Daggett Daze

The parade on Highway 43

At ten o’clock on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, traffic stops on Highway 43 and the Daggett Daze Parade comes through Manila. For the 2026 parade on September 5, the county’s tourism office, Visit Flaming Gorge, warned of delays from 9:45 to 10:30 on Highway 43 and for traffic coming north from Highway 44. It asked visitors to carpool because parking was limited and said no one could park behind the courthouse. A paid notice in SweetwaterNOW announced new float prizes that year. Three days after the parade the tourism office posted the winners. Best Entertainment went to MHS, Crowd Favorite to the Senior Center, and Best Wheels to Flaming Gorge Resort. Best Youth/Family went to the Flaming Gorge Community Foundation and Most Creative to Sweet & Bubbly.

From the route the crowd moves to Daggett County Park, which the county also lists as Manila Park, at 40 North 2nd West. The park has a pavilion, a picnic area, a playground, an outdoor volleyball court, and restrooms. The vendor fair runs there from 11 to 1. Its tables carry permanent jewelry, western finds, handmade crafts, crochet, leather goods, Flaming Gorge decor, and baked goods. The tourism office advised bringing cash, since some vendors may not have card systems. Food trucks sell fresh lemonade, sorbet, and sweets, and there is vendor bingo. The county’s Emergency Management Preparedness Fair sets up beside the vendors. At 1:30 Kaleb Austin plays a free concert in the park, and the notices told listeners to bring a chair.

Rodeo grounds and the marina

Daggett Daze is the Saturday of a longer weekend. Most of that weekend belongs to the Daggett Heritage PRCA Rodeo at the Daggett County Rodeo Grounds, 180 West Highway 43. The rodeo’s 2026 schedule called Friday, September 4, “Patriot Night.” It opened with a PRCA/WPRA performance at 7 p.m., followed by entertainment and a dance on the grounds. Saturday was “Heritage Day.” Slack began at 7:30 a.m., with cowboy worship after it, which the tourism office called Cowboy Church. The second performance began at 5 p.m., after the parade and the concert. The rodeo’s own page also lists a Rodeo Clown School among the weekend’s events.

The rodeo is PRCA-sanctioned, with livestock from McCoy Rodeo. It runs as a Utah Pioneer Rodeo in partnership with the Days of ‘47 Rodeo, and in 2026 it was listed as an America 250 Utah community event. A non-profit, Daggett Heritage Rodeo, Inc., produces it with a rodeo committee. The committee’s executive members include couples such as Annamarie and Blace Martin, Curtis and Carleen Harwick, Matt and Marty Henry, and Raymond and Roxey Pallesen.

At dusk on Saturday the weekend moves to the water. Boats in the Parade of Lights pass Lucerne Valley Marina on Flaming Gorge, and fireworks follow, weather and fire restrictions permitting. On Labor Day itself the committee’s schedule lists a pancake breakfast from 7 to 11 a.m. at the Manila Senior Citizen’s Center, 165 West Highway 43. It also lists the Cow County Jr. Rodeo Finals at 9 a.m. back at the rodeo grounds.

Watermelons and twelve-inch shells

The county’s September 2010 newsletter called the event “Annual Parade & Daggett Daze Games.” The parade that year was on Saturday, September 4, at 10 a.m. on Main Street, Manila, and was open to any entry. Craig Collett took entries by phone, and entry forms were available at the Courthouse and Town Office in Manila or at the businesses in Dutch John. After the parade came a craft fair and “Fun & Games for young and old” at the county park just off Highway 43 and 2nd West. The Junior Rodeo Finals began at noon at the arena.

The Boat Parade of Lights in 2010 started at dusk at Lucerne Valley Marina, seven miles east of Manila. The fireworks that followed used 12-inch shells. The newsletter named the best viewing sites as Stateline Cove and the Lucerne Marina and campgrounds. On the Sunday, the Lake Flaming Gorge Yacht Club held a dinner and dance at the marina’s group site. On Monday the Senior Citizens Center served pancakes from 7 to 10, at $5 for adults and $3 for children.

An undated county flyer comes from a summer when the Flaming Gorge Dam was marking its 50th anniversary. In that year the parade fell on Saturday, August 30, and could be heard on FM 88.1. Daggett County Search and Rescue brought its equipment to the park and let children handle it. Sales of hamburgers, hot dogs, soda, and popcorn went to the search and rescue team. The park had face painting and balloon twisting. A watermelon scramble ran in heats: 11:00 for children 5 to 8, 11:30 for 8 to 12, and noon for any age. A frozen “T-shirt” contest also started at noon. On Sunday the yacht club held its Commodore’s Dinner & Dance at G Loop in the campground. On Monday the Cow Country Junior Rodeo Finals ran at 10 a.m. at the Daggett County Fairgrounds.

A county behind the Uintas

In 2017 Daggett County turned 100, and Daggett Daze ran from September 1 to 4 as the centennial party. The Rocket Miner of Rock Springs reported the program. The Friday rodeo cost $15 for adults, which included a $5 meal voucher, and $8 for children. A Firehouse Dance followed at 9:30. On Saturday at 7 a.m. there was a Breakfast in the Park at Centennial Park, the same 40 North Second West address as today’s park. The parade, which the paper printed as the “Daggett Days Parade,” lined up in the Manila High School parking lot. It ran past the baseball diamond to Highway 43, then past the Flaming Gorge Market, where entries were introduced, and on to Third East Second West. After the parade came a car show, a craft fair, and a Daggett Centennial Bake Sale.

Clint Pumphrey, who has documented the county’s history, described Daggett as perhaps the most geographically isolated of Utah’s counties. “In fact, geologically and historically, it shares as much or more in common with the Green River-Rock Springs area of southwest Wyoming than neighboring part of Utah to the south and west,” he wrote. “The reason (is) the Uinta Mountains, a formidable 10,000-foot tall barrier to travel and communication located on the county’s southern flank.”

Pumphrey traced how the region was passed between counties. It began in the large Green River County, created in 1852. When the Wyoming Territory was formed in 1868, Utah’s share shrank to a strip north of the Uintas. That strip was attached to Summit County in 1872 and moved to Uintah County in 1880. Uintah County’s seat was at Vernal, 60 miles south of Manila over the mountains. Residents found the arrangement hard to live with, and a 1913 state law allowing parts of counties to break away gave them a way out. Daggett County, with Manila as its seat, was created in 1917. It was named for Ellsworth Daggett, Utah’s first surveyor general, and it remains the state’s least populated county.

In the centennial year Pumphrey described what the parade and rodeo would show. “Both the rodeo and the parade will feature families who operated ranches since before the creation of the county 1917, including the Allens, Becks, Gambles, Neffs, Olsens and Tinkers.”