Campbell County Fair

On the Wednesday morning of the 2026 Campbell County Fair, the 4-H Royalty Drill Team sold breakfast burritos for $5 apiece inside the Central Pavilion at Cam-plex. They set up near the chickens and ducks and sold from 6 to 9 a.m., or until the burritos ran out. The fair describes itself as the single-largest youth event in Campbell County, and its exhibitors come from 4-H, FFA and open class. In its 2026 posts it called itself “The Greatest Show on Dirt.” That fair ran July 24 to August 2 and was billed as part of Campbell County’s America 250 celebration.

Barns, show rings and the Sunday sale

The week keeps a stock show’s clock. On Monday, July 27, the Youth Supreme Cow Contest was held in the morning. By evening the youth livestock were due in the barns: beef, swine, sheep, poultry, rabbits, goats, alpacas, llamas and dairy cattle. Farm Bureau goat roping filled Barn 3 that night, and the fair reported that slick ground “gave us a few tumbles along the way.” Tuesday brought weigh-ins and the Campbell County Born & Raised contests in market goats, lambs, beef, Herefords and swine. From Wednesday on, the shows moved through the East and Central Pavilions one species at a time:

• Wednesday: meat goats, rabbits, dairy cattle and dairy goats, then alpacas and llamas.
• Thursday: sheep, with an open-class sheep lead held during the lunch break, then poultry.
• Friday: swine.
• Saturday: beef.

Between classes the rabbit exhibitors stepped out of the ring long enough to make a TikTok together.

Kim Fry, a Campbell County 4-H youth educator, showed sheep she helped raise on her family’s ranch. In 2021 she told the Gillette News Record what the ring is like from the inside: “You always have nerves in exhibits. Is my animal going to handle things OK? Am I going to say the right things to the judge? Am I doing OK?”

Static work fills Spirit Hall in the Wyoming Center. The 4-H project list runs from aerospace and entomology through leathercraft, ropecraft, welding and woodworking. The open-class book covers ceramics, floriculture, garden products, furniture refinishing and needle and fancy work. The homemade fruit pie jackpot costs $10 a pie. The winner takes half the pot, and the other half goes to youth awards.

The week closes on Sunday morning with Round Robin Showmanship at 7:45. A buyers’ lunch follows, and the Youth Livestock Sale begins at 1 p.m. in the Central Pavilion. “Every purchase and add-on rewards the dedication, responsibility and countless hours our local 4-H and FFA exhibitors have invested in their projects,” the fair posted on sale day in 2026. Verna Ann Gilbertz’s children Jay, Kathy, LD and Susan all came up through 4-H. Their Youth Livestock Sale earnings were saved for college.

The plaza, the grandstand and Energy Hall

Free entertainment opened on Wednesday, July 29, which was also kids’ field-trip day, and ran through Saturday. The plaza held:

• the Bubble Tower and a Cyclone Swing carnival ride
• a foam party and a stilt party
• corn hole, pickleball and putt-putt golf
• laser tag and paintless paintball
• Noah’s Way Exotic Petting Zoo
• the All Aboard train

On the free stage, The Imaginaries alternated with the Kelly McDonald Band. Circus Zirkus performers strolled the grounds and played the Plaza Tent. Inside the Wyoming Center were the trade show, the Young Guns Circus Fun Park, Action Entertainment NASCAR racing, caricature artists and The Silver Starlets Show. Local candidates also worked the hall in 2026.

Evenings belonged to the Morningside Park grandstands, and those shows were ticketed:

• Opening Friday and Saturday: demolition derby.
• Tuesday: pig wrestling.
• Thursday: the Showmanship Showdown. In 2026 a team called the Ring Queens took first place and the Crowd Favorite Costume Award.
• Friday: a ranch rodeo put on by Adon Ranch Productions.
• Final Saturday: the Thrill Extravaganza circus stunt show.

On Wednesday night the 4-H and FFA members held their own dance at Morningside Park. On Friday, July 31, Cam-plex presented Lonestar at the Heritage Center Theater.

The Heritage Center also hosts the Miss Campbell County Pageant on the fair’s first Sunday. The Betty Hough Memorial PeeWee Rodeo runs in the Wrangler Arena that afternoon. On the opening Saturday, Gillette VFW Post 7756 hosts the Patriot Charity BBQ at the Marquee Campground.

