Dow’s Prairie Run brings local runners to Clam Beach Drive

Sixty runners ages 8 to 77 took part in the 37th annual Dow’s Prairie Race on June 20, 2026, filling Clam Beach Drive just north of McKinleyville with a low-key local field. The annual run offered a choice of a 2-mile or 6-mile course, a simple format that has kept the event rooted in the North Coast running calendar for decades.

The race sits within the Six Rivers Running Club’s broader work in Humboldt County. The club says it exists to encourage distance running, arrange road and trail races, and support youth running, and it hosts six signature races each year along with smaller events across the county. Dow’s Prairie has remained one of those recurring fixtures, drawing people who want a community race rather than a large commercial spectacle.

Archived race pages show how steady that tradition has been. The 2021 Dow’s Prairie Run was billed as the 32nd annual event and drew 51 runners. In 2023, the 34th annual race brought out 66 runners, with 26 entered in the 2-mile and 40 in the 6.1-mile race. The 2024 event recorded 39 finishers in the 2-mile race and 40 in the longer race, while the 2026 edition brought 60 runners to the line. That span shows a race that has held on through changing crowds while still pulling families, club runners and newer participants onto the same coastal route.

The course itself is part of the appeal. Archived writeups describe runners starting near the ocean, climbing toward Dow’s Prairie and finishing back along the coast, tying the race to the landscape around McKinleyville and the Clam Beach frontage road. That setting gives the event a local identity that bigger races often lose, with the run framed by coastal prairie, open road and the ocean edge rather than by closed-street fanfare.

Jeff Haag has been identified as race director on multiple archived pages, and those same records name recurring volunteers and club members including Gary Timek, Mark Ellis, Yoon Kim, Tammy Haag, Sophia Haag, Jack West, Bob Peck, Don Brubaker, Catrina Howatt, Brent Howatt, Yoshi Uemura and Mary Wells. Their repeated presence points to what keeps Dow’s Prairie going: a small network of organizers and volunteers willing to build another year around a familiar Saturday run.