Garfield County Fair

The Garfield County Fair & Rodeo opens on Railroad Avenue in Rifle, the street that Colorado State Highway 13 becomes after it leaves exit 90 of Interstate 70. The 2026 fair, the 88th, began there at 10 a.m. on Saturday, August 1, with a parade. It drew local businesses, community groups, horses, performers, classic cars, emergency vehicles, and floats built to the theme “Red, White and Blue – A Fair for you!” The theme marked 88 years of the fair, 150 years of Colorado statehood, 110 years of 4-H, and 250 years of the United States. The year before, the parade had 50 entrants. One was a carriage driver guiding a miniature horse and a decorated carriage hung with first-place ribbons. The crowd lined Railroad Avenue from 3rd Street to 16th Street for more than an hour.

The parade route leads to the Garfield County Fairgrounds, 29 acres on the left side of Railroad Avenue inside the city limits. The county dates the grounds to the early twentieth century. The grandstands went up in 1938 and have been enlarged since. Below them lie a 250-by-150-foot outdoor arena and a 225-by-140-foot indoor arena. On parade day a car show ran on the grounds from noon to 4 p.m., and the Highway 82 Band played from noon to 3. The 2025 car show, called Summer of Thunder, had 76 registered entries. The main fair followed, Tuesday, August 4, through Saturday, August 8. The parade, midway, exhibits, family rodeo, and youth shows cost nothing to attend.

Five nights in the outdoor arena

Tuesday night in the outdoor arena is the Family & Kidz Rodeo, where anyone may compete in front of the town. The 2026 card listed mutton busting, steer riding, mixed team roping, breakaway and junior breakaway roping, barrel racing and junior barrel racing, and pole bending. Contestants lined up at 6 p.m.

Wednesday brought the PRCA/WPRA ProRodeo, sanctioned by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and the Women’s Pro Rodeo Association. The fair’s schedule put it at 7 to 9 p.m. The Glenwood Springs Post Independent gave the start as 5 p.m. It was the pink night, when the crowd was asked to wear pink for survivors of breast cancer and their families. In 2025 the rodeo sold 1,809 tickets. Thursday was veterans’ night, with the PRCA Xtreme Bulls from 7 to 9 p.m. and the crowd in red, white, and blue. The 2015 fair book announced Xtreme Bull Riding as a new event from the PRCA in the same year the association’s rodeo returned to the lineup.

Friday’s concert in 2026 starred Sawyer Brown, with Casey Donahew opening at 7 p.m. Gates opened an hour earlier. Gary Allan headlined in 2015. In 2025 the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band brought its farewell tour, with David Nail opening, and sold 3,120 tickets. It was the first time a band had brought a farewell tour to the fair. Saturday at 7 p.m. the demolition derby closes the fair, with fenders crushed and mud thrown in the outdoor arena. In 2025 it sold 2,253 tickets.

From 3 to 10 p.m. each day the midway ran beside the arenas. Its games included a mechanical bull, putt-putt golf, a football toss, a soccer goal, cornhole, and a fastball pitch past a batter. In 2025 the food stands sold tacos, crazy fries, hot dogs and brats, and iced coffee. Small children pulled in kids’ tractor pulls, splashed in the water at Cowboy Cove, and rode ponies, and a petting zoo held dozens of animals. When the arena emptied each night, a free stage ran from 9 to 11. In 2026 it featured Desert Heartstrings on Wednesday, the Tyler Rust Band on Thursday, the High Desert Sky Band on Friday, and A Band Called Alexis on Saturday.

Blow dryers on the west side

Mornings belong to 4-H and FFA. The indoor arena held the rabbit show at 8 a.m. Tuesday, swine on Wednesday, sheep and goats on Thursday, and beef showmanship Thursday evening. The beef show came Friday at 9 a.m., followed by a round-robin showmanship contest that afternoon. The north hall held 4-H general projects all week.

The Post Independent described a beef-show Friday in 2019. Before the public arrived, the arena and midway were silent. On the far west side of the grounds, more than a dozen industrial blow dryers hummed. Alison Teter of Rifle and two of her four children had been up since 5:30. Loghan, 17, and Trey, 11, sat behind their steers drying the animals’ hindquarters. They had already blown the stall shavings off and taken the steers to the wash rack, and the drying would take about two hours. “Make them super fluffy, so they look fat,” Loghan said. “The fatter they look, the better.” Her steer, Buddy, weighed 1,200 pounds. Trey’s, at 1,250, was named Von, after the Denver Broncos linebacker Von Miller. The children had picked their calves the fall before and raised them through the winter. Inside, Courtney Jenkins of New Castle fixed Samantha Scott’s hair before Senior Fitting and Showmanship. Judge Brad Fassett of Durango watched the class to choose a winner. The livestock sale was the next afternoon. “That’s probably the hardest part,” Trey said of parting with Von. “I’ve got really attached to him.”

