Elko County Fair

On August 19, 2026, a racehorse from Wyoming put its head out of a stall at the Elko County Fairgrounds. It was one of about 300 stalls that fill for the race meet. Across the way, carnival rides were going up. Since about the last week of July, Todd Wolf of the Elko County Road Department had been working the racetrack in ten-hour days with a road grader and a watering truck. He was building up three to four inches of cushion, which the Elko Daily Free Press described as fluffed-up dirt with moisture underneath. The 105th Elko County Fair ran from the first race at 3 p.m. on August 28 until the exhibit building closed on the evening of September 7.

The fairgrounds cover 40 acres a few minutes from downtown Elko. A citizen board appointed by the Elko County Commissioners runs both the fair and the grounds the year round. Two year-round staff support the board, and temporary hands are taken on for the month of the fair. By the board’s count the fair draws about 20,000 people, and other events at the grounds draw another 20,000 over the course of a year. One of those is the Silver State Stampede, a June rodeo whose association dates it to 1912 and calls it the oldest in Nevada. Hundreds of volunteers work the fair, some for more than two decades. Local groups raise money at it, among them the American Legion, the Elko County Sheriff’s Cadet Program, the Elko High School Choraliers, and the Elko Police Officers Protective Association, which runs a concession stand.

Six days at the track

The Elko Convention & Visitors Authority counts six days of racing, with nine to ten races a day for thoroughbreds and quarter horses. It says trainers come from as far as Washington and Arizona for purses that run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 2026 the horses ran on August 28 and 29 and on September 4 through 7, with wagering handled by the fair’s pari-mutuel manager, Yolanda Duran. Wolf stays at the grounds through every racing day, as many as 15 hours a day, and goes back out between races to ready the track for the next field. Justin Reeves, the grounds superintendent, told the paper that Wolf was probably the most underrated man in the county. “He pours his heart and soul into getting the track ready,” Reeves said.

August 29 was Veterans Day. Veterans entered free and were invited onto the racetrack for the National Anthem and the color guard.

The last race on the last day, Labor Day, is the Nevada Blackjack Challenge. Nine local stables run it for bragging rights, and posters for them go up around Elko. The visitors authority names them as Unstable Stables, Unable Stables, Misfits Stables & White Pine Stables, Under The Table Stables, Unwanted Stables, We Wanna Win Stables, and Let It Ride Stables. Dennis Gilligan and John Lemich, both associated with the Unstable Stables racing syndicate, created the race. The two rode as co-grand marshals of the parade for the 99th fair.

Irons and cow horses in the main arena

The visitors authority calls the fair’s branding contest the nation’s only hot-iron branding contest in which teams race the clock. In its description of the men’s event, four hands brand six yearlings, two on the ground and two on horseback, and all the hands change after the third yearling. The women’s and co-ed events run the same way with four yearlings. The fair now lists Women’s, Open, Co-Ed, Senior, and Draw Pot divisions, along with two youth divisions and a Miners division for people who work for a local mine or sell to one.

The finals ran on Sunday, September 6, which the program called Ranchers Day. Thirty-three Open teams were cut to six, and Warr Land & Livestock won in 4.56.34. Forty-two Co-Ed teams came down to six, with Goemmer Ranches first at 4.08.78. In the Women’s finals, 15 teams were cut to three, and the Maher Ranch crew of Natalie Maher, Lindy Norcutt, Kaylee Filippini, and Mesa Martin won at 5.18.74. Fifteen teams entered the Senior contest. Sim Malotte and Ira Walker finished in 1.59.12, and the Old Rawhiders, in fifteenth, posted no time.

Between the branding rounds the stock horse classes worked the arena: herd work, reined work and fence work, snaffle bit, hackamore, and two-rein. The Champion Nevada Cow Horse class ran at 8 a.m. on Ranchers Day. The fair named Uno Im Wright, owned by Michael Vipham and shown by Alex Vipham, its Top Stockhorse for 2026, and Flint Lee of Fallon its Top Rider. On Labor Day morning the children rode. The Young Buckaroos, eight and under, and the Junior Riders, nine to twelve, did reined work first and then boxed a cow. Oliva Neff on Dancer won the Buckaroos. Cotton McKay on Boomer won the nine-to-twelve class.

Team roping, breakaway roping, barrel racing in the back arena, and a market livestock auction at 9:30 on Ranchers Day morning fill out the program. From 9 to 1 that same morning there was a Bloody Mary Bar at the Cowboy Bar. On the Saturday and Sunday nights the band Hyjacked played the Cowboy Dance.

