Carson Valley Days

At four in the afternoon on Thursday, June 11, 2026, the 116th annual Carson Valley Days opened with the carnival at Lampe Park in Gardnerville. The Record-Courier reported that Davis Shows Northwest workers were making the final adjustments to the rides while newly released schoolchildren wandered the grounds. Davis Shows, a family-owned carnival company, has brought the midway to the park for over a decade. Admission to the festival grounds is free, and the rides are paid for separately. An armband costs $38 a day, a single ride ticket $8, and game tickets a dollar apiece, with six or more needed for a game. On Thursday only, a second armband goes for half price if both people are present to buy it.

The night before, the carnival opened for a few hours to invited guests only. The organizers call it Special Needs Night & Sponsor Night. It is held for people with significant disabilities and sensory, developmental, medical, or mobility needs. In the club’s words, “the crowds, noise, flashing lights, and unpredictability of a normal carnival night” would otherwise keep these guests away. Invitations go out through local schools and the special needs programs that serve them.

Four days at Lampe Park

The festival is run by the Active 20-30 Club of Carson Valley #85, a volunteer club of men between 20 and 39. Members wear red vests on the grounds and answer visitors’ questions. The money raised goes to local youth through nonprofits, schools, athletic programs, scholarships, and food and clothing drives. The club’s beer booth is the only place on the grounds that sells draft and canned beer. It also sells frozen margaritas in partnership with the Center for Hope and Healing.

Craft and food vendors line the park, and children get face painting. Each evening the main stage holds free concerts. On Friday, 2026, Carson Chandler played from 5 to 7 and Moxy Ruckus from 8 to 10. The Record-Courier noted that the Friday celebration has moved from downtown over the years. On Saturday, Little Hurricane, described by the club as a Grammy-nominated blues-rock duo, played at 5, and Boot Juice headlined at 8. The club told visitors to bring chairs and blankets for the grass and cash for the food, the vendors, and the carnival.

The contests run all weekend. For children there is a watermelon eating contest, tug of war, and a water balloon toss. Adults have horseshoes, arm wrestling, and Taylor Lengel’s Tay Tay’s Beard Competition. At noon on Saturday, 2026, the Glutton Bowl eating competition came back. The Record-Courier had last reported it a decade before. The Corner Bar in Minden sponsored it, and the menu was a large pizza from the saloon, spicy wings from The Grill Next Door, ice cream from Schat’s Bakery and Restaurant, hot dogs, and more. Sunday has a cornhole tournament and the raffle drawing. It also has the Duck Derby of the sister club, the Active 20-30 Club of Carson City 140, in which visitors adopt ducks ahead of time and watch them race to the finish. The forecast for that 2026 weekend called for highs in the low 90s.

Saturday on County Road and Esmeralda

The parade begins in Minden and finishes in Gardnerville. At 6:30 on the morning of June 13, 2026, the first of 60 entries were arriving at the Douglas High School parking lot. One of the first was an antique tractor, unloaded from its trailer. Members of the Minden Town Board were cooking breakfast for the early crowd, as they do every year. At 8 a.m., runners in Main Street Gardnerville’s “We Run This Town” 5K left Heritage Park. They ran the parade route and cleared it before the parade started. Highway 395 closed in both directions from Buckeye Road to Waterloo Lane.

At 9 a.m. the parade left the high school and went down County Road, around Minden Park, and left onto 6th Street. Two cement columns once marked the entrance into Minden at 6th Street and County Road. The Town of Minden’s account says they were built in 1911 “as part of the first Carson Valley Days celebration.” From 6th Street the parade went southeast along Esmeralda Avenue and then south on Highway 395. It turned onto Waterloo Lane and broke up near Lampe Park. The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, its Mounted Posse, Search and Rescue, Citizens Patrol, and the Nevada State Police kept the route clear.

The 2026 theme was “Celebrating 250 years of Freedom.” The club said only four of the 60 entries were political, since Election Day had passed. According to club spokesman David Hochgurtel, the special guests were:

• Miss Rodeo Nevada 2025 McKinna Jackson
• the Kerak Shriners
• the Rotary Club of Minden, marking its 100th anniversary
• the Comstock Civil War Re-enactors
• the Carson Valley Little League all-star float, which the judges named best overall

Mark Menezes announced the parade. When it breaks up, the club names its Citizen of the Year. The year before, that honor went to Jodi Wass, and the previous year’s citizen is usually the grand marshal.

