Auburn’s annual Clean Sweep returns this weekend

Published 7:30 am Friday, April 17, 2026

Take a stroll around town sometime and you’re likely to come across one of the legacies of Clean Sweep’s past.

Check out A Street Southeast, where decades ago, volunteers planted the hedges that partially shield the rail yards from the busy thoroughfare. Or elsewhere, enjoy the sight and sounds of kiddos playing on the slides and clambering bars of various playgrounds about town, courtesy also of Clean Sweep.

Clean Sweep, now in its 24th year, is Auburn’s annual celebration of Earth Day.

Cleanup, environmental restoration, and beautification efforts in and around Auburn have continued every spring since things began. And on Saturday, April 18, once again the city extends its invitation to all to volunteer. It’s a chance for everyone to pitch in for light cleanup and maintenance projects, landscaping, painting, weeding, and planting in and around downtown, and at various park sites.

Service clubs, social service agencies, faith-based groups, scouting troops, businesses, families, and individuals are invited to get together and work on these projects. Volunteers may choose either to participate in a specific project or ask to be assigned to one.

Volunteers work on general cleanup, landscaping, planting, weeding, litter pickup and projects at various parks, trails and other public sites around Auburn.

Auburn’s now annual spring Clean Sweep event got moving in 2002 to a backdrop of general fussery about how grubby downtown Auburn looked. Fortunately, this coincided with city efforts to get people from all over Auburn “involved” in things.

The city along with the Auburn Area Chamber of Commerce and the Auburn Downtown Association put out multiple notices about a pending Clean Sweep of the city.

“We were hoping to perhaps get a hundred people,” said former Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis. “We staged the event in the empty, then under construction Sound Parking Garage, and people kept coming, well over 600. We had all sorts of projects to be done, but by noon all those were done and they were asking, ‘What do you want us to do now?’”