Bonneville County Fair

Gates open at 9 a.m. on the first morning of the Bonneville County Fair, at 1542 East 73rd South on the southeast side of Idaho Falls. The 2026 fair ran eight days, from Thursday, July 30, through Thursday, August 6, under the theme “Stars, Stripes & Show Lights,” a nod to the 250th anniversary of the United States. The fair’s own account of that week lists hands-on activities, live animal showcases of cattle, chickens and goats, a ranch roping event, local food trucks and rows of vendor booths. Each fair morning starts with Cowboy Church, and a 5K fun run follows.

Eight days of 4-H and show lights

The junior program runs the whole week, from the Table Setting Contest at the start to the Market Animal Sale at the end, and 4-H exhibitors set out their project work for the public. Open-class exhibits go up alongside them. In the photography exhibit, mounted and matted prints hang for the length of the fair. Frames and collages are not allowed. The prints are entered in junior, youth and adult divisions, in classes for scenic, portrait, action and sport, animals, still life and macro, and they are judged for first place, second place, Fair Board’s Choice and Best in Show.

From Friday, July 31, through Sunday, August 2, Community Focus Days ran from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with local vendors, community exhibits, family activities and events sponsored by the Fair Board. The Post Register described the days as designed to connect children and families with the agricultural roots of East Idaho. That Sunday also brought the second annual Rods & Rigs Car Show, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It drew classic hot rods, custom pickups, commercial trucks, big rigs and specialty vehicles, and it held a Show & Shine competition.

Legacy Night fell on Wednesday, August 5, with dinner at 6 p.m. and a recognition ceremony at 6:30. The ceremony honored the county’s volunteers, ranchers, farmers, educators and community leaders. The fair closed on Thursday with the Junior Livestock Market Sale, where businesses and community members bid on animals shown by young exhibitors. “Whether you’re cheering from the bleachers, honoring an agricultural pioneer on Legacy Night, or supporting our youth at the Junior Livestock Market Sale, you’re part of something bigger than an event,” said Mark Wilson, president of the Fair Board. Since then the fairgrounds website has read “See You in 2027!” It gives no dates.

The grounds south of Sandy Downs

The fairgrounds lie just south of Sandy Downs, a rodeo and racehorse track. The hub is the 12,000-square-foot Melaleuca Event Center, which hosts livestock shows and public auctions. The other buildings are:

• a 15,000-square-foot Education Complex and Activity Center
• a 12,000-square-foot Swine Barn
• the Farm Bureau 4H Livestock Center, a refurbished 15,000-square-foot building that stood on the land before the fair arrived
• two Bank of Commerce 4H arenas
• a 20-stall Westmark Credit Union horse barn
• a 7,200-square-foot Beef Pavilion
• a multipurpose Carriage House
• a covered picnic area

The University of Idaho Extension office is housed in the education building.

The show arena is air-conditioned, a welcome feature during an August fair. Stan Boyle, longtime chairman of the Fair Board, said judges from as far away as Virginia and Washington had asked the board, “Do you realize what you have to show in? In an air conditioned show arena with seating for several hundred people?” The new space also brought the horse events back to the fair. For years the 4-H horse fair had been held in borrowed arenas around the county.

Outside fair week, the buildings are rented for soccer, weddings, company events, classes and high school dances. Gaylen Stucki, a former board member, said these daily rentals bring in more than half of the fairgrounds’ operating budget. The grounds are run by a nine-member Fair Board of volunteers appointed by the Bonneville County Commissioners. Late in 2024 the board’s list of unfinished projects included a children’s playground, an RV park and a cover for the roping arena.

A lake, a racetrack and the War Bonnet Roundup

The fair’s early grounds lay across town, on land Charles Tautphaus began shaping in 1886. That year he and his family dug a six-acre lakebed south of what was then Eagle Rock, and they later filled it from his Idaho Canal. Tautphaus died in Tonopah, Nevada, in 1906. According to Idaho Falls Magazine, his wife Sarah sold the land three years later to the Idaho Falls Boosters Club, which passed it to the Bonneville County Fair Association. The association built fairgrounds, a racetrack and a grandstand near the lake.

Idaho Falls, City of Destiny, the 1991 city history compiled by Mary Jane Fritzen, records that Idaho Falls boosters enlivened the county’s fall agricultural exhibit in 1912 with the first War Bonnet Roundup, held in conjunction with the Bonneville County Fair. The magazine places the first roundups on the Tautphaus ground, which was called Reno Park by then. The city bought the land back in 1934 and opened a zoo there the next year.

Five acres on Rollandet Street

The fair’s later home was five acres along Rollandet Street near Tautphaus Park. Stucki dated those grounds to 1949. In his account they served for years, but the city grew up around them until they were cramped and unsafe for kids and animals alike. Marla Meyer, the board’s treasurer, remembered that there was no parking and that tents had to be rented to house animals. “It was just so crowded,” she said. “There wasn’t any room for growth for the 4-H program.” In August 2017, Commissioner Bryon Reed told EastIdahoNews.com, “We are completely out of room.”

The Fair Board bought new land in 2017. The sources give different sizes:

• The fairgrounds’ own history says 50 acres.
• The Post Register reported more than 50 acres of farmland in 2019.
• Reed described a 30-acre site in 2017 and put the cost at about $1 million.

A storage barn was the only structure on the property. The sources also differ on when work began. The Post Register’s 2019 report says construction began in 2017, while Boyle’s account dates the undertaking to 2018. Reed said crews finished an estimated four-year project in two, slowed only by a long winter. “When spring came we really poured the fuel on,” he said.

The finished facility cost $3.5 million. Funding came from several sources:

• more than 100 private donations, some as small as $5 from children in 4-H
• county savings
• $1.5 million from sales of excess land
• the sale of the Rollandet grounds to the city, which planned to use them to expand the Idaho Falls Zoo

Private gifts came to nearly $800,000. They included $80,000 from the CHC Foundation, $72,500 from the Idaho Farm Bureau, which bought naming rights to the renovated barn, and $42,500 from The Bank of Commerce. At a news conference on August 1, 2019, Reed announced the largest gift: $275,000 from Melaleuca. The company’s chief executive, Frank VanderSloot, had been a 4-H member as a child. He described kids who “take a 1,000-pound steer and tame him, from being wild, down to where they’re gentle and tame,” and added, “You just can’t learn it from an iPad.” Reed said 4-H enrollment, which had been capped for lack of space, was already up about 30 percent. The first fair on the new ground opened that week and ran through August 9.

A calf that would not lead

Boyle taught math for 38 years in the Idaho Falls School District. He sat on the Fair Board for 26 years and estimated he was chairman for about half that time. Stucki called him “the driving force, never losing focus and determined to make things happen.” Boyle’s fair life began at age six, before he was old enough for 4-H, when he showed one of his family’s Guernsey calves in open class. The judge asked why the calf would not lead. Boyle answered, “If I get behind her she will.” He and his wife Joy later founded the Foothills 4H Club, the second oldest in the county, 43 years before he retired. Before the pandemic the club had grown to 90 members.

Boyle left the board in January 2024, and Mark Wilson succeeded him as chairman. Looking over the ribbons from his own 4-H years, Boyle counted more red than blue and no grand champions. “We didn’t have good cattle but I still loved what I did with them,” he said.