Vernonia’s annual Salmon Festival mixes family fun with education about healthy ecosystems.
Story and photos by Scott Laird
Every fall for the past 23 years, the Vernonia community has gathered in Hawkins Park along Rock Creek on the first Saturday of October for Salmon Festival, a celebration of the fall harvest and the return of the salmon to local streams.
The day is filled with family-friendly events including pumpkin carving, scarecrow stuffing, a scavenger hunt, live music, crafts, food, and other vendors. There is also a beer garden, educational displays, and, if the weather cooperates, the rare opportunity to witness wild salmon swimming upstream to spawn.
The Salmon Festival is coordinated by Corrie Aiuto, who also serves as outreach coordinator for the Upper Nehalem Watershed Council, the organization that recently took over hosting the festival. She’s excited about the event being fun, but also passionate about the opportunity to educate people about the life cycle of the region’s salmon.
Residents of Vernonia and surrounding communities are fortunate to live in a place where they get to see the salmon returning to their home waters in the Nehalem Valley, Corrie says. It’s not something everyone gets to experience.
“It’s exciting for me whenever the word gets out a little bit broader about Salmon Festival,” she says. “I think it’s such a fun event, and the fact that the salmon are spawning right here in this creek that is adjacent to the park is really special. It’s the coolest thing to watch people who are not expecting it—for people who have never seen salmon spawning in the wild before. There’s nothing that will tell the story better than the salmon themselves doing their thing.”
Female salmon lay eggs in the stream bed gravel, which are then fertilized by the males; both die after their final act. The eggs hatch and the juveniles, called fry, stay in these home waters for their first year. They then migrate downstream to the ocean, where they live for several years before returning to the home stream of their birth to lay and fertilize their eggs, called spawning, and keep the cycle alive.
Helping the salmon has been a huge part of UNWC’s work, Executive Director Maggie Peyton says.
“Our role is to try and maintain our healthy ecosystems,” she says. “One way we do that is by improving salmon habitat through stream restoration projects. We have to build up resiliency because we have the climate, we have politics, and we have other things that are working against the ecosystems right now in a big way. We can’t let these salmon go extinct on our watch.”
UNWC has been involved with the Salmon Festival since its inception. It was part of a grassroots community collaboration that came together to organize an autumn celebration that included the city of Vernonia, the Vernonia Lions Club, and other motivated individuals. For more than 20 years, the event was organized by community volunteers. 3 years ago, UNWC stepped in to lead organizing duties.
UNWC’s mission to educate the public about the life cycle of the salmon has always been at the heart of the event. “Education and outreach has been the kernel that everything else has sort of sprouted from,” Maggie says.
1 unique activity that takes place at Salmon Festival is the Knee Deep in Salmon auction. Regional artists buy carved wooden salmon blanks and decorate them in their own distinctive styles, creating art which is then auctioned off. Last year, 20 salmon were auctioned, with many drawing intense bidding wars and fetching several hundred dollars. Proceeds from the auction help fund the festival.
This year, UNWC is growing its own pumpkins for the event at its nursery on the Vernonia Schools campus. A variety of heritage pumpkins and squash will be available.
Festival attendees can enjoy a hayride wagon, and, after a successful first year, the community bake-off contest is back, including categories for children and adults.
Claudia Chinook, a large educational display will be at the park, alongside booths and materials with information about local salmon populations. UNWC is also celebrating its 30th year with a slideshow inside Scout Cabin at the park.
Maggie says her hope is to continue to grow Salmon Festival so it can fund community projects, such as educational salmon life-cycle kiosks in local parks, in the future.
Corrie acknowledges 2 critical components of hosting such a successful event are the volunteers and business sponsors. While UNWC hosts and its board of directors help plan and participate in the event on the day, the festival remains a community collaboration. Last year, more than 100 people helped make Salmon Festival a success.
Since the festival is on October 3, weather can be a concern, Corrie says. While dry weather on festival day makes for a more enjoyable experience, some rainfall beforehand is essential. Rain triggers the salmon to begin their upstream migration, giving visitors the chance to watch them spawn.
If salmon spawn in Rock Creek during the festival, Corrie encourages attendees to watch but also keep their distance. Only 1 of every 1,000 eggs survives to adulthood and returns to spawn, according to Oregon Fish and Wildlife.
“You can watch them, but they’re so shy, so don’t disturb them,” she says. “They are in their last moments of life. Their energy has been expended getting all the way up here, and this is their final, sacred act.”