The Daffodil Festival

The tradition & historical record

The Daffodil Festival is a regional festival and "Royal Court" contest program. The Grand Floral Parade is held in Pierce County, Washington, every April. It consists of a flower parade and a year-long royalty program to select a festival queen from one of the 24 area high schools. Each year, the Royal Court spend thousands of hours promoting education, community pride and volunteerism in the county. In 2012, the Royal Court was named the "Official Ambassadors of Pierce County" by the County Executive and the Pierce County Council. ¹

The Daffodil Festival came into existence because of the bulb industry between 1922 and 1925. It followed a severe infestation of ‘hop lice’ that destroyed the area's hop crops and Prohibition. The US Department of Agriculture recommended bulb planting to Valley growers because of the mildness of the climate and ideal soil conditions. The climate conditions of the Puyallup River Valley produce blooms about 2–3 weeks earlier than other areas, in plenty of time for the mid winter markets. The area quickly became the nations ‘bulb basket’ producing 50% of the nations daffodil bulbs, over 50% of its bulb iris and 80% of the nations tulips. About 300 of the 12,000 varieties of daffodils were grown in the Valley. The most popular and most locally grown is the King Alfred. Mr. and Mrs. Charles W. Orton hosted civic leaders from 15 towns in western Washington in 1926. In 1927 the Sumner Chamber of Commerce sponsored the first Bulb Banquet. Free daffodils were given away to visitors. Between 1928 and 1933 a Bulb Sunday and bulb banquet were held. The roads became increasingly congested each year as people drove out to see the colorful fields. Reaching a peak of 30,000 vehicles. A local photographer Lee Merrill suggested a parade be held to "take the daffodils to the people". He organized the first event in 1934, this was the first festival as it is known today. Lee decided every festival needs a queen so as he was driving through Puyallup he saw a pretty girl and stopped and asked her if she would be the queen. Her reply was "I'll have to ask my husband". Thusly, Elizabeth Lee Wotten became the first Daffodil Queen at the age of 28. She had only four days to find a proper gown. ¹

The Grand Floral Parade travels through Pierce County, Washington, with four routes in Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner and Orting in one day. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Daffodil Festival”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

The Daffodil Festival is regional festival and parade held in Pierce County, Washington, USA, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²