Custer County Fair

The pens at the Custer County Fair hold animals that county children have fed and handled for months. The fair runs each July on the rodeo and fairgrounds just north of downtown Westcliffe, Colorado, on County Road 241, and admission is free. The exhibitors are members of 4-H and Future Farmers of America. A visitor can walk up to a pen or a project display and ask the person who raised the pig, the lamb or the rabbit how it was done. The Wet Mountain Tribune put the preparation at six months and called the third week in July, for locals, “the grandest and most anticipated of the summer.”

Not all of the work is livestock. Indoor projects are on view through the week, and ribbons go to sewing, cooking, photography, woodworking and archery. A shooting sports competition runs alongside the animal shows. In 2025 the archery was held at the Cowboy Church archery range.

Llamas on Saturday, beef on Friday

The Custer County Fair Board is a county-appointed board that meets monthly in the school district’s ag classroom on Main Street. Its minutes gave the 2026 dates as July 9 to 19, and its Facebook group marked the days as they came. The llama show and race came early, on the evening of Saturday, July 11. The next morning board treasurer Alisha Shy wrote: “It was a great night for the llama show and race last night. Thanks to all that came and supported the kids.” Caleb and Brittany Van Deusen were the llama superintendents.

Public speaking followed on the Sunday at four. The contest has four categories: impromptu, presentations, interpretative reading and prepared speech. Each age division gets a grand and a reserve champion. The board’s May 2026 minutes record that speech winners would not receive buckles, “following the debates last year over scoring and how the buckles would be awarded.”

Tuesday, July 14, was move-in day for the animals, and Wednesday was “Pig Show Day.” The lamb and goat shows began at nine on Thursday, and the beef show at nine the next morning. In 2025 the order ran the same way. The swine show was held on a Wednesday evening, sheep and goats on Thursday, and beef on Friday, followed that afternoon by livestock master showmanship. There are small-animal classes as well, judged in cat, dog, llama and rabbit. The board’s 2026 planning list named Sheyenne Shy as small-animal superintendent. She had shown a prize-winning steer at the 2021 fair.

Under the same plan, each show was to open with the Pledge of Allegiance, the 4-H Pledge and the FFA “Why Are We Here,” and the judge’s biography was to be read aloud before judging began. Eddie Crispe, the FFA advisor, was confirmed to announce the daily shows, except beef, and the livestock sale. The minutes noted he would retire at the end of the school year. Buckles were ordered for livestock, master showmanship, the “Led, Bred, Fed” awards and a carcass contest. For the carcass contest, Westcliffe Meats takes ultrasound readings at weigh-in.

Steak at eleven, sale at one

Local groups cook through the week. In 2025 a pulled pork dinner came before the swine show, and the Custer County Cattle Women served a beef breakfast before the beef show. For 2026 the minutes assigned the pork meal to the 4-H Council and the beef meal to the Cattlewomen.

The closing Saturday runs on a fixed sequence, given in the board’s post of July 17, 2026: “Steak Dinner @ 11am, Award Ceremony @ 12pm, and Livestock Sale @1pm tomorrow!” The steak fry belongs to the Sangre de Cristo Cowboy Church. The fair board buys the meat, and the church provides the sides, runs the dinner and keeps the donations. A tent goes up for the dinner and for master showmanship.

Grand-champion ribbons and buckles come at noon. Then the youth auction begins, and the animals the exhibitors raised sell to area buyers. In 2025 the auction ran from one until four-thirty. Two microphones were requested for the 2026 sale day.

A circle of cars on County Road 241

The fair shares its ground with the Wet Mountain Valley Stampede Rodeo, held the third weekend of July. Together the two draw what the valley’s visitor bureau calls “huge crowds each July.” The rodeo grounds are older than the fair, and their origin is told two ways.

The Wet Mountain Valley Saddle Club says four local ranchers, Rock Canda Sr., Jim Christo, Jack Geroux and Bud Camper, founded the club in 1937 as a place to race horses. The rodeo grew out of the club. Its first arena was a circle of cars. In 1940 club members gave $1,000 each to build a permanent arena on the site of the present rodeo grounds. The club dates the Stampede to 1946. That year Olin Camper, the club president, supplied the stock, and Mary Montgomery Jagow was crowned rodeo queen.

The visitor bureau’s version starts about 100 years back. A few teenagers raced their horses down Macey Lane in the valley below Westcliffe. Then they invited townsfolk to watch and give cash to the winning rider, and from that race the rodeo eventually grew. The fair followed the first Stampede by a year. The visitor bureau calls it an annual tradition since 1947.

The grounds still get built on. Stone Everhart, a 4-H member who raised market swine and competed in shooting sports, had spent weeks at the fairgrounds in summer heat with little shade or cover from afternoon downpours. For his Eagle Scout project he built a 14-by-16 gazebo. To do it he briefed the county commissioners, got a permit from the Town of Westcliffe and passed inspections. The Sangre de Cristo Sentinel reported that it was the favorite resting place at the 2025 fair.

In May 2026 the board voted to spend Conservation Trust Fund money on 25 new hog pens, 12 behind the steer barn and 13 behind the show arena. Shade over the bleachers was still waiting on bids and engineered plans.

Three rabbits from a twelve-year-old

The Sentinel’s issue of July 25, 2014, led with a sale-day story. Katelyn Roberson was 12 and had raised rabbits for five years. Her mother, Sue, said the family’s only rabbit sale until then had been one to a friend for around $25.

The county fair had no breeding-rabbit sale category until Sue persuaded the Fair Board that one had worked well at the Cañon City 4-H fair. There the highest price they had seen for a meat-pen rabbit was $600 or so. That year Katelyn raised three Champagne D’Argent rabbits and left them unnamed. Exhibitors are encouraged to send postcards and letters to potential buyers, and one of hers went to a rabbit breeding company in Ulysses, Kansas. The family knew nothing about the company. Katelyn’s pen won first place and Grand Champion in the meat-pen class.

At the Sunday sale the bidding stalled around $30. Then a bid came from one end of the arena and a higher one from the other, and the price kept climbing past $1,000. Sue, trying to take pictures, started crying, and so did Katelyn. The bidding passed $2,000 and then $3,000. It ended at $3,400.

The two bidders were Mr. and Mrs. McCall, owners of the Kansas company, bidding against each other. The story names the company as the Sante Fe Rabbit Company, and the photo caption calls it the Santa Fe Trail Rabbit Company. Katelyn planned to spend some of the money on cages and supplies and to enter again the next year. After the sale, the McCalls let her keep her rabbits.