Three fat steers, 1910

Minden itself was only four years old when the first celebration was held. The Dangberg Land and Livestock Company had given the Virginia & Truckee Railroad land for its Carson Valley terminal. The town was laid out to serve the branch line, and the first train arrived in July 1906. Local boosters wanted to show off the new town and the valley’s farms.

The Carson City Daily Appeal of May 21, 1910, reported that more than twenty of the valley’s leading citizens had met at Minden the previous Friday. They proposed setting aside a date each year to be celebrated as Carson Valley Day, and the meeting approved it. They formed a permanent organization and appointed committees. They chose June because, the Appeal said, the valley is then “clothed in her most enchanting raiment.” More than a thousand dollars was raised for free amusements, including two brass bands, a dancing platform under a large tent, baseball, and “probably” a balloon ascension.

Bert Selkirk, owner of the Record-Courier, promoted the event that month. “The idea of a Carson Valley Day is a mighty good one,” he wrote, “having for its purpose to bring people from all parts of the state to see what a wonderful Valley we have, entertain them with a barbecue and have addresses by the state’s most memorable men.”

The barbecue was put in the hands of Richard Raycraft of Genoa, whose family had run the Raycraft Exchange hotel there for decades. “Richard Raycraft would not be a Raycraft if he did not know how to cook,” the Genoa Weekly Courier wrote on May 27. On June 10 the same paper reported the preparations. Bakers across the valley were turning out 1,600 loaves of bread and 400 cakes, along with chickens and “salads by the wash tubs full.” Three fat steers were to be butchered that day and roasted under Raycraft’s supervision. “All this big feed is to be absolutely free for everybody,” the paper wrote. It also expected at least fifty automobiles from the Reno automobile club.

June 11, 1910, was a Saturday. In Carson City the state offices closed, and several stores closed so their clerks could go to Minden. Carloads of people left on the two early trains. The Appeal reported that about thirty people came out on Carson Street at noon to watch a runaway Chinese vegetable wagon, the rest of the street’s population having gone to Minden. In the Record-Courier’s later count, around 700 Reno and Carson City residents arrived on the V&T at 10:45 a.m. They were among more than 3,000 who attended. The 1910 Census counted only 1,875 people in the county.

The visitors filled the big dancing platform. The Nevada State Band opened the program at 11 o’clock with an overture. Grant Marsh, a former Carson City resident, gave the address of welcome. J. E. Stubbs of the Nevada State University spoke next, and then Judge F. H. Norcross of the state supreme court. After the speeches came the barbecue, and then the sports. The first event was a wrestling match between Edward and Phillips, on which a number of bets had been placed around western Nevada.

Tom Kearney had installed the lights at Minden for the celebration. He rode the afternoon train back to Carson City and reported “fully 2,000 strangers in the little town.” The barbecue looked so good to him that he went back on the 3 o’clock train for another helping. He also reported that the trout fishing near Gardnerville was the best in years. According to the organizers’ history, the day ended with a dance.

From Minden Park to Lampe Park

The organizers’ history says the event became a yearly tradition and stopped only briefly during World War II. It also says the parade was added in 1946, after the war, and the Record-Courier says there has been a parade every year since 1946. The 20-30 club says it has organized the whole festival since that year. The Carson Valley Visitors Authority gives a longer history, saying the club has taken part since the 1930s and has hosted for more than 60 years. Research also recorded a 1938 photograph of a Carson Valley Day parade with riders George Gansberg and Ruth Lundergreen.

The single day became a multi-day festival in 1954, and its name became Carson Valley Days. A 1987 photograph shows the parade on Esmeralda passing the old Farmers Bank building and Tumblewinds. Until 1993 the parade ran from Gardnerville to Minden. That year the route was reversed and the festival moved to Lampe Park. The 117th Carson Valley Days is scheduled for June 10–13, 2027.