Tulip Festival bloomed from La Conner's fertile soil

In 1981 Community Homewell, a home visiting nursing agency, wanted to start a Hospice service. They hired Paul Murray, a resident of La Conner, to fundraise for this new service. Paul had to come up with some serious money because his own salary would be dependent on his success.

For this project, Paul noticed that the bulb farmers produced beautiful stretches of color with their tulips and thought it would be a good idea to share this beauty with others. He came up with the idea of hosting the ‘Tulip Pedal’, a casual bike ride through the back roads of Skagit farmlands to view the intense color in the fields. He talked with the farmers to ask if they would share with him which fields would be planted in tulips, expected dates for the high point of the bloom, and if they would speak to a few bikers during their ride. Some farmers were interested the first year and more grew interested and more enthusiastic in later years.

Next, Paul recruited his friends, the ‘team’, to sell T-shirts, and mark the route according to the farmers’ planting maps. Members included Ron Shrigley, Joan Cross, Rusty Kuntze, Libby Mills and Dan O’Donnell. We ordered the shirts and posted announcements on community bulletin boards, advertised in local newspapers, and community calendars in preparation for the Saturday event.

On the best blooming Saturday morning the ‘team’ woke at 5 a.m.

and drove around the prescribed route, taking a 10-pound bag of flour to mark arrows at significant turns in the route.

Upon returning to La Conner, we set up the T-shirt tables and started taking fundraising money.

The third year we organized a Bike Criterium race around La Conner’s First St. and Second St. For this, Dan O’Donnell took the lead and we recruited Bud Moore to place hay bales at crucial corners.

It was a popular race in the biking community because of the hills, a straight away and the tight corners.

By the fourth year the Tulip Pedal was too big to manage with thousands of visitors for our small ‘team’, so we gave it to the La Conner Kiwanis Club to fund-raise.

The following year they gave it to Mt. Vernon Chamber of Commerce.

And Paul’s vision of sharing this Skagit Spring spectacular scene grows every year.

This story accounts for the rediscovery of tulip appreciation during the years1982 to 1985 after which Mt. Vernon Chamber took over the organization.

Jana Gage has written a long history of the Tulip Festival, which has been published in previous years in the La Conner Weekly News.