aeroplane” flights over the nearby countryside, and concessions.

The day concluded with a band concert.

The one activity requiring an admission fee was a baseball game featuring players from McMinnville and a team from St. Paul-Newberg.

In addition to the local Berrians, tug-of-war contestants included the Vancouver Prunarians and the Salem Cherryians. The location was where Hess Creek flows through what we know today as Hoover Park.

But nothing was more important to the festival organizers than the many berry exhibits on display at the Calkins Garage on Main Street.

Dishes of berries and cream were served to visitors from out of town, with the Graphic suggesting to the locals that “while the berries and cream are to be served free to the public, it is requested that local people not take undue advantage of this feature, as it is the aim of the festival to make this attraction largely for outsiders who are our guests.”

Imagine trying this in 2025.

The cost of the entire festival, raised from donations by local businesses, was $400.

Surprisingly, the event was not without its naysayers. Possibly because of the strong Quaker influence in the local culture, some viewed the new festival as a “pleasure event.”

“It is not,” railed the Graphic. “First, last and all of the time, the Berrians have the idea that the berries are the important thing under consideration. We hope the farmers and berry growers will take this same view and will make good our declaration that Newberg stands without equal for quality of berries. A start must be made somewhere.”

Indeed.

Over the years, Newberg’s summer fun fest has been known by various names — the Newberg Farm Product Show (1941), Farmeroo (1943), the Berrian Festival (1950s) and Old Fashioned Days (1978). In 1981, the name became the Old Fashioned Festival.

George Edmonston Jr. is a former columnist for the Newberg Graphic. His “Tales from the Grubby End” appeared on these pages from 2011-2018. He is the co-founder of the Newberg Area Historical Society and retired editor of the Oregon Stater, the alumni magazine at Oregon State University.