Franklin County Fair

Every jar of canning, every flower and 4-H project at the 2026 Franklin County Fair stood under one roof. The county opened its Franklin County Event Center at the Preston fairgrounds in January 2026. The rest of the year it serves basketball, pickleball, volleyball, and wedding receptions. For fair week, August 10 through 15, it held the crops, flowers, baking and canning, antiques, home arts, and junior arts and crafts that had once filled three separate buildings.

Those three buildings are gone. On the grass where they stood, 31 food vendors set up in 2026. Other vendors filled the park beside the stage and pavilion, 58 in all, which the fair board said was the most the fair has ever had. The theme was “United We Fair.” On November 27 and 28, 2026, the board is holding its first Cowboy Christmas in the Event Center, a holiday market that raises money for the fair.

The livestock moved too, into three new livestock pavilions and a beef barn. Donors and sponsors paid for a new steer and dairy barn, and Valley Implement paid for a new wash rack between the barns. Cody Traveller has sat on the fair board for 19 years, and 2026 was his first year as chairman. He told KPVI that the old buildings had electrical problems and no air conditioning. “When I first started we were in little barns that were really old, outdated and you’d hit your head every time you walk in,” he said. “Now everything’s under one roof, we have AC, better power.”

Pig wrestling to bull riding

The week opens with the 4-H horse show at 8 a.m. Monday and a 4-H dog show Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday at dusk, around 8:45, a free movie plays on the open lawn, with free popcorn. In 2026 the movie was Planes: Fire and Rescue, and the shelter was held in reserve for bad weather. On Wednesday the Robinson Building hosts BloomFest, the fair’s pageant. At 8:30 a free barn dance for all ages starts under the large tents behind the building, with line dances taught and prizes given. Team branding runs the same evening, with sign-ups at 5 and roping at 6.

From Thursday through Saturday the vendor booths and food stands open on the lawn from 11 to 9. Free acts play on the pavilion stage beside the picnic tables. On Thursday night the Farm Bureau Pig Wrestling fills the rodeo arena; teams sign up beforehand at the Preston Farm Bureau Building on South 1st East. Friday brings Corrie J., the hypnotist, back under the pavilion at noon. The county commissioners serve free ice cream at 3 on the lawn by the pavilion, and the truck and tractor pulls begin at 7.

Saturday is the long day. The 4-H and FFA market animal sale starts at 9 a.m. in the indoor livestock arena. Grand and reserve champions sell first, and each young exhibitor may sell only one animal. In the Robinson Building the baby contest works backward through the ages: 16-to-23-month-olds at 9, 7-to-15-month-olds at 10:30, and babies under seven months at noon. Team ropers enter at 8 and rope at 9. In 2026 the county’s first responders brought out their trucks and equipment, and a Lifeline helicopter was expected to land around 1 p.m. The Franklin Co. Bull Bonanza closes the week at 7:30 in the fairgrounds’ PRCA outdoor arena. A dutch oven cookoff, goat roping, and story time fill out the schedule. Andee Smith, who handles entertainment for the board, put the aim this way: “Oh we just want it to be fun for everybody, fun for the family.”

Rain can change the week. On the night of August 13, 2026, the crew worked the arena as late as it could. The arena was still judged unsafe for horses and riders, and the next morning’s open horse show was cancelled. The night after the 2026 fair closed, Traveller wrote from the emptied grounds: “No kids running around laughing, no cows bawling, pigs squealing or horses making noise in the barns. No announcers over the speakers, no music playing, no smell of fresh shavings and hay, and definitely no smell of all that great fair food.”

Three founding dates

The fair’s own site and the county both say fair-goers have gathered at the grounds since 1958. The same county page also says the Franklin County Fair started in 1939. The Franklin County Historical Society goes back further. In 1907 John and Anna Larson sold the property to the Preston Park and Fair Association for $4,600. The town board first discussed adding a county fair to the grounds in 1908. The society infers that a fair was held from a village payment entry dated January 5, 1909, and says the fair ran on and off for the next two decades. The mortgage was paid off in 1914. Hugh S. Geddes, John Larsen, James Johnson, and J. C. Jensen signed the release.

Will Robinson, age 90 at the time of an interview printed in Newell Hart’s Cache Valley Newsletter in 1975, remembered what the rodeo grounds had been: “After the turn of the century, [the rodeo grounds area] was all a big racetrack. It was all for horse racing. Every year for at least two weeks, we’d have horse racing every day. People would come from all over the country to enter their horses or just watch the races.”

Roundup, carnival, and vaudeville

In 1921 a new Roundup partnered with the fair, and in the following years the pair became known as the Annual Fair and Roundup. Money was tight. The 1924 fair and roundup ran a $77.00 deficit despite business contributions and money left over from 1923. In August 1927 the Zeigler shows were hired for fair week. By the account in the Preston Citizen’s history series, the company carried about every attraction in the carnival line, a new thing for Franklin County. In 1928 there was no fair at all, and the newspaper reported very poor turnout at the roundup.

By 1951 the fair had its own closing tradition. That August, W. M. Robinson, newly appointed chairman of the fair board, announced that a night vaudeville show in the Preston rodeo arena on September 1 would close the 1951 fair. It replaced the horse-pulling contest that had ended the fair for several years. Robinson said too few teams were available to hold it.