Grant County Fair

A Ferris wheel met visitors at the gate of the Grant County Fairgrounds, a few blocks north of downtown John Day, for the 117th Grant County Fair, Aug. 12-15, 2026. Beyond it were games, prize booths, art exhibits, a zipper that flips its riders end over end, and a mechanical bull at $3 a ride or $5 for two. The theme was “Small Town, Big Heart.” Admission was free on opening Wednesday and free to first responders and veterans on Thursday, Aug. 13, which the fair called Thankful Thursday. That day John Day Fire Chief Don Gabbard walked the grounds with the fire department’s new mascot, Sparky.

The 2026 fair set a record with 57 vendors, 10 of them there for the first time. Fairgrounds manager Mindy Winegar named a few of the newcomers: a dessert vendor called Sweet Treats, a Hawaiian barbecue stand, a toy seller, a T-shirt vendor and an author selling books. They joined the food vendors who return every year. The Grant County Stockgrowers ran a beer garden all week. The county’s entertainment page lists the Old Time Fiddlers; Arty Looney, a magician, juggler and balloon artist; and a corn hole tournament. The carnival came back for a second straight year with two more rides than in 2025. The Blue Mountain Eagle names the company World Amusements, and the county’s page calls it Wold Amusement. “We’re lucky we got to book them this year,” Winegar said.

Candy from horseback and a bull with no rider

About 40 entrants rode or drove in the parade, in four categories: commercial vehicles, community vehicles, mounted youth and mounted adults. “We love the parade,” Winegar said. “That’s me and Dusty’s favorite part of the fair because we get to slow down and throw candy to the kids.”

On Thursday night Scotty McCreery played the headlining concert, with the Dugger Band opening. “This is the most relevant name we’ve had,” Winegar said before the fair. “His one hit right now, ‘Bottle Rockets,’ is pretty big.” The fair’s 2025 headliner was Clint Black, with the Daniel Nickels Band. On Saturday, Aug. 15, the Hamsher Fighting Bulls worked the Iron Triangle Arena. Hamsher bullfighters are freestyle bullfighters who use nothing but their own hands to keep a bull engaged. Freestyle motocross was added to the bullfights in 2026.

Right around 13,000 people passed through the gates, which Winegar called average for the fair. The rodeo and the concert each drew about 400 fewer people than the year before. “This is where the whole community comes together,” Winegar said afterward. “Politics and everything is left by the wayside, and everybody is just glad to see each other.”

The steer that brought $22,260

The same Saturday, more than 200 people packed the Heritage Barn for the annual 4-H and FFA youth livestock auction. Local students raise the animals and sell them to local businesses. In 2026 the auction sold 176 animals, 20 fewer than in 2025. Sheep made up the second-largest group, more than in past years. Beef still brought the most money. Eight steers sold for $10,000 or more. The grand champion steer weighed 1,484 pounds and was raised by Bransyn Harper of Prairie City. Bob Cowan Thompson of Chester’s Market bought it for $22,260.

The total came to $706,713.50. Shannon Springer, treasurer of the Grant County Auction Committee, said it was the highest figure in her nearly 15 years on the committee. Ten years earlier, in 2016, the auction sold 106 animals for $170,010.30. Floor prices in 2026 were not much different from 2025, and Springer could point to nothing behind the jump except the buyers themselves. “We just have a crazy generous community,” she said, “and every year they seem to outdo themselves.”

A fair and race meet on Trowbridge land

The first Grant County Fair was held in John Day in October 1909. The Trowbridge family had given land to the Agricultural Society so it could hold a fair and race meet every year. The gift rested on a verbal agreement until 1962. That year the Grant County Court, with the approval of the Grant County Fair Board, bought more adjoining land from the family. The family name is on the Trowbridge Pavilion. In 2021 the county finished a $320,000 renovation of the pavilion. Workers took out large trees on its north side so they could replace a concrete floor that had heaved and cracked, and the rebuilt hall served as the county’s COVID-19 vaccination clinic.

The county’s history page calls this the longest-running annual county fair in Oregon. It says the fair is held on the fourth weekend in August, though the 2026 fair ran Aug. 12-15. In 1942 there was no fair. On Sept. 4 of that year the Eagle reported that the directors had cancelled it, because a gathering that encouraged the use of gasoline and tires did not fit the nation’s “all-out, win-the-war effort.” The fair had been set for Sept. 26. In its place the board sponsored a 4-H show of livestock, agricultural and handwork exhibits, along with a fair dance, on Sept. 19, a week early so it would come ahead of the opening of deer season. The paper called the fair “the oldest institution of its kind in the state” and promised its return: “After the war it will come back again. Don’t ever believe anything else, and when it does come back, it will be enjoyed far more than ever before, because it will be a Victory Fair.”

Gravel walkways, a parachute and a hanging on Main Street

The 53rd fair opened on Aug. 23, 1962, with a midway of gravel and sand walkways, carnival rides and concessions. That year brought several firsts. The Ken Jensen Shrine Circus played one show in the arena, the first circus in Grant County in nearly a decade, and the Eastern Oregon Junior Rodeo ran on the weekend. There were three dances, one of them with a rock and roll band at the 62 Hall in Canyon City. Crews had poured a permanent concrete-base pit for an open-pit barbecue. Fair manager Al Reinertson said the pit seemed to show that the board meant to keep the barbecue as an annual feature.

Twenty years later, fair manager Dave Metlock added 50 percent more exhibit and booth space for the 73rd fair by stretching a rectangular parachute over the tennis court. Admission dropped to $1 a day from $3.50 for the weekend, and visitors got a ticket stub and a stamp in place of the old buttons. Metlock expected about 18,000 people over four days. The fair moved up a week, to Aug. 18-22, so that exhibitors could also enter the Oregon State Fair in Salem. Before the Saturday parade, the Murderers Creek Maurauders and the Whiskey Gulch Gang staged a robbery, a shoot-out and a hanging outside Gold Town Pizza on Main Street, near the stoplight.

In 2002 the 93rd fair saw more 4-H members taking part, with the Grant County Family Heritage Foundation’s new youth agriculture building at its center. In the Northwest Professional Rodeo Association go-rounds that year, Kirk Giovanini of Prineville won the bareback riding with 76 points, and J.W. Rose of Burns took the calf roping in 8.78 seconds.

Lean years and the next headliner

In 2019 the company hired to run the carnival cancelled, and the fair could find no replacement; it booked other entertainment, with Britnee Kellogg opening the concert. The next summer state lawmakers moved to cut county fair lottery funding in half. “It’s going to be pretty devastating for us,” Winegar said. Gov. Kate Brown cancelled large events in the more populous parts of the state. Winegar, a Grant County native, looked for room within the state’s guidelines, and the 2020 fair went on in scaled-back form. Her staff, the Fair Board, 4-H and FFA worked out a plan to hold the livestock shows and auction anyway, and the auction cleared about $302,000.

In December 2021, Winegar asked the county court for permission to start making offers for a 2022 headliner. She named Craig Morgan and Sawyer Brown as possibilities and told the court that prices had gone up. The 2021 concert had made a little money, and she wanted cancellation insurance against further Covid restrictions.

Those costs still shape the fair. Winegar said after the 2026 fair that she has about eight fairs left before she retires. Rising prices for headliners could mean smaller acts, or no concert at all, in later years, though she already has a list in mind for the 118th. Planning for it was under way less than a week after the 117th closed. “I love the fair and wouldn’t change too much about it — besides, what do we do next year?” she said. “I don’t know.”