In early January, a handful of residents filed into Heritage Hall for an audition that had nothing to do with a wedding reception or a city council meeting, the two things most people in Washington City associate with that building these days. They were trying out for a new community play, one written specifically for this year's Cotton Days. No professional experience required. Sing a minute of a song, read a line or two, see if a part fits.
What made the audition notable wasn't the casting call. It was the subject of the play itself. The story being staged is about the construction of the very gymnasium the actors were standing inside, a building put up in the 1920s by residents who mortgaged their own livelihoods to give the town's youth somewhere to go. A century later, the town restored that gym, renamed it Heritage Hall, and then commissioned a script about the men who built it, to be performed on the same floor where the story took place.
If you've lived in Washington City through more than one Cotton Days, this should sound familiar. It's happened before.
The Play Nobody's Heard Yet
The city's own announcements haven't entirely agreed on what to call this year's production. An early casting notice on the city's site referred to it as "Pulling Together," set in the 1920s and centered on Arthur Paxman and Bishop Calvin Hall's push to build a gymnasium when most Washington residents were, in the city's words, barely scraping a living from the red dirt. A later announcement from the mayor's office gave the play a different title: "Side by Side, Arthur Paxman and the Old Gym," credited to playwright Rebecca M. Robertson and director Rachel Cox. Same story, same creative team, two names. Whichever title ends up on the program, the plot doesn't change: Paxman, Hall, and neighbors Miller and Evie Iverson risked what little they had to build a social hall, worried that without one, the town's young people would drift away.
That worry, as it turns out, is the emotional hinge the entire festival keeps returning to.
The Building Behind the Play
Heritage Hall started as a two-story school building constructed in 1909 at the corner of Main and Telegraph. A gymnasium was added onto the back in 1924, and that gym portion is what the city just spent years bringing back to life, funded through Washington City's Recreation, Arts, and Parks tax. The renovation kept the bones intentionally visible: a foundation built from basalt lava rock, walls of sandstone quarried from a hillside near town, rafters dating to 1957, and maple flooring pushing a century old that the city chose to refinish rather than replace. Mayor Kress Staheli has described the goal as folding in modern function without erasing what makes the structure feel like it belongs to this specific place.
Today the hall does double duty. Most weekends it hosts private weddings and receptions. In recent years it has also hosted the Cotton Ball, the Washington Area Chamber of Commerce's formal dance evening, along with the closing Sunday fireside where residents meet that year's grand marshals. The city's own 2026 event listing has the Ball moving out to the Staheli Family Farm this time around, but Heritage Hall keeps its place at the center of the week for a different reason. This year it becomes a stage set, which is new.
Cotton Days Has Done This Before
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you've only ever known Cotton Days as the week with the parade and the tractor pull. The festival's origin story runs through a different building entirely.
The first official Cotton Days took place in 1987, timed to the restoration of the old Cotton Factory, a structure that had sat in disrepair for decades before someone bought and refurbished it into the landmark it remains today. To mark that restoration, a group of residents wrote and staged an original community play called "The Cotton Mission," with a script by Tereece Olsen, music by Carol Black Palmer, and lyrics by Jaclyn Lalli. It told the story of Southern families called by Brigham Young to grow cotton in the desert, and it was performed inside the newly restored factory itself, as part of what became the very first Cotton Days weekend.
Line up the two stories side by side and the pattern is hard to unsee.
| 1987: The Cotton Factory | 2026: Heritage Hall (Old Gym) | |
|---|---|---|
| Original purpose | Cotton processing, built soon after the 1861 Cotton Mission call | School gymnasium, added 1924 |
| Condition before restoration | Fallen into disrepair for decades | Aging but structurally intact |
| Funding and completion | Purchased and refurbished ahead of the 1987 celebration | Renovated through the city's RAP tax, reopened 2024 |
| New community play | "The Cotton Mission," by Tereece Olsen | "Side by Side, Arthur Paxman and the Old Gym," by Rebecca M. Robertson |
| Where it was staged | Inside the restored factory itself | On the hall's own stage, in the same building the story is about |
Thirty-nine years apart, the town has now done this twice: finish restoring a building nobody had fully appreciated, then write a play that hands that building its own origin story back to the people who use it. Whether that becomes a permanent tradition or a coincidence that happened twice, it says something about how Washington City chooses to mark the work it puts into its old buildings. It doesn't just reopen them. It gives them a script.
What's Actually New This Week
Cotton Days remains, at its core, the same week it has been for years. The city's most recent schedule announcement puts this year's celebration at April 27 through May 2, though some regional event listings extend it through May 3, so it's worth checking the city's own calendar before you build plans around a specific closing date. The staples aren't going anywhere:
- The Lions Club pancake and ham breakfast at Veterans Park, with proceeds funding community service projects and scholarships
- The Cotton Days 5K along the Virgin River Trail, starting at Sullivan Soccer Park
- The parade down Telegraph Street, followed by the free Car Show-N-Shine at Nisson Park
- Cotton Fest at Veterans Park, including the Color Country tractor pull and a free evening concert
- Family activities tied to the Staheli Family Farm
What's different this year is layered on top of that base. Alongside the new play at Heritage Hall, the city has added a drone show at the Community Center, a free evening display scheduled for the first time in the festival's history, giving the week a closing spectacle that didn't exist in past years' lineups.
Quick reference for residents planning around the week: dates run roughly April 27 through May 2, the new play runs at Heritage Hall with multiple showings Thursday through Saturday, and the drone show closes out the Community Center's evening programming for the first time.
The Statue That Broke a Different Pattern
The habit of using Cotton Days to formally recognize something overlooked isn't limited to buildings. During the 2025 celebration, the city unveiled a bronze statue of Malinda Covington at what's now called George Washington Plaza, sculpted by Jerry Anderson. Until that unveiling, the plaza's statues had only ever depicted the town's founding men. The push came from the Washington City Youth Council, which worked alongside the city council to secure recreation, arts and parks tax funding and raised an additional $10,000 on its own. The idea itself reportedly traced back to former Washington County historian Priscilla Cahoon, who championed it before her death, and city organizers had expected Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson to attend the unveiling given her interest in Utah's pioneer women's history.
It's a smaller story than the Old Gym's, but it points at the same instinct. Cotton Days isn't just a parade and a tractor pull stapled onto a town's birthday. It's become the week Washington City settles unfinished business, whether that business is a building that needed saving or a statue that was overdue.
Why This Matters If You Already Live Here
None of this changes what you do on the Saturday morning of Cotton Days. You'll still get up early for the 5K or the breakfast, still find a curb along Telegraph for the parade, still wander through Cotton Fest wondering whether the tractor pull line is worth the wait. What changes, maybe, is what you notice walking into Heritage Hall for the play or the closing fireside. That maple floor under your feet is the same one Paxman and Hall's neighbors laid down a century ago, and for one week this year, the building gets to tell you its own story instead of just hosting yours.
If you're the kind of resident who tracks these details, who knows the difference between Nisson Park and Veterans Park without checking a map, you already understand why a town this size keeps investing in its old buildings this deliberately. And if a friend or family member ever asks you what it's actually like to live in Washington City day to day, beyond the median price they saw on a listing site, this is the kind of thing worth telling them.
For residents who eventually find themselves on the other side of a real estate decision, whether that's helping a parent downsize, weighing an investment property, or simply wanting a second opinion on what a home in this part of Washington County is really worth, Michelle Evans has spent her career paying attention to the details that make Southern Utah's communities distinct, not just their comparable sales. Schedule a Consultation whenever that day comes.
