Curry County Fair

The Event Center on the Beach covers about 13.8 acres on the ocean side of U.S. Highway 101 in Gold Beach, where the highway runs through town as Ellensburg Avenue. The grounds drop toward the Pacific in two terraces joined by a steeper bank. A mobile home park lies to the north, motels lie to the south, and the high school track is to the northeast. The 2018 strategic plan for the grounds states that this is the only fair in Oregon set next to the beach. For four days each summer the grounds hold the Curry County Fair. The 2026 fair ran Thursday, July 23, through Sunday, July 26, from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. The fair’s site gives July 29 to August 1 for 2027.

Between the highway and the surf

Brass Ring Amusements sets up the carnival midway, and did so again for 2026. Food and vendor booths line the grounds. The fair’s own page promises entertainment “from music to circus training.” The fair’s listings open the program with a rodeo at 7 p.m.: bull riding, with mutton bustin’ for the children. Scott Anderson, an illusionist and close-up magician seen on America’s Got Talent, Wizard Wars and Go Big Show, takes the stage at 2 p.m. in the afternoons. The Off Axis Stunt Show, an acrobatic and extreme-sports act out of Las Vegas, performs on the same stage. The evenings go to country music: the Stinson Brotherz, a Brooks and Dunn tribute out of Austin; Oregon singer-songwriter Tony Lundervold; and Sam Girl on the country classics.

The buildings carry the rest of the program. Community exhibit halls fill with creative art, photography, produce, culinary art, hobby crafts, floral entries and animals. 4-H events run through the week and end with the Junior Livestock Auction. The north end of the livestock building is fitted as a dormitory, used by 4-H and as emergency housing for fire crews. The Floral Building is the oldest on the grounds. The arena building houses motorsport events, and the horse stalls stand at the northwest corner. Exhibit families and vendors dry-camp on the grounds through the fair, with no hook-ups and no fire pits.

The fair is run by the Curry County Fair Board, a statutory body. Its listed board and staff include Shala Kudlac, secretary; Patrick Hollinger, commissioner liaison; Lynne Dewald, Magdalen Popoff and Karyn Nielson; Natasha Tippetts, fairgrounds manager; and Darrel, on maintenance.

Saturday on Ellensburg Avenue

On Saturday morning the grand parade comes down Ellensburg Avenue from the post office to the fairgrounds. In 2019 it stepped off at 11 a.m., with community floats and riders on horseback. That year the fair was billed as the 107th annual, and more than 8,000 visitors were expected. Its theme was “You Don’t See THAT Everyday!” Locals competed in the Curry Talent Round-up and a Battle of the Bands. Babies raced across a tarp and competed for most beautiful. Children made things to take home in the Showcase Building, and the Oregon South Coast Beekeepers Association showed them the life of honeybees. A photograph from that fair shows a young girl on a camel. The midway that year belonged to Paul Maurer Shows. The arena held the Bulls and Barrels rodeo and Tuff Trucks competitions. On the bill were Karen Quest’s “Cowgirl Tricks,” XPogo stunts on pogo sticks, Duane Nelson reciting cowboy poetry, Paul “Dizzy Hips” Blair with a hula hoop, Hathaway Jones telling tall tales, and the Southern Oregon Scottish Bagpipers.

A log house south of Riley Creek

Gold Beach was called Ellensburg in 1857, when Dennis and Margaret Cunniff arrived. An account kept by the Curry Historical Society, based on the recollection of Frank Colvin, gives their story. Dennis Cunniff, born in Ireland on March 7, 1828, landed in San Francisco in 1850. He mined on the Feather and Yuba rivers and then, from 1852, on the Klamath. In 1856 he married Margaret McAffery Graham, also Irish-born, who had a daughter, Lizzie Graham, from her first marriage. They homesteaded south of Riley Creek on land that included the present fairgrounds. There they built a log house, and Margaret kept books for some of the miners. On August 17, 1860, the couple signed an agreement to live apart. The town became the county seat in 1859. In 1891 it was renamed Gold Beach, for the gold in its sands and to end confusion with Ellensburg, Washington. The avenue past the fair still carries the old name.

The fair was once a joint venture of Coos and Curry counties. In the 1930s the Crook and Turner families deeded the land to the “Curry County Fair” as a place to hold it. The buildings belong to Curry County. A 1913 Oregon law had authorized county courts to hold agricultural fairs and appoint fair boards of three resident taxpayers. From 1969 a state County Fair Commission divided fair money among the counties by a merit system. The Port Orford News of October 30, 1975, reported that the Curry fair placed seventh in 1973 with 798 points and fourth in 1974 with 849. The money came from the state’s racing funds, eight percent of its share of the pari-mutuel take.

The Crooks of Pistol River

One of the deeding families has stayed at the center of the fair. The Crooks of Pistol River went to the fairs at Myrtle Point and Crescent City as well as Gold Beach. “Every year we attended the fairs and I looked forward to that as the event of the year,” Ron Crook said in 2012, recalling the fair’s 100th anniversary. He began exhibiting before he was old enough for 4-H. In later years he was still winning top ribbons at the Del Norte County Fair in Crescent City.

In the 1950s Harvey Crook, the family patriarch, was livestock superintendent, and he started the free lamb barbecue that became a fixture of every fair. Bill Crook managed the fair from 1967 to 1969. His wife, Jackie, served on the fair board in the 1990s. Ron took the manager’s job in 1971. The World, writing in 2019, says he stayed for the next 40 years and also that he retired in 2017. Under his management a master plan was drawn and large projects were completed. The fair became the first small fair in Oregon to be named a Gold Medallion Fair.

In the 1990s federal assistance to Curry County fell, and the county cut its own funding. A fundraising group was formed to keep the fair in the black. The World and the Curry Coastal Pilot date it to 1993. The 2018 strategic plan says Ron Crook and Brad Wentworth organized Curry Fair Friends in 1996. The group earned most of its money catering events at the center, and by 2020 it had given $200,000. That paid for a John Deere tractor, a commercial dishwasher, chairs, tables, and carpet for the upper mezzanine of the Docia Sweet building. The center and the Friends also put on free community dinners at Thanksgiving and Christmas. In June 2016 the Gold Beach City Council added one percent to the tax on hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts and vacation rentals, with the money set aside for the center’s buildings. In May 2019 a transient lodging tax passed at the ballot, which The World credits largely to the support group Ron Crook formed. The first large job paid from the city tax was a new roof for Docia Sweet, designed for the coast’s high winds and begun in August 2020.

James Crook of Crook Ranch Construction gave the time and materials for the tile floor in the Showcase Building and the FOG tank on the grounds. In 2018 he received the Western Fairs Association’s Blue Ribbon Award. The family served as grand marshals of the 2019 parade. By then Luke, Vivian and Pierce O’Donnell, of the next generation, had all ridden in the Mutton Bustin’ competition.