Photo Credit: Bellevue Strawberry Festival

The board of the Eastside Heritage Center has decided not to put on the Bellevue Strawberry Festival in 2019. The festival, which has taken place at Crossroads International Park since it moved from it’s location at the Bellevue Downtown Park, first took place in 1925.

As the strawberry festival has grown bigger and attracted more people, the requirements to professionalize the production in order to ensure quality, safety, and a great experience at the event, have also increased. As a small, non-profit community heritage organization, they could no longer keep up with the growing demands.

There is a chance that an outside event producer will pick up the festival at some point. A post on their website explains that it may be possible to restart the Strawberry Festival in the future but with a much smaller role for the Eastside Heritage Center.

We are saddened to hear this as it was an event that became a tradition for our family each summer! How do you feel about the news that there will no longer be a Bellevue Strawberry Festival? Let us know in the comments section below.

5 Comments

  1. Jenni D Rimbaugh

    How sad! It was a community event we enjoyed so much.

  2. I will miss this event. I was totaling looking forward to it. Hope it returns soon.

  3. It makes sense to me—last year’s Strawberry Festival had almost nothing to do with strawberries and everything to do with selling cheap trinkets and taco-truck food. We finally found a place that sold strawberry shortcake. Whoopee.

  4. Now how will I cross shop aluminum gutters and siding treatments?

  5. It broke my heart to hear of the cancelation of the Strawberry Festival this year. I moved to Bellevue in early 1939 when I wasn’t yet 1 1/2 yrs old. My Dad worked for the Sherman Compass Factory and we lived in the house next door to the business. We were right across from the fields next to the old Community Hall, Library then lunchroom for Bellevue Jr. High until very early 1942. That field is where they held the Strawberry Festival in those days. It must have been the June of 1941 that I remember at night time they had some entertainment and a gentleman climbed a huge ladder, lit his clothes on fire and dove in to a tank of water. Not sure if I was scared or excited. Time continues and the June of 1989 when they started up the Strawberry Festival and it was held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and as then a single woman again I met “Mr. Wonderful” (we were both B.H.S. grads he in 1943 and myself 1955) and we were married about 5 months later. So you see the Strawberry Festival was an important event in my life. Just sad to see it go.