Beaver County Fair

The Beaver County Fairgrounds stand on Highway 21, halfway between Minersville and Beaver. Outside of reserved events, the riding arena is open to anyone who rides. Around it are a large indoor building with a carpeted floor, heaters, air conditioners, restrooms and a large kitchen; a lighted pavilion with no tables; a playground, a volleyball pit and a barbecue pit. A creek nearby is used for fishing and swimming.

For three days each August the grounds hold the county fair. The 2026 fair ran August 20 to 22, with a rodeo, a derby, contests and games, 4-H, open class exhibits, a junior livestock show and pageants. Its grand marshals were Sid and Jennifer Marshall.

Steers at nine, rabbits at half past three

The carnival midway opened at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 20, 2026, and closed at 9:00. On Friday it stayed open until 11:00. On Saturday it ran from noon to 11:00. Thursday at 6:00 p.m. brought Beaver County’s Got Talent, a musical competition with prizes.

Saturday belonged to the junior livestock shows, which ran one after another through the day. Steers showed at 9:00 a.m., lambs at 10:30 and goats at 1:00. A pet show followed at 2:30, then poultry at 3:00 and rabbits at 3:30. At 6:00 that evening came Let’s Make a Deal, and the fair advised contestants to come dressed up to improve their chances of being picked. The program also listed a baby contest, a Little Britches rodeo, and open class exhibits, for which the fair posts a canning label. After the fair closed, its organizers thanked Full Contact Racing and Breath of Fresh Eyre for “a great derby.”

A bull out of the chute

The 2026 fair opened about a month after the Cottonwood Fire and destructive flooding struck parts of Beaver County. Fox 13 reported that Klellin Bradshaw’s family lost a cabin in the fire. It had been built in the late 1990s, and for about a week the family studied fire maps for word of it. “We always had hope,” Bradshaw said. “But, you know, in the end, it was gone.”

The floods that followed damaged homes and washed out portions of State Route 153. They also destroyed the rodeo grounds in Beaver roughly a week before the city’s two-day Pioneer Day rodeo, and the rodeo was canceled. Riding clubs, 4-H programs and families had all used the arena. Wiley Hughes, of the rodeo and grounds committees, said his father-in-law helped build it in the early 1980s. “It’s where they went to be together and practice their events,” Hughes said.

On the Friday night of the fair, rodeo returned to the county at the fairgrounds in Minersville, with a crowd of 1,000 to 1,500 expected. Rodeo chairman Lonnie Olsen said the first competitor out of the chute would be riding a bull. His own job was to pull the gate and then, as he put it, quickly move out of the way. “They need some cheering up,” Hughes said. Debbie Utterback, whose daughter was married on family property in the canyon, said of the fair: “We’re getting through one day at a time through the struggle that we’ve been through.”

Governor Spry at the ball park

The first county fair was held the last week of June 1905. It had agricultural and mining exhibits, games, food booths and dances. Five years later the Beaver Press of September 30, 1910, reported that the fair had opened at Beaver on a Wednesday “with a record breaking crowd.” Visitors began arriving the Sunday before. Some came by team, and the transportation lines between Milford and Beaver were taxed to capacity.

Governor William Spry arrived at Milford that Wednesday morning and was escorted to the county seat, where he served as orator and officer of the day. He went through the exhibit building and expressed surprise at the farm and mineral displays. After luncheon he was driven to the baseball park and race track to watch Milford play Beaver and to see the horse races. That evening he was the principal speaker at two public meetings, and then he was returned to Milford by auto. Members of the state supreme court came for Milford Day.

Both ball clubs had brought in outside players. Beaver won the opener. In the second game, played Thursday, Beaver led 9 to 2 at the end of the second inning, and Milford came back to win 16 to 12. In the exhibit hall, women’s work ran to quilts, rugs, draperies, dresses, coats, fruit and pickles. When the fair closed, the mineral exhibit was taken to a permanent home in Salt Lake. The paper called the fair “the greatest exhibition and sporting event ever undertaken in southern Utah.”

Race tracks, caves and a federal lease

In 1938 a new race track at the fair grounds opened for the first time, after a parade down Beaver City’s main street. The next year the fair moved to Milford’s new fair grounds, which had a half-mile track, and ran three days over Labor Day weekend 1939. In 1940 the WPA designated $12,000 for improvements to the Beaver race track at the Murdock Academy fair grounds. The 1949 fair offered tours of the Lehman Caves, attended by Governor J. Bracken Lee of Utah and Governor Vail Pittman of Nevada.

The grounds on Highway 21 are held under a recreation lease with the Bureau of Land Management. The county first applied for that lease to build a racetrack. In February 2014 the county commission authorized the renewal under Resolution 2014-01 and revised the application to describe the land’s use as fairgrounds. The minutes noted that the change was not expected to cause problems with the renewal. A month earlier, fair chairwoman Allison Webb had come before the commissioners with two possible August dates. The commission advised choosing the one that gave the carnival and the derby the most room.

The fair’s list of grand marshals begins with Vance and Connie Marshall in 2004 and runs year by year to Mark and Janet Nelson in 2025 and Sid and Jennifer Marshall in 2026.