01/01/2026
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So happy to be ringing in the New Year with at the North Fork Grange! Huge gratitude to everyone who came out and supported our annual New Year’s dance.
Thank-you to our event sponsors Flowra, Trinity River Lumber Company, Merchants Mall and Debbie Laffranchini for their generosity, and to our community partners—Ascend Wilderness, the 49er Gold Country Inn, and Trinity County Brewing Company—for helping make this celebration possible.
Gather ’round and hear the tale of the Junction City Fruitcake, a sweet and nutty legend baked into the heart of our town.
Thirty-six years ago, the Junction City Fruitcake of Friendship was first gifted to Kathy Adams. As the story goes, Kathy was at home doing dishes when a few monks from the Gompa walked by, their eyes catching hers through the kitchen window. The brief encounter gave the impression of a moment of peeping as they passed. It was innocent—just one of those small, perfectly timed human moments—and a fruitcake was offered afterward as a gesture of goodwill and friendship. Legend has it Kathy was doing dishes in her birthday suit, listening to Janis Joplin, and smoking a doobie. For those who knew her, those extra details were hardly surprising.
Since then, the fruitcake has been passed from friend to friend throughout Junction City, becoming a symbol of friendship and togetherness, a thread of giving that stretches all the way back to 1988. In the tradition, it is gifted each year at the North Fork Grange New Year’s Eve dance, continuing the circle of goodwill and celebration.
This year, last year’s recipients, Sadie and Damon Fagan, gifted the fruitcake to Tim and Kassandra Kelly, Kathy Adams’ grandchildren—bringing the tradition beautifully full circle.
This fruitcake is a sweet, nutty, maybe slightly musty symbol of our Junction City community, and of the way friendship and perseverance carry us across generations.
Happy New Year from the North Fork Grange.
NYE 2025 Black Light Dance Party
