Canyon County Fair

At eight in the morning of fair week, four hours before the public gates open, the market meat goats go into the D&B Show Ring at O’Connor Field House and the market hogs into the CWI Show Ring in the Fair Building, the tan livestock barn on South 22nd Avenue in Caldwell. The 2026 Canyon County Fair ran Thursday, July 23, through Sunday, July 26. Each day began this way, with goats, swine, sheep, beef and dairy cattle, poultry and rabbits shown for market or breeding. The fairgrounds and carnival opened at noon and closed at 11 at night. The livestock area kept its own hours, 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.

The grounds share a block of public ground with Simplot Stadium, the Caldwell Night Rodeo arena, Wolfe Field and Gabiola Field. A city ordinance bounds the block by 22nd Avenue, Blaine Street, Linden Street and the railroad tracks, and bars smoking anywhere inside it. Visitors park free along Griffith’s Parkway, on Blaine Street in front of Simplot Stadium, and in the College of Idaho lots, which are opened to the public for the fair. In 2026 golf carts shuttled people in from the adjacent parking for the first time. At the gate, adults paid $10, and children 6 to 12 and those 65 and over paid $8.

Pie at two, motocross at six

Inside The Center, the fair’s expo building on County Fair Avenue, open-class exhibits and vendor booths fill the hall from noon to 8:00. The Center Circle Market of local sellers runs the same hours, and on the Friday of the 2026 fair it was a kids’ entrepreneur market. A ceramics make-and-take table operates in the Canyon County Farm Bureau Expo Hall. At 2:00 each afternoon the same hall holds a pie-baking contest, with a different fruit each day: apricot on Thursday, cherry on Friday, berry on Saturday, apple on Sunday.

Outdoors at the same hour, the Aces Flying Pig Races start in the 2C Zone and run again at 4:00 and 6:00. Children pedal toy tractors against a weighted sled at the Canyon Corral in heats at 1:00, 3:00 and 5:00. The mechanical bull at Canyon Corner bucks from 4:00 until closing. Balloon animals and face painting are free on the grounds through the afternoon. Corbin Maxey brings his animal show to Center Stage and the Project Filter Stage, and Adam the Great works magic on both. The magician later wrote of a volunteer named Riley in his finale illusion: “She was understandably timid when we began the finale, she was ecstatic and smiling ear to ear when we finished.” The hypnotist Tammy Harris Barton takes the Project Filter Stage at 6:30 and again at 9:00.

At 6:00, freestyle motocross riders of FMX RAMP-AGE jump in Simplot Stadium. The headliners play the Bi-Mart Main Stage at 7:30. In 2026 they were Jo Dee Messina with the Dugger Band on Thursday, Kansas with Judd Hoos on Friday, and Sawyer Brown with Clay Walker on Saturday. CBS2 reported that general admission to the concerts came free with paid fair admission. A beer garden adjoins the main stage. Food is served at the O’L Food Court and from vendors along Center Street, Midway Lane and Fairview Plaza. The schedule set a drone show for 10:30 on Thursday and Friday nights.

Sunday’s program turns toward Mexico. Mariachi Cantares de Mexico played the Project Filter Stage at 2:30. Ballet Folklorico Yareth de Idaho and the Danza Azteca Tonatiuh dancers followed on Center Stage at 3:30 and 4:30, and Banda Pachuco with the Tejano Outlaws closed the main stage at 7:15. The fair called that last day the Latino Fair Festival.

Final drive and sale day

The livestock program runs on its own calendar inside the fair’s. On opening evening of 2026, the youngest exhibitors showed in the Bucket Calf Show at 5:30. At 6:30 the Fair Final Drive in the CWI Show Ring chose the Grand and Reserve Grand Champion market animals. Saturday morning began with a buyer’s breakfast at 8:30 in O’Connor Field House, and at 10:00 the Market Livestock Sale opened in the Fair Building.

The parent of a lamb exhibitor named Abbey wrote about sale day on Instagram: “The sale is always bittersweet. This is what you work for and towards, to raise a quality animal to show off and make a profit from. But there are tears shed, (by Mom too!). It’s impossible to not become attached to an animal you house, feed and train.” The same post said the exhibitor keeps all of the profit and the fair takes no percentage.

That Saturday afternoon also brought a goat costume contest in the D&B Show Ring. On Sunday, in the program called Bacon Buddies, participants paired with 4-H and FFA mentors to show pigs in the ring. The Idaho Pork Producers helped put it on. Large-animal and small-animal round robins followed through the afternoon.

