Benton Franklin Fair & Rodeo

The main gate of the Benton Franklin Fair is on Oak Street, off East 10th Avenue, at the Benton County Fairgrounds in Kennewick. During fair week, Ben Franklin Transit buses run to the gate free of charge. Central Plateau Cleanup Company pays for the rides, and in 2026 the buses carried a record 36,796 riders to and from the grounds. Every guest goes through security screening, and every bag is searched. Outside food and drink are not allowed, and that includes sealed water. An empty bottle may come in and be filled at the free Water Monster stations around the grounds. The fair calls itself “The Best Week of Summer.” Its own pages and the Tri-Cities visitor bureau date the 2026 fair August 25 to 29. A statewide list of Washington fairs gives August 24 to 28. The fair announces August 24 to 28, 2027, for the next one.

Kick-off comes the Saturday before. On August 22, 2026, the Benton County Fair Grand Parade went through downtown Kennewick from ten to noon, and a demolition derby followed at 5:30 that evening at Speck Dealerships Arena.

Inside the gates, Davis Shows NW sets up its carnival midway, open from noon to 11 p.m. The thrill rides are the Orbiter, the Zipper, Vertigo and Starship 2000. Smaller riders have the Merry-Go-Round, the Ferris Wheel, the Funhouse and the Wacky Worm. On the Thursday of the 2026 fair, rides cost $3 apiece from noon to six. Mannie and Melba Davis founded the carnival in 1950. Pat and Geraldine Davis run it now, and it works fairs in Washington, Oregon and parts of Nevada from March through September.

Each night the Hayden Homes Summer Concert Series plays the ICCU Stage, with gates at 7 and music at 7:45. The 2026 bill was Brantley Gilbert, Skillet, Lee Brice, The Art of Rap featuring Ice-T, and Gerardo Coronel, “El Jerry.” Lee Brice had played the fair once before, in 2011. The fair’s list of headliners goes back through Willie Nelson in 1996 and 2000, and the Beach Boys appear on it three times, in 2009, 2010 and 2024. In the 2026 exhibit buildings were homegrown produce, flowers, photography, fiber arts, and, in the fair’s words, “creative builds and projects we’re not even sure we could dream up ourselves.” The Hometown Makers Market sells the goods of local artisans and small businesses.

Five nights at the Horse Heaven Round-Up

The rodeo runs five nights. The Horse Heaven Round-Up is a PRCA rodeo and a member of the Big 4 Rodeo Association, and the fair counts it among the longest-running PRCA rodeos in the Pacific Northwest. In 2026 the purse was $225,000, with $25,000 added per event, and the top 12 in each event met on Championship Saturday. The Cowboy Channel carried it live. Roger Mooney called the action in his 28th year as announcer. Bullfighters Dusty Tuckness, Nate Jestes and Miles Barry worked the arena, and barrelman JJ Harrison of Walla Walla kept the crowd laughing.

Before the nights there is slack. From August 24 to 26, 2026, between 7 a.m. and noon, the timed events ran their preliminary qualifying rounds. Each night, before the bucking stock, 15 children aged four to six ride sheep in Mutton Bustin’. Helmets and vests are provided, and full western attire is required.

On Thursday night the arena turns pink for Tough Enough to Wear Pink, which marked its 18th year in 2026. The rodeo gives $1 for every person wearing pink, and the campaign has given more than $224,000 to help uninsured people in the community get mammograms, cancer screenings and follow-up care. On Saturday night the crowd wears red, white and blue for veterans and first responders. Kade Sonnier, a Louisiana cowboy, won at the 2026 Round-Up, and the win moved him to fourth in the world on his way to the National Finals Rodeo. Afterward the fair wrote that it had been “the greatest year in Horse Heaven Round-Up history.”

Old MacDonald’s Barn and the sale ring

The first aid station sits by Old MacDonald’s Barn and the Kid’s Zone. The barn was built to show farm animals and their young, and visitors have met piglets, chicks, goats, miniature horses and llamas there. Pasco High School agriculture teachers Walt Grisham and Wally Caldwell built it in 1975 with students from the Pasco Future Farmers of America chapter. The school’s senior agricultural class drew the design, and members of the Kennewick FFA came to help. The Fair Board put in $4,000, Kennewick businesses gave $2,000, and others donated materials and equipment. The project took second place nationally in the FFA’s “Building Our American Communities” contest. The barn turned 50 at the 2025 fair.

