Annual Eggstravaganza draws hundreds of kids to Ober Park

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Vashon Park District Recreation Manager Eric Wyatt put it this way when describing his team’s work on the Eggstravaganza Egg Hunt:

“It’s three months of preparation for three minutes of mayhem.”

That mayhem arrived in the form of an estimated 350 children ages 10 and younger, who fanned out across Ober Park on Saturday, April 4, in search of 4,078 candy-filled eggs — including 16 golden eggs offering a shot at a large chocolate bunny.

The annual event is now in its fifth year under the Vashon Park District, which took over hosting duties from the Vashon Chamber of Commerce in 2022. It was paused in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and did not return until the park district revived it two years later.

For Wyatt, keeping the tradition alive was never really a question.

“When the chamber stopped doing it, I thought it was really important to keep this going for our community,” he said.

Families gathered in two sections of the park ahead of the start, baskets in hand and cameras ready, as the Vashon Community Street Band helped build anticipation.

When the signal came, kids surged forward in two age groups, spreading across the grass in a matter of seconds — some sprinting, others dropping to their knees to scoop up eggs as quickly as they could carry them.

Within minutes, the eggs were gone. Then came the quieter part — kids comparing hauls, cracking open plastic eggs to reveal candy and parents catching their breath.

Among them was Ashley Metcalfe, who was house hunting on Vashon with her husband and three children while exploring a possible move from San Diego. The family stumbled onto the event while in the area.

“We decided to give it a go and invite ourselves,” Metcalfe said. “We’ve been sitting here chatting with both people who just relocated here and those who have grown up here, and there’s just a cozy sense of community in a small town like this.”

Metcalfe said she and her husband, Larry, both grew up in small towns and were drawn to the feeling they experienced at the event.

“This is the kind of community we want to be a part of,” she said.

Not every kid was eager to share that enthusiasm.

“It’s just a little kid thing,” said 8-year-old Rory Nash, who said she had been reluctantly dragged to the hunt by her younger brother, Colby, and her dad, Doug.

Her reluctance didn’t stop her from walking away with five eggs.

While the modern Eggstravaganza has been organized by the chamber and park district in recent years, records from the Vashon Island Heritage Museum show Easter egg hunts on Vashon date back nearly a century.

While the exact origins are difficult to pin down, one of the earliest known mentions of an organized hunt appears in a 1929 Vashon News-Record account.

By 1930, a News-Record story described about 40 children gathering on “the old cottage grounds” for a Sunday school egg hunt — a simple, teacher-led event framed as “a treat.”

Other accounts from that era describe children hunting for eggs among flowers and ferns at the home of Mr. and Mrs. L.P. Black in Vashon Heights, with prizes provided by the Imperial Candy Company.

By the mid-20th century, the event had grown in scale. The Old Men’s Business Club helped organize hunts, and a 1950 News-Record story reported more than 1,000 people gathering at Matsumoto Field, north of Winter’s Greenhouse.

In the decades that followed, the tradition continued to evolve. By the 1960s, egg hunts organized by civic groups were drawing more than 100 children, with hundreds of eggs scattered across open fields near the Vashon town center.

At times, the format even shifted — including a 1982 spring event in which 4,000 balls, about half containing prizes from local businesses, were dropped from a hot air balloon.

Through it all, the core idea has remained the same: a chance for kids to run, search and celebrate the arrival of spring.

Today’s version — with thousands of eggs, organized age groups, and a team of staff and volunteers working behind the scenes — may look different from those early hunts. But for Wyatt, the goal hasn’t changed.

It’s about creating that memorable moment of mayhem.

The Eggstravaganza is one of several events the park district organizes throughout the year. Wyatt said the next major gathering, the 18th Annual Low Tide Celebration at Point Robinson Park in June, is expected to draw as many as 1,000 people.

Eddie Macsalka is a contributing journalist for The Beachcomber.