The last Saturday is the fullest day. NEW FARRM Exchange holds its farmers’ market south of the Marquee, as it does on the first Saturday too. Dachshunds race at noon on the grass by the grandstand entrance. The watermelon eating contest runs at 2 p.m. under the Plaza Tent, and the Campbell County Jackpot follows at 3 p.m. in the Wrangler Arena. At 11 a.m. the Pioneer Dinner is served in Energy Hall. The committee members who have served it include Bobbi Geis, Marilyn Christensen, Marilyn Mackey and Myrna Sharp. Eric Barlow, identified as Wyoming Speaker of the House, has served alongside his wife, Kelly.

A seven-member county Fair Board oversees the fair, chaired by Stephanie Styvar. Fair coordinator Liz Slattery runs the office staff. The 2026 fair was Marilyn Christensen’s last on the board, and exhibitors’ children sent her off with a Harlem Shake video.

A schoolhouse fair south of Gillette

Accounts of the first fair differ.

• The Rockpile Museum’s version: Research by the Campbell County Rockpile Museum traces it to a community fair at Lone Star School on October 10, 1918. The museum dates the first free Campbell County fair to 1922 and notes that schoolwork entries were among the first projects judged.
• The News Record’s version: The Gillette News Record wrote in 2021 that the first fair “was considered to be” the Lone Star Community Fair of 1920. It was held inside a schoolhouse about 30 miles south of Gillette, with prizes, a band, a basket dinner, a rodeo and a race. By that account, the fair moved to Savageton in 1922.

That September, the Gillette Record printed a poem titled “Our County Fair” by White Eagle, a local Native American poet and homesteader:

“You’ve heard about our county fair. You going to come. Of course you are! And bring a pig, a cow, calf, hen or pig. Help boost and smile and make it big.”

Celeste Hayden, a 4-H youth educator assistant, remembers a later home: the old fairgrounds off Second Street, also called the Custer Battlefield Highway, south of where the Rockpile Museum stands. There were petting zoos. Fairgoers walked across the street to a mini mart with their friends, and 4-H junior leaders ran lemonade stands to pay for projects and trips. “It was very family oriented,” Hayden said.

The experiment farm east of town

The present grounds came out of the energy boom. Judith Semple, one of the original land board members, recalled a county in the early 1980s where horse racing, community theater and the fair had all outgrown their space. “It was obvious we needed a bigger playground,” she said.

An architect’s study offered two choices. The county could assemble lots downtown, or it could buy the 740-acre Wyoming Experiment Farm east of town, which the state was closing. The farm would cost about $3 million. Semple took the idea to John Ostlund, a former state senator, and he backed it.

The steps followed quickly:

• July 30, 1981: the Campbell County Joint Powers Land Board was formed.
• Soon after: voters approved a $4.7 million bond issue to buy the farm.
• 1982: the Legislature approved the sale.
• The next three years: Cam-plex was built.

Cam-plex opened on August 14, 1985, and the Campbell County Fair was its inaugural event. “A casual outside observer might say, ‘Sure, you can do anything with all the money you have,’” Ostlund said at the opening ceremony. “But it was more than just money — it was the will, wishes and determination of a lot of people.”

A hundred years, a year late

By the News Record’s count, the fair turned 100 in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the celebration to 2021.

That June, historian Lucas Fralick sat alone at a conference-room table at 1 a.m., sorting photo albums and scrapbooks. They were on loan from local families, the Campbell County Cattlewomen and the Wool Growers Auxiliary. Fralick, a Campbell County native, had once shown at the fair himself. “Each photograph has a story to tell,” he said, turning the pages of a leather-bound journal. The Rockpile Museum pulled almost 150 photographs from its archives to help.

Liz Edwards, then fair coordinator, led the commemorative book project. Half the book went to Centennial Families: those in the county for at least a century who had stayed in agriculture and kept showing at the fair. The first application came from former state senator John Hines, whose family began farming and ranching in Campbell County in 1901.

The 2021 fair added other centennial pieces:

• A commemorative quilt carrying the designs of 4-H clubs and fair logos from over the years.
• Pageant royalty: 21 girls, from six months old to high school seniors, were crowned Miss Campbell County royalty in the Heritage Center Theater.
• A record livestock show: the Youth Livestock Show drew 471 participants, up about 25 percent from the year before.
• A century exhibit in the Wyoming Center with historic photographs, old belt buckles, trophies, ribbons and old Future Farmers of America jackets.