Gila County Fair

The Gila County Fairgrounds lie just north of Globe on US 60, at 900 E. Fairgrounds Rd. The grounds hold a grandstand and racetrack, a rodeo arena, several exhibit halls, an event center, a go-kart track, and an RV park. Each September they also take in a carnival midway, livestock and agricultural shows, and what the fair’s website calls “tons of food vendors with every type of food you can imagine.” Gila County Fair, Inc. puts the fair on. For 2026 its contact list named Hannah McDaniel as chairman, Justen Ollendick as co-chairman, Andy Bauer over entertainment, and Frankie DalMolin over livestock. The 2026 fair, which the website counted as the 57th, ran September 9 through 12.

Wednesday: school day, family day, mutton bustin’

The 2026 fair opened on Wednesday with Globe School Day, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. At 3 the gates opened to the public for Family Day, at $10 a car. The carnival started at 4 and the car show and shine at 5. Mutton bustin’ for the children ran through the evening, and an Ag Experience ran through the day until 7. At 7 the gymkhana began in the arena, billed by the fair as “speed, skill, competition,” while Chase played music. The day’s program also listed the Dominguez Action Showcase, the Small Stock Show, an open mic night, and the Old Fashioned Fair Night Auction. One vendor offered five-minute massages all week.

The Entry Hall holds the community’s work. The fair asks for whatever people “made, baked, crafted, created, or grew,” and in 2026 the hall took in projects from August 28. A 2021 notice in the Arizona Silver Belt gave the same call in kitchen terms: “grab your knitting needles, break out your cookie sheets, make up that jam you’ve been wanting to do all year, snap that photo of your kids and make sure your animals are looking their best.” The Globe-Miami Times wrote in 2019 that the entries ran “from quilts and jams to vegetables, photography, hobbies, and scarecrows.”

Mud drags, broncs, and Main Squeeze

At 5 p.m. on Friday, the open car and truck show lined up on the fairgrounds. The fair’s notice promised “polished classics and custom builds to lifted trucks and head-turning pickups.” Monster trucks and mud drags ran Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 5 p.m., with FMX freestyle motocross on both days. New in 2026 was a monster truck taxi that carried eight riders at a time for $15 apiece. The arena held a rodeo and a ranch rodeo, with bronc and steer events. On Saturday at 7:30 p.m. the Main Squeeze Band played to close the fair weekend.

On the morning of September 13 the fair posted the rodeo and ranch rodeo results with a line for the crowd: “Thank you everyone who came out. It was another great year!!”

Six kids and the Gila MonSteers

The livestock barns go back to six children: Grant Boice, Mary Boice Moreton, Frank DalMollin, Elaine Hagen McBride, Eric Treible, and Jeff Mercer. They wanted to show steers. According to the Globe-Miami Times, that led Bob Boice of the Slash S Ranch to start the first 4-H club in Globe in 1964, under the name Gila MonSteers.

For many years the MonSteers kept their animals at the Globe Stockyards on Walliman Road, then owned by Buster Mounce. Before Globe had fairgrounds, every steer was shown and sold there. Even after the fairgrounds opened, livestock owners and 4-H members went on using Mounce’s scales for several years, because the fairgrounds had none of their own.

The land came through County Supervisor Bill Bohme. He approached the local rancher Kendrick Holder about the state land lease Holder held on what is now the fairgrounds. According to Janet Cline, a later fair chairman, Holder donated 160 acres on the condition that they be used for agriculture, fairs, and racetracks. Bohme, Joe and Mabel Bassett, and volunteers from the Globe Junior Chamber of Commerce began work on the racetrack. “The profits from our horse racing weekends helped develop the fairgrounds each year,” Cline said.

The Times account says that Boice, by then chairman of the Gila County Fair and Racing Commission, and former Globe Mayor Bill Lewis added a rodeo arena in 1968. The fair’s own history gives a different picture. It says the first fair had only a grandstand, some old wooden horse corrals, and a racetrack, and that the rodeo arena came later.

Steers loose on the track

The first Gila County Fair was held in 1970. Three men organized the early fairs. Bob Boice was a University of Arizona alumnus. Jim Tidwell was a local rancher and a fellow alumnus. Van Wilson was the U of A Extension Service county agent, and livestock judges were hired through his Extension Office. “The livestock shows were held up on the racetrack back then, as there were no facilities like you see today down below the track,” Cline said. “Those were some exciting times as, occasionally, steers would get away on the track and have lots of fun being chased.”

The 50th fair ran Thursday through Sunday, September 19 to 22, 2019. It added a ranch rodeo, World Series Roping, Trailer Team Roping, a BMX exhibition, a Fear Factor event, and a wildlife encounter. These joined the All-American Beef Cook-Off, Brown’s Amusement Carnival, the agriculture experience tent, old-fashioned fair night, and go-kart racing. A slide show of every earlier fair played continuously in the Exhibit Hall. “The Gila County Fair is about generations of traditions and heritage being passed down to the upcoming children,” Cline said that year.

By 2019 the young exhibitors included Future Farmers of America students as well as 4-H members. They came from Payson, Strawberry/Pine, Young, Tonto Basin, Globe, Miami, Claypool, Winkelman, and San Carlos. “We’ve come a long way from the original six kids selling their steers,” Cline said. She estimated that about 37 steers, 14 goats, 14 lambs, and 267 market pigs would go through the 50th Junior Livestock Auction, which began at 1 p.m. on Sunday, September 22.