Pete Giamalakis has been coming to the Salt Lake City Greek Festival since he was in his 20s. Years later, he was bringing his own sons, watching all three of them take the stage in Greek costumes to perform dances.

He remembers when the festival was little more than a small bazaar for church members, with people selling handmade goods, before it opened to the public and evolved into its current three-day festival format in 1976. Decades later, he said, it’s hard to believe how much it has grown.

“I’m very proud to be Greek,” Giamalakis said, looking out at the crowd Saturday. Despite the economic struggles people face today, he said, the community continues to show up, helping the celebration become the largest Greek festival west of the Mississippi.

The event now draws roughly 40,000 people each year, said festival chair George Karahalios. Ahead of the 50th anniversary, organizers hoped to see that number grow to about 50,000 people.

And they’ve expanded to make room for a larger crowd, Karahalios said.

This year, the main tent is about 60 feet longer and has more seating, he said. The café has also moved to the east side, opening up more room for people to move around, while vendors selling imports like clothing and jewelry crafted in Athens have moved to a new shopping area at the north end of the tent.

For the first time, the festival also has both indoor and outdoor dance performances, allowing more dance groups to take part, Karahalios said.

On Saturday morning, a long line stretched outside the festival next to the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral near 300 West and 300 South before the gathering began at 11 a.m. By noon, every table inside was filled, and dancers were taking the stage in traditional Greek costumes.

Nearby, people eagerly lined up for chicken skewers, lamb roasting on a spit, gyros, cheese-filled triangles known as tyropita and loukoumades, deep-fried dough balls drizzled with honey.

The three-day festival kicked off Friday for its 50th anniversary with a ribbon cutting. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, in a Facebook post, recounted how women at the cathedral started it as an annual bazaar, cooking food, making crafts and sharing Greek traditions, before the event grew into the massive celebration it is today.

“If it’s your first time going, my recommendation is to try anything and everything they’re serving,” Mendenhall wrote. “And then explore the beautiful Cathedral and learn a little about the people who built this community.”

Volunteers and staff with the Greek Orthodox Church of Greater Salt Lake have been preparing food for the hungry crowd since April, Karahalios said. Over the summer, they filled and rolled grape leaves for dolmathes, skewered pork and chicken for souvlaki and layered filo dough and nuts for baklava.

The menu has stayed largely the same over the years, but the recipes passed down through generations are gradually tweaked, Karahalios said. This year, organizers made slight changes to the pastitsio, or Greek lasagna, and stifatho, a beef stew, he said.

Many of the food vendors have also been part of the festival since its early years.

One of them is the stand selling loukoumades, where Goldie Kacinski said she has been serving up the fried dough balls since she was 10 years old. Gesturing to the crowds, Kacinski said the festival’s growth has been “explosive!”

And on the event’s 50th year, some experienced it for the first time, like Fran and Carter Paxton, who brought their 1-year-old son, Ernest, to see the festivities. For them, the food was the biggest draw, with gyros and dolmathes among the dishes they were looking forward to trying.

For others, the festival offered a first look inside the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral before the more-than-century-old church is set to undergo a multimillion-dollar restoration to repair damage from the 5.7-magnitude earthquake that shook the Salt Lake Valley in 2020.

The Greek community has long-standing roots in Salt Lake City. The first Greek immigrants arrived in the Salt Lake Valley as early as 1870, and over the next three decades, more than 1,000 Greek immigrants settled in the city, establishing what became known as “Greek Town” downtown.

More than a century later, that community is still celebrating its traditions, and the festival has grown far beyond the small bazaar Giamalakis remembers from his younger years.

Seeing what it has become, and celebrating its 50th anniversary this weekend, Karahalios said, “is pretty unbelievable.”