The sale still comes on Saturday. Awards are given at 12:30 p.m. and bidding starts at 1 in the indoor arena. In 2025, 870 animals were entered: 136 beef, 270 poultry, 69 goats, 182 swine, 97 sheep, and 116 rabbits. Of those, 247 sold for $743,258.50. Buyers added another $252,815.18 in add-on donations to the children. The total of nearly $1 million was a record payout to 4-H and FFA members.

Across the grounds, the south hall holds the Open Class exhibits. These are entered by adults, seniors, children, and professionals, and the 2025 hall held 751 entries. The divisions are artwork, photography, quilting, needlework, crafts, home goods, baked goods, farm goods, food preservation, horticulture, and special contests. A professional judge awards first, second, and third ribbons in each class. Two contests are judged in the hall at midday Thursday: the Commissioners’ Cookie Jar at noon, then the Apple Pie contest at 12:30.

A thousand pies on Railroad Avenue

The apple pie predates the fair. The fair board’s 2016 heritage account traces the event to Watermelon Days in the 1890s, when city and county people met to share their harvest and visit. In 1909 the gathering was renamed Apple Pie Day to honor Rifle’s biggest cash crop. Growers donated the apples. Housewives baked more than 1,000 pies to give away along Railroad Avenue. The day began with a ballgame. Then came a horse race, a pony race, a bicycle race, a tug-of-war, and a wheelbarrow race. That evening the Rifle Orchestra played for a dance in the building at East Avenue and Third Street.

Apple Pie Days added rodeo events, music, home arts, and exhibits of other crops. In 1938 the exhibits moved to the fairgrounds, and the board dates the Garfield County Fair to that move. The Cooperative Extension office, the Extension Homemakers, and 4-H took larger parts in planning. The 4-H and FFA livestock shows and auction became the base of the fair. For a time it was the Garfield/Pitkin County Fair, because 4-H youth in Pitkin County had no fair of their own. The board wrote in 2016 that Pitkin County still had none and that its youth were still welcome.

Clowns, a sale barn, and Labor Day

Paul A. Bernklau told the later years in a 2014 column for the Citizen Telegram. “First, it was called Watermelon Days,” he wrote. “Then Apple Pie Days. And now it’s Garfield County Fair Days.” He attended his first fair in 1935. His mother, Marie Bernklau, exhibited for more than 60 consecutive years. He showed hogs in his first 4-H year, 1944. They were shown at the Rifle stock yards. Afterward a livestock buyer came through and offered a bid, and the exhibitor either took it or took the animal home. By the 1950s the judging was held at the fairgrounds. The sale animals were then hauled to the sale barn north of Rifle and auctioned there. Today the show and the sale both happen on the grounds.

In 1956 Bernklau, Dick Dorrell, and Art Dague began clowning the fair rodeo. Bernklau was drafted into the Army in June 1957 and came home that fall to help the other two clown. After Dague quit, Bernklau and Dorrell clowned from 1959 through 1963. From 1960 through 1963 they also staged the junior rodeo, with help from Barbra and Carla. Bernklau sat on the Fair Board from 1960 through 1968 and was its president in 1963. He missed only the 1959 and 1972 fairs.

Until the 1980s, Bernklau wrote, the fair, rodeo, and horse race meet were held on Labor Day weekend. As schools began opening earlier, the fair and rodeo moved earlier in August. The race track came out in the 1990s. “Remember,” Bernklau wrote, “the only person that likes change is a baby with dirty diapers.”

The board’s heritage account says county fairs declined across the nation in the 1980s and 1990s. In Garfield County, ranching families, 4-H and FFA, and the Colorado State University Extension office kept the fair going. Their names appear in the fair’s own memorials. Ruth “Ditty” Perry and her husband, Bob, started the Mt. Sopris Hereford Ranch south of Carbondale in 1941. She held 4-H square dance competitions in her basement and kept Bob’s roping scores at the rodeo. Robert Flohr, a past president of the Fair Board, was known for driving his tractors through Rifle and Silt. In 2014 the livestock show and auction proceeds came within about $20,000 of those at the Colorado State Fair.

In 2025 the Lee Fire burned northwest of town and closed Highway 13 between Meeker and Rifle. The fair went on. Ash fell during the demolition derby, and the contestants still came out to crash under the lights.