Fry bread, rendang, and the Goicoechea building

Food trucks at the 2026 fair sold Indian tacos, funnel cakes, birria tacos, and lemonade in cups shaped like cowboy boots. Brights Delights, out of Reno, fried corn dogs in a homemade batter and rolled them in crushed Takis or Flaming Hot Cheetos. Indo Bowl came from Ely for its first Elko showing, and Adrian Soedarmo handed out samples of gule rendang, an Indonesian beef curry. Cory Collins, who also owns Iron Anchor Tattoo, served pulled pork from Collins Low and Slow BBQ with two sauces, one ketchup-based and one mustard-based. He told the paper the meat is dry-rubbed and smoked low for hours. Ma and Pa’s Indian Tacos made its fair debut with sweet fry bread bites. Cookin’ Up The Good Stuff sold fried Oreos and carne asada fries and hired high school students from Wells and Spring Creek to work the truck.

Any Nevada resident may enter the Home Arts contest. Categories include canned goods, baking, quilting, knitting and crochet, sewing, photography, Indian crafts, and a flower show. Entries are checked in at the Goicoechea Home Arts building. Judging in 2026 began at 2 p.m. on September 3, and from the next afternoon the public could walk through and see who had won ribbons. Viewing is free. The visitors authority lists pies, jams, jellies, photographs, and paintings among the entries. Elsewhere on the grounds, family fun competitions take entries on the spot, and the fair’s own pages mention eating a pie hands-free. In the barns, young exhibitors show market steers, lambs, goats, rabbits, and chickens.

The Elko Lions Club parade stepped off downtown at 11 a.m. on Friday, September 4. Reeves told the paper that some of the buildings, the exhibit building among them, are nearing a hundred years old. The largest job before the 2026 fair was installing new lights by the grandstands. He hoped to find grant money to add women’s restrooms, since those always have the longest lines. The aging buildings, he said, “just need some love.”

The Garcia grounds, Wells, and the China Ranch

Early in the 20th century the Nevada Legislature created Elko County Agricultural District No. 4 to promote agriculture and the local economy through an annual fair, and that district still sends money to the grounds. The first Elko County Fair was held September 16 to 18, 1920. A week before it, on September 9, the first plane on the transcontinental airmail route landed at the Elko airport, then called Rickenbacker Field. The eastbound pilot, Jack Sharpnack, had left San Francisco, and he carried a message from Reno: “Congratulations and success to Elko and the Elko County Fair.” That afternoon Stanhope Boggs landed westbound from New York City with a greeting from the Salt Lake Tribune that ended with wishes “for the success of the Elko County Fair.”

The fair’s own history, researched by the historian Jan Petersen, says the board spent its first seven years without a permanent site. The fair was held at the Garcia Rodeo Grounds on the east edge of Elko and once in Wells. It was canceled twice in those years, once for an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease and once to save money for permanent buildings. The visitors authority tells it differently. In its account the fair is said to have begun in Lamoille before moving to Elko, and its only documented cancellations came in 1942 and 1943, during World War II.

In 1927 the City of Elko acquired part of the old China Ranch, and the fair was held there later that year. Over 1927 and 1928 the board spent $34,000 on the facility, which the fair reckons at about $450,000 in today’s money.

The fair’s history page said the centennial would be celebrated in 2020. The Elko Daily Free Press covered the 100th fair in 2021, which opened with an inaugural Country Music Fest headlined by the band Parmalee. That year’s parade grand marshal was Walter Winchell, a rancher who served 45 years on the Fair Board, 20 of them as chairman. He died the winter before, and his family brought his riderless horse to the parade. In the barns, a ewe took a bite of a winning blue ribbon, and a bystander saved what was left of it. The police association’s concession stand went through about double the French fries of the previous fair. “We had to have our vendors make special trips to keep us stocked up,” said Detective Sgt. Bryan Drake.

Home Arts drew 305 entrants and 1,829 entries that year, and $10,270 in prize money went home with the winners. Katie Upshaw, the board member over Home Arts, told the paper that a supervisor at the Nevada Youth Training Center had called to ask whether the boys held there could enter the vegetables they grew in the center’s greenhouse. Their entry won a Centennial ribbon. “Some of these boys have never won anything,” Upshaw said. “The crates were made by one of the boys.”