What could be the last Mukilteo Lighthouse Festival is happening this weekend.
The three-day festival is 53 years old, but festival organizers says rising costs puts the annual celebration in jeopardy.
Mukilteo's annual Lighthouse Festival is so old, it predates the VCR. In today's accelerated culture, that's a pretty long time.
Festival board member Matt Martin broke out an old VHS tape of the event from 1984, complete with waitress races, log rolling, mud wrestling and body painting.
"It's Americana," he smiled. "It's just a bunch of people in town having a good time."
But festival organizers are now worried about the future of the slice of Americana.
"I think it would put a big hole in the fabric of this community," said Martin. "That opportunity to get together and celebrate our diversity would really go away."
It costs about $260,000 to put the three-day festival on every year. Last year, it lost about $15,000. Another deficit looms on the horizon this year, with costs up, corporate sponsorships down and a decade-long trend of businesses looking much more closely at what they're getting for their donations.
"To utilize something like this as an advertising or marketing opportunity is fantastic," said Martin. "Where are you going to get 20,000 people in the same area? But I think it's sometimes a tough sell to businesses when they're looking for return on investment."
From Fourth of July fireworks shows to community celebrations, private citizens are being asked more and more to fund public events.
In order for the festival to continue, organizers in Mukilteo are asking the community to buy in.
They say if the 20,000 people who attend gave just two or three dollars a year, all would be well. They've now resorted to a Go Fund Me campaign to raise money.
Without it, more than 50 years of lighthouse tradition could all go dark.
"This is the one thing of the year for the entire community to get involved," said Martin. "It would really be a shame to lose that."
