Grand Old West Days

On the Friday of Memorial Day weekend in 2026, the day at the Moffat County Fairgrounds in Craig began at 8:25 a.m. with prayer and the national anthem. Five minutes later the junior high riders of the CSHSRA State Finals Rodeo went out for their first go-round. After a 12:45 grand entry the high school riders followed. Grand Old West Days, which its organizers call “Colorado’s annual kick off to summer,” now turns on that rodeo. It runs four days of go-rounds, grand entries and championship rounds in the Main Arena, and the awards are handed out in the Pavilion fifteen minutes after each finish.

The rest of the weekend gathers around the arena. Brown’s Amusement Carnival, run with the Craig Chamber of Commerce, opened Thursday evening and stayed until 11 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. On Thursday night Branden Edwards gave a talk in the Pavilion called “College Rodeo 101.” Food and craft booths opened at ten each morning. On Saturday the Yampa Valley Antique Power Club ran tractor pulls at Ranney and First Street. Queen contestants modeled in the Pavilion and rode horsemanship in the Main Arena, and the afternoon closed with a meet-and-greet for a celebrity match roping and barrel race. At 7:30 that evening Tyce Delk played the Indoor Arena, with Kalyn Beasley and Brennan Scott Greene as guests. Church services were held in the grandstands at 7 a.m. Sunday, and the queen was crowned forty minutes later. In the afternoon the senior riders’ graduation and scholarships were announced. The 2026 program stated one absence plainly: there would be no Downtown Business Association parade.

Monday opened with a Bear River Young Life pancake breakfast in the Pavilion. The 8 a.m. high school championship round doubled as a Veteran’s Memorial Tribute. At 11 a.m. the schedule listed a veterans’ service at the Moffat County Cemetery. A month afterward the organizers posted their thanks for photographs of the VFW Post 4265 Memorial Day service at the Craig Cemetery, which they called “the most important time of the entire Memorial weekend,” and noted that the Rowdy Riders had taken part.

A buffer against boom and bust

The festival was started in 1990 by the Craig Improvement Authority. A 1999 Craig Daily Press account gives three aims: to ease the town’s boom and bust cycle, to add to the tax base, and to give residents something to build community spirit around. The committee was all volunteers, and members estimated their donated time at close to 3,000 hours a year. In those years the weekend offered a quick draw contest, a concert, dances and a shoot-out reenactment.

Memorial Day weekend of 1999 brought bull riding to Craig for the first time. Officials said it drew the largest crowd the fairgrounds grandstands had seen in 25 years. That August committee member Les Hampton brought numbers to the Craig City Council. The festival fell on the weekend of Moffat County High School graduation, and many people credited the crowds to that. Of 340 people questioned, however, more than 290 said they had come solely for Grand Olde West Days, as it was then spelled, and 36 said they had come for both. At least 136 had traveled more than 100 miles, from as close as Wyoming and as far as Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Four were from Germany. “It’s pretty evident why people came,” Hampton said. “They came for our event.”

The money was thin. Each year the committee borrowed $8,500 from the city and the county to cover up-front costs and repaid it after the weekend. Two years earlier the county commissioners had given a one-time $10,000 to end that cycle, and the committee put it in a certificate of deposit to borrow against. That night it returned the city’s $8,500 and asked for a matching grant. “That way we wouldn’t be coming here every year with our hand out,” Hampton said. City Manager Jim Ferree said he would try to work it into the budget.

Yampa Avenue or the fairgrounds

For the festival’s first nine years, Monday belonged to downtown. Yampa Avenue was blocked from Victory Way to Sixth Street, vendors set up booths in the middle of the street, and the contests, entertainment and food filled the downtown park. In February 2000 the committee voted to hold everything at the fairgrounds. “It was a hard decision for us to make,” committee member Karen House said. Committee member Kathy Shea called the downtown arrangement a logistical nightmare. Vendors had to break down their booths and move them, city and county workers put in overtime, and the committee spent $4,000 moving the stage and sound system. Some vendors had quit over it. “We are marketers and promoters of the area,” Shea said. “GOWD was never defined as a downtown event.”

