Chama Days

On the second weekend of August, the Village of Chama, at 7,860 feet near the junction of State Highway 17 and U.S. 84, turns its park and streets over to Chama Days. The festival is centered on Robert Gallegos Park and spreads into the town around it. It has a family and professional rodeo at the rodeo grounds, a double-elimination softball tournament, a parade, craft booths, food trucks, and live bands and dancing in the evenings. During the 2026 festival the village posted a short schedule note: “Softball 24hrs all weekend!” The village also advises visitors to book rooms early, because the festival draws people from the surrounding communities as well as Chama.

Thursday crowning and the kiddie parade

The 2026 festival ran August 6 through 9. Thursday opened with a senior dance at 11 a.m. Softball began at 6 p.m., and the crowning followed at 6:30. That year’s royalty were Queen Madison Berry, Rodeo Queen Arden Johnson, Princess Ava Gurule, and Junior Princess Layna Sanchez, and Jardy Jones was named Grand Marshal. The band Point Blank played as soon as the crowns were placed.

On Friday, Chama Fire volunteers worked the vendor park with a fill-the-boot fundraiser and a hydration station. The kiddie parade lined up at 5 on 3rd Street, set off at 6, and ended at Rio Chama Espresso, a coffee shop that serves flatbreads and bagel sandwiches. Friday night’s band was Severo y Grupo Fuego. Food vendors set up in more than one spot: Chama Loco was down by the baseball field, and Saddle Lite served the crowd at the arena.

Buckles in the arena

The rodeo includes team roping, and the 2026 program awarded separate championship buckles to the winning header and the winning heeler. Local individuals, families, and businesses paid for the open rodeo buckles. The junior rodeo is for young cowboys and cowgirls, who rode for championship buckles of their own. The arena’s sponsors that year included Pettingill Land & Cattle, Arriba Concrete & Construction, and a local couple, Kristina and Michael Montano.

Earlier accounts show how long the softball has gone on. In 2017, New Mexico Magazine reported a single marathon game that started at noon on Friday, August 10, and kept going until 5 p.m. on Sunday, August 13. The same notice described a tug-of-war style contest among area firefighter crews, with a splash zone for spectators. It also mentioned calf roping and evening dances that lasted into the early hours.

By 2022, when that year’s festival fell on August 11 through 14, Anita Massari had added her own activities. Massari directs Chama Valley Arts, which is housed in a former parish center and elementary school, and she brings the arts cooperative into town events. At Chama Days that meant face painting, T-shirt dyeing stations, and scavenger hunts.

As long as anyone can remember

Chama itself has a clear starting date. The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad needed an engine terminal and stockyards below the climb to Cumbres Pass, and it chose a site on the Rio Chama. A tent city went up around the railyards. Trains began running on February 1, 1881, and the post office and Foster’s Hotel opened the same year.

The festival has no such date. The village describes Chama Days as part of Chama for more than 100 years. In August 2009, a campaign for lieutenant governor, Solano’s, came to town for the festival and posted an album of seventy-one Chama Days photographs, one of them taken at the parade on August 8. That April, Matt van Buren of the Rio Grande Sun had tried to find out when the celebration began. Even Ed Vigil, the village’s first mayor, could not say for sure. The answer the paper heard most often was “As long as I can remember.”