Asotin County Fair & Hells Canyon Rodeo

The Asotin County Fairgrounds lie along Highway 129 on the road from Asotin to Anatone, on the right where the signs point. The fair comes in spring. In 2021 the Lewiston Tribune gave its usual time as the last full weekend in April, and the Washington State Fairs Association listed the 2026 fair for April 23 to 26. The 2027 fair is scheduled for Friday, April 23, through Sunday, April 25. The Rainier Amusement carnival opens its midway at 4 p.m. on the Thursday before.

The Asotin County Fair and Rodeo Board runs the event. Its stated first purpose is the county’s 4-H and FFA youth, to whom it offers a place to show their projects and skills “for the people of the county and public to see.” Any citizen may also enter open-class competition. The board says those entries are judged so that exhibitors can improve their work from the judges’ suggestions. At the 4-H and FFA horse show, performance events run on Saturday and gaming events on Sunday.

Bulls, mutton busters, and the Lions Club saloon

The Hells Canyon Rodeo is the second half of the name. The Hells Canyon Roughstock Rodeo starts Friday at 6 p.m. in the upper-level arena with four events: ranch bronc, bareback, bronc riding, and bull riding. P9 Rodeo Company supplies the stock. Saturday at 2 p.m. is Stripes & Spurs Patriot Day, a bulls-only event paired with a mutton bustin’ qualifier. Sixty mutton busters ride, and the top 10 return on Sunday for the championship. The kids rodeo starts Sunday at 11:30 a.m., on Tough Enough to Wear Pink Day. Gini Roberge, a professional rodeo photographer, works the Friday and Saturday shows.

The Asotin Lions Club operates the Hells Canyon Saloon, a beer garden, through the weekend. On Friday it opens at 2 p.m. and stays open until 2 a.m., with entertainment there before and after the rodeo. Saturday at 10 a.m. the fair parade steps off, and judging takes place along the route. The parade flower is any spring flower. Candy may be handed out but not thrown. Horse entries bring their own clean-up, and the committee gives an award to those that carry pooper scoopers.

Grandpa Johnny and a calf in the 1962 parade

At the horse show a visitor may find Johnny Floch opening gates or sitting in the grandstand. Many of the contestants call him “Grandpa Johnny.” According to the fair board, he cheers every rider, not only his own grandchildren, with calls of “Go get ‘em, pard!”, “Need for speed!”, “Way to go, girlie bob!” and “Boy howdy!” He was the 2026 grand marshal.

His grandparents, Benjamin Floch and Mary Harbin, came by horse and wagon and homesteaded on Montgomery Ridge near Anatone in 1873. They were the second homesteaders on the ridge. Johnny was born on June 5, 1951, to Mary Weed and Louis Floch and grew up on the Hostetler Ranch. He was born with club feet and was told he would never walk. His father asked a friend, Buster Fordyce, for help, and Fordyce got the boy into Shriners Hospital in Spokane. Johnny spent the next 15 years there undergoing surgeries.

On April 29, 1962, still wearing leg braces, he rode a calf he had broken himself in the Asotin County Fair Parade. He took third place in the children’s division. Later he showed steers in 4-H and FFA and entered Wild Cow Milking and the Cow Pony Contest. He worked 38 years for Potlatch Corporation as a certified lumber grader and crane operator. In his spare time he hauled 4-H and FFA kids’ animals to the fair, made repairs at the fairgrounds, and served on the fair board. His six children and eight grandchildren have kept on showing animals, serving in royalty, and riding in rodeo events. The grand marshal page closes with a couplet of his: “If that cat could talk, what tales it would tell—about the Hostetlers, the Sangsters, and Johnny Floch as well.”

Queens since 1939

Cecil R. Bond came to Asotin County in 1938 as chairman of the Cooperative Extension Service and held the post until 1972. His obituary says that when he arrived, the county had just finished changing from horse power to machines, and he made some early visits to remote farms and ranches on horseback. It names him one of the original founders of the Asotin County Fair.

The fair has crowned a queen nearly every year since 1939, when Doris Floch of Anatone was the first. June Bucholz followed in 1940, and LaDoris Ausman reigned in 1942. A list of past queens printed in 1971 records no fair in 1943, 1944, or 1945, and a fair without a queen in 1946. The Floch name recurs throughout the fair’s papers. June Bucholz is listed under her married name, Mrs. Harold Floch.

In April 1961 a newspaper clipping now held by the fair board reported the largest parade in the fair’s history. Several thousand spectators “sat on cars, stood on tiptoes and filled all available windows” on Asotin’s 2nd St. A color guard of World War I veterans, the Millsap-Gruver post of the American Legion, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars led the parade. T. M. Floch, president of the Asotin Civic Ass’n, rode in the line of march, and his son Forrest served as parade chairman. Queen Marleen Wilson and her princesses rode with visiting royalty from the Lewiston Roundup, the Deary Strawberry Festival, and Dayton Days. Bands came from Asotin, Clarkston, Orofino, Kamiah, and Clearwater Valley. Mr. and Mrs. Ed Spencer of Asotin rode in an ancient horse-drawn buggy. The Waunette Club’s “Fairyland” float took first, and “Ma and Pa Kettle,” built by rural residents, took second. The Asotin Chamber of Commerce float depicted a “bright future” ahead, with Celia Bond and Linda Simpson riding on it. It had to drop out of the parade when the car pulling it developed engine trouble.

The 1971 coronation program has a pink cover. That year Sue Perkins was crowned queen, with Ed Dittentholer as her escort, and Irene Gehrke and Donita Hendrickson were princesses. Barbie Perkins was flower girl and Jerry Ausman crown bearer. The Asotin Wheelers sponsored a Queens Ball at Floch Hall after the coronation, at 9 p.m., for $1.00 each.

The years without a rodeo

The Hells Canyon Rodeo was canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021 a scaled-back fair went ahead with 4-H activities and food vendors. The rodeo was tentatively moved to August 6 and 7. On June 30 the board decided it could not be held. County Commissioner Chris Seubert, the commission’s liaison to the fair board, gave the reasons. About $30,000 in state money usually spent on the fair and rodeo had not arrived. Sponsorships are normally sought in the fall, half a year ahead, and there was no time left to raise them. Lining up the roughly 30 contractors who handle cleaning, portable toilets, and event timing had also proved difficult. The plan was to hold the rodeo in 2022 alongside the fair. “I always (like) going to it and helping out with it,” Seubert said.