Downtown disagreed. “Originally, GOWD was formed around the historic part of Craig,” said Linda Booker of On the Shelf Bookstore. “It may be nice logistically, but I think the connection between GOWD and the museum will suffer,” said Nadine Daszkiewicz of the Kitchen Shop. Dan Davidson, director of the Museum of Northwest Colorado, was disappointed. “I know they have the right motive in doing it,” he said. “I can see their point.” The committee hired a horse-drawn wagon to carry people from the fairgrounds to the museum.

The museum then held a weekend of its own that May. “This is where it all started,” Jan Gerber said. The western group Prickly Pear traded sets with cowboy poets. Les Hamilton, half of the group, taught fiddle to anyone who brought one. Visitors could pose beside a life-sized Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid, and recordings of 1940s radio programs played on an old set. On Monday volunteers churned butter, spun wool, ground coffee, pressed apples and made ice cream on original equipment. Casey Hicks of Craig, in his portrayal of Teddy Roosevelt, signed certificates explaining the name of the Teddy bear. The Albaugh family, in period dress, gave tours of the Marcia car on Victory Way.

The street did not stay empty. By 2006 the Monday schedule again listed a street festival on Yampa Avenue. In 2015 the festival filled the 400 and 500 blocks.

Bed races, camels and a pie platform

The 16th festival, in 2006, brought bed races on Victory Way, an idea from the Chamber of Commerce ambassadors. “You can bring whatever rolls,” ambassador Delaine Voloshun said. “A roll-away bed, an ambulance stretcher, whatever you have.” Each bed needed four pushers and a helmeted rider. The re-formed Colorado Cruisers Car Club held a show at Wyman Living History Museum, east of town on U.S. Highway 40, and club president Harvey Craft expected 400 to 500 cars. Forty riders signed up for a Professional Bull Riders Discovery Tour stop at the fairgrounds. Rough stock organizer Hal Burns chose among five bull contractors, and organizer Jackie Roberts added a calf scramble and a “get the goat” contest for children. That year’s chariot races were canceled.

In 2010 chairwoman Kandee Dilldine reported about 5,000 people at the Monday street festival and about 550 at the Lane Frost Challenge Bull Riding. The new pie-eating contest filled all but one of its four groups. For the next year she planned a raised platform so the crowd could see. The woman who ran the camel rides told her “there was a line all day.”

The 2015 edition brought Michael Aldridge in a $10 concert and the Bears Ears Sportsman Club’s shooting match, “Where the Old West Stayed Young,” held off Moffat County Road 7 near Cedar Mountain. Free root beer floats followed the 3 p.m. parade. On Monday Charlie Martinez pulled turkey legs off a smoker to raise money for the Bad Dog Youth Wrestling team.

By the organizers’ account, after 25 years the festival was “revamped.” The 26th, in 2016, moved most of the weekend to the fairgrounds, with Chancey Williams and the Younger Brothers Band, an Iron Woman Bronc Riding Invitational, draft horses and mules from Moffat County Horse Power, breakfast burritos from high school wrestlers, a Road Kill Cook-Off, and David Morris’s original play, “An Old West Craig Crime Spree.” The 2024 vendor application announced that the “Olde” would be phased out.

A parade for Memorial Day

In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic canceled most of the festival. The Downtown Business Association kept the parade and renamed it. “We didn’t want to have to cancel everything, so we figured we’d just call it the Memorial Day Parade,” Dilldine said. Floats had been built around a Western theme in past years, and that year she hoped for red, white and blue. The route ran up Yampa Avenue from Craig Middle School and turned up Ledford Street toward Sandrock Ridge Nursing Home. The parade had averaged around 20 entrants, and Dilldine said she would be happy with 10. “It can be as simply as a decorated bike,” she said.