Graham County Fair

Four days south of Safford

The Graham County Fairgrounds lie south of Safford, on the east side of U.S. Highway 191, about two hours east of Tucson. The gate takes cash only, and ATMs stand nearby. A visitor leaving for supper gets a hand stamp to come back in the same day. Ride tickets for the Frazier Shows carnival midway are sold inside the gate. The food comes from concession booths that the fair turns over each year to local non-profit clubs and organizations. Graham County Parks and Fair runs the whole affair.

The 2026 fair runs October 8 through 11, and the fair’s own site bills it as the 100th annual. Thursday opens at 5 p.m. with the instrumental and band division of the Rising Star Talent Show, followed by Aravaipa at 5:45 and The Junebugs at 8:30. Friday begins downtown at 10 a.m., when the Graham County Fair Parade carries floats, marching bands, and decorated vehicles down Main Street. Back at the grounds that afternoon, Safford Dance Academy and Gila Cheer take the Bandshell. The OutLaw Mariachi plays the Main Stage at 5:45, and the Tejano musician Michael Salgado closes the night at 9.

Saturday is the long day. At 8 a.m. the Adult Disc Golf Tournament starts, and so does the 5K Desert Race, which sets off from Graham County Park next to the ball field snack bar. The Graham County Horse Show begins at the same hour. It runs from halter classes at sunrise through reining, trail, and the bareback dollar after lunch, and it is open to junior, senior, open, and senior-citizen riders. The vocal division of the talent show follows at 10:30. At 2 p.m. come the fair games: the three-legged race, the sack race, the grocery grab and carry, the frozen T-shirt contest, and the diaper derby. Monster trucks run at the Grandstand at 4:30 and 6:00, while Bo Titla plays the Bandshell. The cornhole tournament starts at 5, and Huckleberry Road plays the Main Stage at 8:30. On Sunday the fair closes at 5 p.m.

Trucks for the hundredth

Trey Andrews, the Graham County Parks and Fair director, told the Eastern Arizona Courier in September 2026 that organizers had been given a little more room in the entertainment budget for the milestone year. “The biggest thing we wanted to do differently for the 100th was step up our entertainment,” he said. Salgado’s booking came about through Peter Gauna, who works with the fair through Graham County Search and Rescue. According to Andrews, Gauna used a connection with Salgado’s brother. Organizers had also hoped for a demolition derby. County insurance issues quickly ruled that out, and attention shifted to monster trucks.

Andrews said organizers did not mean to reinvent anything. “Part of what has kept the Graham County Fair going for 100 years is its identity as a rural county fair,” he said. “We wanted this year to feel special while still feeling like the Graham County Fair people know and love.” About 20,700 people attended the 2025 fair, despite rain on Saturday and an open gate on Sunday.

Andrews took over as director in 2022, and the 2026 fair is his fifth. In that time the buildings have gained insulation and fans, and the grounds have added electrical upgrades, marquees, TV monitors, more vendor spaces, and ADA-accessible picnic tables. Judges now score on tablets instead of by hand, and maps and QR codes help visitors find their way. “We wanted this one to be memorable,” Andrews said.

Quilts, squash, and rabbits

The exhibit halls keep the same hours as the grounds but close an hour earlier on the first three nights. Their competitive departments cover field crops, horticulture, floriculture, foods, home economics, art, photography, and hobbies and crafts. Andrews put a typical year at about 3,500 entries. In 2024 the fair had 156 large-livestock entries of cattle, sheep, swine, and goats, along with 648 small-stock entries. Another 2,738 entries came through departments that included 4-H, fine arts, floriculture, horticulture, foods, and photography. The Courier’s pictures from recent fairs show Jo Taylor’s quilt, which impressed the judges in 2023, a couple looking over the quilt displays, and Wes Bryce with the 39-pound Apache Giant squash that took first place.

The animals are judged on Thursday. Beef cattle, swine, and sheep go before the judges with their showmanship classes, at times the superintendents set. The small stock follow a fixed clock: pigeons at 8 a.m., exhibition poultry at 9, goats at 10, rabbits at 11, and rabbit showmanship at 4 p.m. “We believe our livestock show is among the larger county fair shows in Arizona in terms of entries, and we also believe our poultry exhibit is among the larger ones in the state,” Andrews said. The fair added a Small Stock Auction in 2023, and he called the response since then “phenomenal.” That same year the Courier described the Graham County Junior Livestock Auction as abuzz on Saturday evening. Away from the fairgrounds, a window display contest puts fair decorations in the windows of participating Graham County businesses and schools.

Trotters at the fairgrounds, 1913

The county and the Gila Valley Central news site both count 2026 as the fair’s hundredth year. Andrews said many of the fair’s historical records were not kept over the years. Organizers recently found old scrapbooks and photographs, though, and staff hope to show some of them on monitors around the grounds. Newspaper pages reach back further than the centennial count.

On August 1, 1913, the Safford Graham Guardian reported on a fair it had proposed a couple of weeks earlier. Support had grown, the paper said, until “there is no question but that the fair will be held,” and “you can hear fair talked on every corner.” It promised a fair second only to the state fair. Safford already had the grandstand, grounds, stables, and race track. Seven of the fastest trotters and pacers in Arizona were in the fairground stables, the paper said, and at least one would race for the $1,000 prize at Phoenix. The Guardian proposed holding Graham County’s fair first, then Cochise County’s at Willcox, then Pima County’s at Tucson. That way horses, stock, and exhibits could ship from fair to fair on to the state fair without doubling back.

That year the newly appointed fair commissioners held their first meeting on a Tuesday afternoon at the Bank of Safford. Present were Z. C. Prina, James M. Talley, Bert Hoopes, Richard G. Layton, David Rogers, W. B. Fonda, C. D. Stephens, and E. W. Clayton. Layton, of Thatcher, was chairman, Fonda, of Safford, was secretary, and Clayton was treasurer. By 1916 the Graham County Fair Commission had Victor Holding as president and LeRoi C. Snow as secretary. That year it took up a proposal for the county to buy the fair grounds and sent its committee on arrangement of grounds to meet with the stockholders of the fair association. The pages at hand do not show how those early fairs connect to the count that makes 2026 the hundredth.

Uncle Phil and the cotton gin

Phil Jay Curtis was born in 1934 in the Curtis family home on Church Street in Thatcher. He grew up tending chickens, milking cows, and slaughtering pigs, and earned a degree in agronomy at Arizona State University. In 1957 his older brother Carl offered him a partnership on their uncle Ed Hoopes’ family farm in Safford, and Phil moved back to Graham County. According to The Gila Herald, he and Carl were the first farmers in the Gila Valley to irrigate crops with a notched ditch.

For almost 65 years Curtis volunteered with the Graham County Fair Association. He served on its governing board, then as vice-chair, then as chairman for 25 years. For almost 55 years he supervised the Agriculture and Field Crops department, where he became a familiar face to fairgoers. He kept looking for new facts about farming to tell visitors. He loved to watch people’s faces as the department demonstrated the Mini Cotton gin it was able to display. Curtis died at his home in Thatcher on November 23, 2021, at 87.