The Machine That Changed Cider Fest

Before the Cyclops, making festival cider meant turning a hand press with a large crew of volunteers. In the mid-1990s, local industrial electrician Dennis Jenson built a much bigger solution: an imaginative cider-making machine designed to be watched as much as it was designed to work. Each year, apples are brought in from Wenatchee especially for the festival, then sent tumbling through chutes, washed in a trough, lifted in wire baskets around a Ferris wheel-like frame, ground, pressed, and transformed into fresh cider right here in Marcus. With its towering wooden wheel, moving buckets, belts, gears, and one-of-a-kind construction, the giant homemade press turns cider-making into an experience visitors can follow from beginning to end.

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Known as the Marcus Cyclops, the press is far more than a piece of equipment. It is a working example of local ingenuity, volunteer effort, and the community spirit that has shaped Marcus Cider Fest through the years. Capable of producing far more cider than the original hand-cranked system, the Cyclops became both a festival spectacle and one of its most recognizable traditions—a lasting connection to the festival’s history and the reason fresh-pressed apple cider remains at the heart of the celebration.