The youth market stock auction closes fair week, and the money goes directly to young livestock exhibitors. The 2026 sale brought $1,734,427, a record. The 2025 sale brought $1,512,958. In 2020, when Covid-19 canceled the fair, the sale still raised $647,000. The fair says the money helps exhibitors pay for college and for next year’s animals.

A fair on rented ground

The Benton Franklin Fair Association does not own the fairgrounds. It leases them for a few weeks each year, and a small staff with many volunteers puts up the fair and takes it down again. Within five days of closing, most of the grounds go back to the county. The association is a nonprofit run by a volunteer board, with offices across the river at 812 W. Washington Street in Pasco. Duane Howard is board president and Lori Lancaster is executive director. In its 2023 count, the fair drew more than 117,000 people in five days, from 30 states.

Benton County rebuilt its side of the grounds over two summers. New parking lots with new lighting were finished in July 2025. In July 2026 the county finished $12 million of work at McDaniel Arena, including a new grandstand that doubles the seats from 3,000 to 6,000 and new restrooms. The arena’s south side, called “over the chutes,” was left in place. The mural on the front of the old grandstand is being carried into the remodel by digital means.

The association rebuilt a smaller arena itself. Decades ago the Benton Franklin Mounted Sheriff’s Posse built a wooden arena on the grounds, and generations of 4-H members and riders used it until it wore out. In June 2026 fair and rodeo volunteers tore it down, set new Noble Panels, leveled and sifted the footing, and built the arena again. Big D’s Construction lent equipment. The job cost nearly $45,000, and the Wildhorse Foundation gave $12,500 toward it. “The Benton Franklin Fair exists to create opportunities for youth and strengthen our community,” Lancaster said.

Roger Baisch served 21 years with that same Posse and 18 years on the Fair Board, including two terms as president. He grew up on a small farm in southern Idaho, where 4-H, FFA and the fair were part of his youth. Years later he brought his own children to this fair. His death was announced in September 2026. In a fair profile from nearly 20 years earlier, he had told volunteers: “Never lose sight of who they are, and who they are there to serve.”

Grape festivals and a night rodeo

The fair grew out of grape carnivals, town fairs, and a Grape Festival held in 1946 and 1947. On May 25, 1948, what the fair calls “a visionary group of prominent community members” formed the nonprofit that still runs it. The first Benton County Fair was held that year, and it included an all-junior rodeo for cowgirls and cowboys aged 10 to 16. Fair events up to then had been held mostly in downtown Kennewick and around Keewaydin Park. By the reckoning of local historian Gale Metcalf, the fair has been on its present grounds since 1949.

The full rodeo came in 1949. Metcalf sets the scene: “One Kennewick afternoon in 1949, a contestant slipped onto the back of a saddle-laden bronc and secured his hand for the ride ahead.” The rider meant to stay on a full 10 seconds, and the bronc meant him not to. “Sometimes the cowboy succeeded. Sometimes he flew off in a cloud of dust.” The first two rodeos were held in daylight. In 1951, electricians from the Benton County Public Utility District gave their time to string lights, and the rodeo ran at night for the first time.

From 1948 through 1953 the fair’s official name was the Benton County Fair, though Franklin County took part so fully that many counted it in. The first official bi-county Benton Franklin Fair came in 1954. Its court was Queen Jene Mullineaux and princesses Joan Austin, Marlene Ross, Sondra Wade and Teddy Anderson. Joan Austin’s sister Sallie was queen in 1958. Because of that two-part start, the fair marked its 75th anniversary in 2023, while Metcalf’s column counted 2024 as the 75th year of the rodeo and the 70th of the bi-county fair.

Admission was free in the early years. As late as 1955, the Benton Franklin Fair was one of only three fairs in Washington that charged nothing at the gate. Metcalf writes that a princess in Queen Sondra Wade’s court, Jo-Ann Hofmeister, went on to dance with the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes in New York. The gate began charging in 1957, at 50 cents. That year’s rodeo brought two Hall of Famers: Harley May of Deming, New Mexico, world steer wrestling champion in 1952, 1956 and 1965, and Deb Copenhaver, born in Wilbur in 1925 and then living in Post Falls, Idaho, world saddle bronc champion in 1955 and 1956. Later parades had Leo Carillo of “The Cisco Kid” as grand marshal, and in 1969 Robert Conrad of “The Wild Wild West.”

A 1962 photograph by Roger S. Nielsen of Walla Walla, held by the East Benton County Historical Society, shows bulldogger John Gravenslund at what was then the new fairgrounds.