Deltarado Days and Western Sky Balloon Festival

At six in the morning on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the Fourth of July weekend, hot air balloons go up from Confluence Park in Delta, Colorado, weather permitting. Those are the only hours they fly. The City of Delta, which runs the Western Sky Balloon Festival, notes that the balloons do not fly during the warm parts of the day, and that when weather grounds them the rest of the festival goes on. For 2026, July 2 through 5, the city listed 25 balloons, marking 250 years of the United States and 150 years of Colorado.

The park covers 265 acres. By the city’s account it was the showcase project that led to Delta’s designation as an All American City in 1992. Within it are the Bill Heddles Recreation Center, the Fort Uncompahgre living history museum, an 18-hole disc golf course, seven miles of walking and single-track mountain bike trail, and a 70-acre lake for fishing and paddle boarding. The festival spreads across most of it.

Ascensions, tethers and pancakes

On the 2026 schedule the Saturday ascension was listed with first responders and the Delta High School JROTC. Rides in the free-flying balloons are reserved for the festival’s balloon sponsors. Anyone else may go up on a tether from 7 to 9 on Friday and Saturday mornings at $10 a person. The tethered balloon rises about 75 feet and comes back down, and donations benefit the Fire Department. During the same two hours a community pancake breakfast is served in the park, by Grace Church on Friday and by Partners on Saturday.

Friday morning also brings the second annual Heidi Varshock Plein Air, a painting event that begins at 6, and a 5K run and walk at 9. The city’s list of things to bring is a camera or phone, a lawn chair or blankets, sunscreen, water “and great energy.” Pets are strongly discouraged.

Ducks, foam and the evening glow

Friday afternoon in 2026 opened at 3 o’clock with a foam party by Foamazing Parties. At 4 the rubber duck race ran in the wellness pool as a Fire Department fundraiser, with ducks sold at the information booth. From 4 to 8 the park offered horse carriage rides from Shelter Insurance, a Delta County 4-H petting zoo, a mechanical bull, a water slide, and a climbing wall from The Nature Connection. The vendor village filled the Rec Center gym. There was axe throwing, and a talent show and game night ran from 5 to 7. Food trucks and the beer garden stay open until 10:30 on festival evenings.

Saturday afternoon has a puzzle-building competition and, at 2 p.m., a crowd spray down by the Fire Department. Children get an obstacle course, a water slide, a balloon artist and Toadstool face painting. Emilee Reynolds played from 5 to 7. The schedule put an Ultimate Skydiving Adventures skydiver over the park at 7 p.m., “contingent on Baby Lowe’s arrival.”

At 8:30 on Friday and Saturday the balloons are inflated and lit on the ground for the glow. The city describes it this way: “No flying. Just colors & music.” Friday closes with a drone show by Hire UAV Pro at 9:45. The city introduced the drone show in 2025, flying it on July 5 that year. The same 2025 release listed about 20 balloons, a movie night at the Tru Vu Drive-In, and fireworks presented by the Delta Volunteer Fire Department at 9:45 p.m. on the Fourth.

On Sunday the last ascension goes up at 6. A community church service follows in the park at 7:30, and the Peaks and Valleys Deltarado Days Disc Golf Tournament starts at 8.

The balloon festival is young, though its sources count it differently. The city’s 2025 release called that summer’s event the third annual, and the Delta Area Chamber of Commerce billed the 2026 edition as the third. The Deltarado Days name on the disc golf tournament is much older.

A banquet in an auto garage

A 2016 history in the Delta County Independent, credited to Jim Wetzel and the Delta Historical Museum, traces Deltarado Days to a week-long event begun in 1920 called “The Annual Farmers Spree.” It was instituted when Holly Sugar was built in Delta. One condition for locating the sugar factory there was a guarantee that 9,500 acres of sugar beets would be grown in its western Colorado territory. Once that acreage was under contract, the company staged a banquet for the farmers.

John Davis organized the first one on little more than 24 hours’ notice. It was held in the Gallup Building, which was then the Laycock auto garage, and about 500 farmers attended. In 2016 the building held two businesses, Classic Computers and a used book store. In later years the banquets moved to the armory, where a program was presented to about 1,000 guests.

A $15 name and an approximate hundredth

The Spree ran through 1936. That year the Delta Chamber of Commerce held a contest to name the event. Mrs. Glen Ellington, wife of the postmaster, submitted “Deltarado Days” and won the $15 prize. The newspaper history says that with war looming the celebration was discontinued until 1946, when it started back up in full swing. It was first held in February, then moved to three days in September, and eventually settled in July. Over the years it has included PRCA-sanctioned rodeos, bubble gum blowing contests, archery demonstrations, pancake breakfasts, mud volleyball, fiddle contests, sidewalk sales, fishing contests, hay rides, “and always a parade down Main Street.” A parade photograph from about 1955 to 1958 shows Delta County agriculture on display. In the 2022 parade, tractors took over the street, and a boy on the Delta Health float sprayed the crowd with a water gun.

The festival’s age has been counted more than one way. The 2016 celebration was billed as the 81st anniversary. In 2021 the newspaper described a return of the traditional festival. That year Carlotta Gibson, working with the chamber, set up a quilt show under two canopies in the Vendor Village at Confluence Park. It held about 50 quilting items from the Basket Case Quilt Guild of Delta, the Surface Creek Quilters of Cedaredge, the S&B Quilters’ Guild of Hotchkiss and the local Quilts of Valor group. A woman demonstrated an old-school hand crank machine. One quilt had been started in England, shipped to the United States and finished there, and Gibson said it looks like stained glass. “The chamber is trying to get this to be an annual thing,” Gibson said.

In 2023 the chamber declared the hundredth celebration, held July 20 through 23, while acknowledging that the exact birth year is not known. “It (Deltarado Days) has kind of a wild and colorful history as far as when,” said Mariah Emond, the chamber’s president, “but I think everyone at the chamber kind of just decided that this would be a great year to get everybody out of that slump and say it’s the hundredth celebration.” That year the Thunder Mountain Flywheelers brought back the Deltarado Days Tractor Pull, and the Friday street dance added a mustache contest.

In 2026 the chamber moved the Deltarado Days parade to the Fourth of July, into the balloon weekend. It was scheduled to step off on Main Street at 10 a.m. that Saturday, four hours after the morning’s ascension from Confluence Park.