Albany County Fair

The Albany County Fair fills the county fairgrounds at 3510 South Third Street in Laramie for about a week and a half where July turns into August. The 2026 fair ran from July 22 to August 1. The county has set the 2027 fair for July 28 through August 7. On the grounds are barns for beef, poultry, and rabbits, a show arena, Hansen Arena, the Grandstand Arena, and a main activity building. Campers gather southwest of the grandstand, where the fairgrounds keeps 21 full-hookup sites. A Laramie Live writer opened her account of the 2023 fair this way: “Livestock in pens; the aroma of livestock in the air, and swirls of gunpowder and grit waft by. Campers have taken over the Fairgrounds.”

The fair describes its purpose as giving 4-H and FFA members “an opportunity to showcase their projects.” The 2026 fair book lists Taylor Heggie as fairgrounds director and Bud Claycomb as grounds manager. A volunteer superintendent oversees each department, from beef and swine to cats and dogs.

Eleven days of shows

The gunpowder comes first. In 2026, 4-H shooting sports began with a muzzleloader contest at the rifle range on the evening of July 21. Shotgun, air pistol and rifle, archery, and .22 contests followed over the next days, and the awards were given on the evening of Saturday, July 25. The youth horse show filled Hansen Arena on Friday and Saturday mornings, and the Smokin’ BBQ Cook-Off ran all day that Saturday. Sunday belonged to the dogs, with showmanship, obedience, rally, and agility classes, and to the youth rabbit check-in.

Hogs, cattle, sheep, goats, and poultry came onto the grounds Monday morning, and the home-raised shows followed at four that afternoon in a fixed order: cattle, sheep, goats, then swine. On Tuesday the poultry exhibitors held a showmanship and costume contest, the breeding cattle went into the ring, and the rabbit breed identification contest was held. That evening came the breeding swine show, boars first and then gilts. Wednesday began with market and breeding poultry and with dairy goats followed by dairy cows. A pocket pet show came at three, and the market swine show at six. Thursday’s sheep show closed with the Supreme Ewe, and the 4-H cat show started at 10:30. Friday opened with the Cattle Women’s pancake breakfast at seven, then the youth beef show. That night the 4-H Junior Leader dance was held in the Rabbit Barn. The fair’s own notices described each show as free to attend.

The indoor exhibits were judged early in the week. The 2026 fair book lists 4-H classes in aerospace, entomology, geology, robotics, welding, ropecraft, and sportfishing. Its open classes include bread, pies, pickles and relish, canned meat, pottery, an egg show, and pee-wee showmanship. In 2016 Jimmy Jo Chatfield, then fair manager, told the Laramie Boomerang: “If you have something — whether it’s a lizard at home or you crochet or you cook or you are a beadwork artist or you paint — there’s a class for you. And if it doesn’t fit, we have categories called ‘any other.’” She said indoor entries had risen from 3,200 in 2015 to 3,400 in 2016, while livestock numbers had fallen.

Family Night and Over the Hill

Thursday evening draws the town. Family Night opened at four on July 30, 2026. The fair promised full concessions in the main activity building, a few food trucks, and Mulligans, with the advice “no need to cook dinner.” The Soda Pit and Quick Draw Coffee Company also set up for the week. At five a team roping jackpot began in the Grandstand Arena. At six came rabbit hopping and agility and the sheep lead. The 4-H Fashion Revue Style Show followed at 6:30, and a cornhole tournament began at seven.

After the sheep lead came Over the Hill Showmanship. Laramie Live explained it in 2023 as a chance for the “22+ crowd” to be nominated by a 4-H or FFA member to show livestock: a teacher, a grandparent, a neighbor. In 2026 the classes were sheep, goat, and swine. Nominating someone cost $10 at the fair office window, and a nominee could buy out for $20. The 2023 Family Night also had a pedal tractor competition in three divisions. The next evening the Show Me Your Meat Smoker & BBQ contest was held, with live music by Eli Mosley.

The sale ring

The fair ends with the Junior Livestock Sale. On Saturday, August 1, 2026, the barns opened at noon for a buyers’ lunch and registration, and the sale began at one. That morning the fair warned exhibitors that the superintendents would be working the ring and not the barns: “We will not hold up the sale and cannot go back in sale order if you are late. A late animal will not sell.” Afterward it posted, “What a tremendous sale!”

Old sale catalogs keep the prices. One from 1990 lists a 1,200-pound steer sold at $1.05 a pound, or $1,260. The average steer in 2015 brought $5,222. Debbie Alworth had worked with the fair for 28 years by 2016, mostly on the sale, and had shown as a 4-H member as a child. “The dynamics of our Fair Board have changed tremendously over the years,” she said. “From really rural active ranchers and agriculture people to more people who are not as involved in the agriculture aspect.”

A druggist, a photographer, and Steamboat

The Boomerang dates the first Albany County Fair to 1890 in Laramie, when people came in from the area to show livestock and crafts. Laramie Live counted the 2023 edition as the 120th fair. “When the fair started, it started as livestock and the indoor home arts — quilting and sewing,” Chatfield said.

The Albany County Historical Society credits the start to Otto Gramm, who came from Ohio to Laramie in 1870 to open a drug store. In the decades after, he served as fire chief, county treasurer, and Wyoming’s first state treasurer, and he was elected mayor in 1926, a few months before his death in 1927. The society writes that he turns up so often in Laramie’s history “it seems that there must have been ten men by that name,” and that “much later, he was recruited to organize the first Albany County fair.”

Within a few years of 1900 the fair had a camera on it. William H. Isberg was a Laramie dry-goods clerk and an amateur photographer. His family’s papers, now at the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming, hold pictures of the fair from 1901 to about 1902, a 1901 fair parade, bands in 1903 and 1905, and a fire company hose race in 1903. They also hold bucking horses from 1903 and 1904, with Bud Gillespie, Frank Stone, and Guy Holt on Steamboat.

Steamboat was a black gelding with three white stockings. He was named for the whistling of his breath through a broken nose. He was known for sunfishing, for landing stiff-legged, and for bucking whenever he was mounted, and very few riders stayed on him until he stopped. About 1921 the university’s athletic department drew a bucking horse and rider for its uniforms. WyoHistory.org reports that most sources agree horse and rider were first modeled on a well-known photograph of Guy Holt riding Steamboat at the Albany County Fair in 1903. Peter Fillerup’s sculpture “Fanning a Twister,” featuring Steamboat, stands north of War Memorial Stadium.

Quonsets and a mud puddle

The bucking horses moved on. A rodeo once ran with the fair until it was dropped and Laramie Jubilee Days took over the rodeo. “It must have stopped in the mid ‘60s,” Alworth said. A track around the arena once held wild horse races. “That was really fun,” said Shirley Lilley, who first came to the fair in the 1960s, 53 years before the Boomerang interviewed her, when her son entered horse events. “But they had a problem with the betting.”

Lilley counted the land and buildings as the largest change. By 2016, about the only original structures left were some horse barns and parts of the arena, and semicircular Quonset buildings had once served the rest of the fair’s indoor needs. “When the pigs were shown, you just kind of grouped around and tried to keep them in the middle,” she said. “They were shown outside between two buildings, and you kind of got together and kept all of them in. There was always a mud puddle in the middle.”