By nine this morning, somebody on Electron Way is already testing wheel alignment with a level from the garage. Down the block, Fircrest Parks and Recreation staff are setting cones along what is normally just a quiet residential street between Fircrest Park and the surrounding blocks. In an hour, Fircrest Derby Days starts at 10 a.m., and for one Saturday a year, this stretch of pavement is the only racetrack the city has.
It is worth sitting with why this particular event, and not the town's two competing pools, is the one that pulls the whole city out at once.
What's Actually Running Down Electron Way
Derby Days is not sanctioned by any national soap box derby association. The event's own rulebook is direct about that, describing itself as "an unsanctioned purely for fun event" built to bring families together in the old soap box derby spirit. There is no qualifying circuit, no national tie-in, no entry fee structure tied to a governing body. It is Parks and Recreation staff, volunteers, and a title sponsorship from Columbia Bank, run because a small city decided a gravity race down a side street was worth doing every year.
The format splits cars into two lanes of competition, not by driver age but by what the car is built on:
| Category | What Qualifies |
|---|---|
| Derby Elite | Traditional soap box stock car, built with Z Glass or similar wheels |
| Derby Custom Class | Car built from your own design, using non-Z Glass wheels |
A custom-built car that still rolls on Z Glass wheels gets bumped into Elite regardless of how it looks. It is single-track, time-trial racing rather than head-to-head heats, which means the morning is less about elimination brackets and more about every kid getting a clean run down the hill and a number posted on a board.
Around the actual racing, the day fills in with a food truck lineup, live music, and what the city's own event page calls a root beer garden, the kind of detail that only makes sense in a town where the biggest annual gathering is built around kids and gravity rather than anything with a cover charge.
The Two Pools That Never Show Up On This List
Here is the part that would surprise anyone new to Fircrest: neither of the city's two swimming pools has anything to do with Derby Days, and that separation is not incidental. It is the reason the event works.
The Edwards Family Aquatic Center sits inside Fircrest Park itself, a short walk from wherever the derby cones end up. It is the public pool, open from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and this summer its own booking rules tell a story about how tight July gets. According to the city's pool rental information, private pool rentals are only available on Saturday and Sunday mornings between 8:30 and 10:30, and Saturdays in July have been held entirely for the FAST swim team's meet scheduling. July 20 specifically was blocked off with no rental exceptions. If you wanted the pool to yourself on a July Saturday this year, you were out of luck regardless of how far in advance you planned.
A few blocks away on Regents Boulevard, Fircrest Golf Club runs on a completely separate calendar. The course was laid out by A.V. Macan and opened in July 1923, a design the club's own site says is still nearly unchanged from Macan's original plans, and one the club notes was ranked No. 4 among Golf Magazine's best courses in Washington. The club's private pool, open the same Memorial Day through Labor Day window as the public one, keeps its water at a steady 86 degrees for members, with its own swim lessons and its own team, entirely separate from FAST and from anything happening at Fircrest Park.
Two pools, two swim programs, two membership structures, both open the exact same ten weeks of summer, and neither one touches the other's calendar. Derby Days is the one date where that split does not matter. Nobody checks a membership card at Electron Way. The kid whose family swims at the club and the kid whose family waits for open swim slots at Edwards are standing at the same starting line, and the only thing that separates their cars is whether the wheels are Z Glass.
The Rest Of The Season That Got You Here
Derby Days does not arrive out of nowhere. It closes out a run of events that started back in late June, each one at the same park, each one building toward the last big Saturday before school supply lists start circulating.
The season opened with the Strawberry Festival on Sunday, June 28, five bands and strawberry-themed everything running from 5 to 9 p.m. A week later, on July 5, the 38th Annual Fircrest Rod Run and Picnic filled the park with special interest vehicles, a Kiwanis breakfast and barbecue, and the kind of low entry fee, twenty dollars at the gate, that keeps it a spectator event rather than a ticketed one. Mid-July brought Fircrest FUN Days, an Old West theme this year according to the city's own event listing, paired the following morning with the Furry 4K, a dog-friendly run that started at 8 a.m. with check-in and wag bags.
By the time Derby Days rolls around in August, the summer event calendar has effectively run its course. What is left is the one event built around a street race rather than a festival footprint, which might be why it draws differently than the rest.
One Street, No Membership Required
None of this means Fircrest's pool culture is a rivalry. It is closer to two separate systems that happen to share a ZIP code and a summer schedule, one built around a swim team with its meet dates locked into the public pool's rental calendar, the other built around a private course old enough that its layout predates most of the houses around it. What Derby Days does, once a year, is put both systems' kids on the same block of pavement with the same rules and the same root beer garden.
If you already know this rhythm, you are probably headed to Electron Way this morning anyway. If you are still learning which Saturdays belong to which pool and which one belongs to everybody, that is worth knowing before next summer's calendar fills in the same way.
For anyone weighing whether a town built around this kind of shared Saturday might be the right fit, Evolve Real Estate PNW is glad to talk whenever the timing works for you. Let's Connect.
