The Bellevue Strawberry Festival is adding new attractions — and bringing back some from its past — for this year’s celebration of the city’s agricultural history at Crossroads Park.
A historic festival that celebrated the region’s bounty of strawberry crops, the Lake Washington Strawberry Festival started in 1925, but was cancelled in 1942, when Japanese farmers forced into internment camps during World War II didn’t return to the Eastside.
The Eastside Heritage Center brought the community celebration back to life in 2003, and experiences increased attendance annually, drawing in more than 45,000 festivalgoers last year.
“Certainly it’s been bigger and bigger every year,” said Heather Trescases, director of the Eastside Heritage Center, which puts on the annual festival. “This year we’re thinking it will be more than 50,000, for sure.”
While the availability of strawberries in bulk and atop shortcakes is a staple of the annual event, Trescases said the festival is also one of few opportunities for the heritage center to showcase to the community Bellevue’s history and what the EHC does to record and celebrate it.
“It provides us a tremendous public opportunity to tell Bellevue’s agricultural story, and the agricultural history of this community was such a huge part of Bellevue’s history,” she said, “… and you don’t see that at all anymore, except in the blueberry farms that the city maintains for that purpose and then Kelsey Creek Farm.”
In honor of the Bellevue Fire Department’s 50th anniversary, this year’s EHC mini-museum at the festival will include exhibit space focused on the history of public service in the city.
Miss Belle, a 1957 Maxim Pumper truck the BFD retired in the ‘70s and began restoring last year, will be on display to the public both days of the festival, June 27-28. The Bellevue Police Department will showcase a 1980s-era motorcycle.
The EHC is bringing back its global map this year, said Trescases, where attendees can pinpoint their country of origin. There also will be an opportunity for attendees to share their Eastside stories in the EHC recording booth, made possible this year through funding from King County’s cultural agency, 4Culture.
A first for the Bellevue Strawberry Festival will be a toddler play area, Trescases said, adding there has been a lack of activities for children younger than two in the past. KidsQuest is loaning the festival a number of toddler-friendly interactive activities to fix this.
12 Baskets Catering will again be providing the shortcakes for sale — and devouring during a daily eating contest — and this year is slicing and dicing the strawberries to top them at the EHC fundraiser booth.
“We used to do all of that ourselves,” Trescases said. “We don’t do that anymore, thank goodness.”
The Bellevue Strawberry Festival runs 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. To find out more about the Bellevue Strawberry Festival, Sunday’s classic car show and parking options, go to www.bellevuestrawberryfestival.org.
