The Little Float Milwaukie is a celebration of the Community and Green Spaces that make our community such a wonderful place to live and play. Elk Rock Island is a treasured natural resource, connected to Downtown Milwaukie, and home to many unique habitats and rich with a history of the communities that grew up around it. Milwaukie Bay Park is the most visited park in Clackamas County; it’s completion a focus of the community since the early 2000’s. The Little Float Milwaukie connects these two community resources by way of the scenic Willamette River.
Come join us for celebrations of these wonderful spaces by floating with us, joining our local volunteer ecologists for dinner on the Island, and hanging out with us in Milwaukie Bay Park and the bay.
We hope you’ll stick around after floating to get to know our local businesses and community while raising some much needed funding to support the efforts of the non-profits working diligently to keep these spaces maintained and accessible to the community.
The day will start with our first ticketed floaters being shuttled to Elk Rock Island from the docks of Milwaukie Bay Park at 10am on August 2nd. Local businesses and vendors will be set up in Milwaukie Bay Park to facilitate a community gathering in the park throughout the day. Our generous local businesses have donated some pretty amazing gift baskets to be raffled off towards the end of the day. In the evening there will be a ticketed dinner hosted on Elk Rock Island by our local volunteer Island Ecologists and Stewards followed by a walking tour of the island and its special and distinct habitats and histories of the Island not commonly known. We invited floaters and non-floaters to join us in the park until 8pm when we will wrap up the day’s festivities.
While all are welcome to join us in Milwaukie Bay Park, we are ticketing floaters to ensure we have the boats and volunteers to shuttle all safely to the island and to limit our impact throughout the day to the sensitive habitats on the island. We encourage floaters to bring their own decorated and unique floatation devices and will have innertubes available for rental for those who need one; there will be a prize for the most unique float at the end of the day. To protect the island and river, we ask that all floaters purchase tickets and all floatation devices decorations are properly secured to avoid unintentional pollution.
Proceeds from the Little Float dinner will go directly to the Milwaukie Parks Foundation and be earmarked for their restoration and maintenance efforts on the Island. Proceeds from floaters, merchandise, and raffles will go directly to the Downtown Alliance of Milwaukie who are the event hosts and stewards of our downtown community and spaces. Both organizations are 501c3 non-profits and purchases and donations may be eligible for tax deductions.
Thanks to all of you who make our community and spaces so special. We look forward to seeing you all in the river and at the Park on August 2nd, 2025.