Payette Day and Shorty’s Place

According to early newspaper reports, the Caldwell Fair Association was organized in 1887, five years before Canyon County existed. In 1901 the fair was incorporated as The Canyon County Fair, and the first fair under that name began September 26, 1901. Its grounds lay near the clubhouse of what is now the Fairview Golf Course. Payette was then part of Canyon County, and for “Payette Day” at the October fair an excursion train brought its residents and the Payette band. A photograph from October 1902, held by the Caldwell Public Library, shows a crowd watching the judging of horse teams. Dan Campbell is identified as the man with the cane.

In 1907 the old site was sold. The association paid $5,000 for 40 acres between Cleveland Boulevard and the railroad tracks, and the College of Idaho soon built its campus across the street. Two library photographs from those grounds survive from about 1912. One shows a concession stand at 21st and Cleveland called Shorty’s Place, with its operator, Shorty Martin, standing inside the booth at far left. The other shows Charles Vogt beside his produce under two signs: “Ranch Exhibit ex Chas Vogt” and “4 years from Sage Brush.”

The Idaho Press, writing in 2012, counted at least two presidents among the fair’s visitors: Theodore Roosevelt, and William H. Taft in 1911. The library dates its photograph of Taft at the fairgrounds to 1910. In that picture he stands in a convertible automobile draped with an American flag while men and women look on.

The Western Idaho Fair’s own history in Boise records a contest over a title in those years. In 1914 Canyon County assumed the title of “state fair,” and in 1915 it named its fair the “Idaho State Fair.” In the same period Ada County’s fair in Boise ran as the Gem State Fair. By that account, Canyon County’s fair came one week before Boise’s. Canyon County held a Boise day, Boise held a Canyon County day, and winners from each carried their prize goods to the other to compete again. The Boise history says no resentments were held between the two counties.

Late in 1916 the Caldwell fairgrounds partially burned. Financial trouble brought foreclosure, and the remaining buildings were torn down.

From the Guard Armory to the field house

The fair started again in the 1930s. It was held at the Guard Armory, then in a Caldwell park, and finally at the O’Connor Field House, which the Idaho Press called the Caldwell Event Center. In the early 1980s the fair built its indoor arena, which gave it a place for its agricultural events. Around 2000 it began booking professional touring musical acts.

The Idaho Press marked the fair’s 125th anniversary in July 2012. The paper reported 46,000 visitors over four days the year before, up from 31,000 in 1998, and a fair run by 300 staff and volunteers. It counted 1,000 exhibitors, 1,000 animals, 25 classes of roses in the open horticulture competition, and 3,000 flat ribbons, not counting the rosettes and champion ribbons. Gate admission for adults was $5. Zane Davis, the fair’s canning superintendent, told the paper: “We’re kind of getting back to the way where it used to be where people knew where their food comes from.”

The move that did not happen

That 2012 report also described a plan to leave. In 2009 the fair had bought 81 acres in North Nampa, on Highway 20/26 between Franklin Road and 11th Avenue, and the county commission allowed the fair board to start a capital campaign to move there. Board chairman Tim Lowber gave one reason: “One thing we’d like to do is provide more education about agricultural, and we’ve kind of run out of room.” Board member Laren Bailey said the move could also give room to the Caldwell Night Rodeo, the city and the College of Idaho’s football program at Simplot Stadium. “Us moving might benefit everybody,” Bailey said.

In February 2017, Boise State Public Radio reported that the county commissioners had announced the fair would stay in Caldwell. The same report said the commissioners voted unanimously to relieve all seven members of the fair board. It cited the Idaho Statesman: director Rosalie Cope no longer worked for the county, and it was unclear whether she had resigned or been let go. Commissioner Pam White said it had never been the county’s intent to use tax dollars to move the fairgrounds. The board that replaced them is advisory only.

The fair stayed and built in place. The groundbreaking for a new expo building was held on July 28; the county’s announcement does not give the year. Commissioners attended with representatives of the Boise contractor HC Company, the Caldwell City Council and the Caldwell Urban Renewal District, and with Fair Director Diana Sinner. The fair’s website says The Center was built in 2022. The county invited the public to a ribbon-cutting for its opening at 11:30 on the morning of July 25, 2024, the first day of that year’s fair.

The building cost $7.6 million and covers 45,000 square feet. Inside are the fair offices and an air-conditioned expo hall of 30,000 square feet, rented the rest of the year for events such as the Nampa Home & Lifestyle Expo, held September 25 through 27, 2026. Along its walls are six roll-up doors, tall enough to admit semi-trailers and tractors, set in an engineered concrete floor rated for heavy loads.