Bad weather is getting the blame for a drop in attendance to the annual LaSalle Strawberry Festival.
The Town of LaSalle is reporting that approximately 22,300 people attended the four-day event from June 11 to 14 at the Vollmer Complex.
Officials say attendance on Thursday and Friday remained consistent with 2025 levels, reflecting continued strong community interest early in the event. Overall attendance was lower than the previous year, largely due to extreme heat on Saturday and inclement weather on Sunday, which impacted peak attendance periods.
Severe weather conditions on Sunday, including a tornado warning, required the temporary closure of outdoor activities.
LaSalle Mayor Crystal Meloche says the numbers aren’t terrible given the weather.
“We had great numbers Thursday and Friday. The heat Saturday definitely kept people away during the day. Unfortunately for Sunday, we had those storms come in pretty quickly. We did actually evacuate the part at one point into the Vollmer to ensure everyone’s safety,” she says.
Meloche says they did reopen after the storm passed, but they didn’t really recover because there were only a few hours left.
“We’re really happy with the people who came out and enjoyed our festival and got to experience all the fun things that are LaSalle,” she says. “We had some great vendors this year, some of them new ones. It wasn’t the numbers we were hoping for, but with the weather, we can’t do anything about that.”
Meloche says the staff did a fantastic job with the festival and getting everyone to safety when the weather turned.
“I think it would have been a really good record-breaking weekend if we got the weather we thought we were going to get. We’ve never had to; at least I can’t remember a year where we’ve had to close the festival down and evacuate,” she says.
A total of 28,686 attended the festival in 2025.
Town administration is currently preparing the post-event report, which will be presented to council in the fall.