Harney County Fair & Rodeo

On the Saturday of the 102nd Harney County Fair & Rodeo, September 12, 2026, the Cattlemen’s Breakfast was served from six to nine in the morning in the Chamber Community Room in Burns. At ten the parade went down Main Street while rodeo slack ran at the fairgrounds. At noon the entertainment area and bar opened, and the queen’s luncheon was held on the entertainment stage. At two the youth livestock auction began, selling rabbits, swine, poultry, sheep, goats, and beef, and the carnival opened. The Queen’s Race was run at 5:15, the NPRA rodeo began at six, and the Austin Miller Band played at 8:30.

The fair is held the week after Labor Day each year. “Historically, our fair has marked the end of the hay harvest period in Harney County,” fair manager Lindsey Robertson told The Oregonian in 2024. “It really does mark the changing of the seasons for us. It’s a marker of a time.” A county fair board runs it. The members listed on the county’s page are Diane Teeman, Pat Horlacher, Craig Neher, Katelyn White, and Jay Nelson, with Christine Stokely as secretary and Jessica Smith as queen and sponsorship coordinator. In 2026, Thursday admission was half price, and the rodeo was included with the gate on every night.

Showrings, branding pens, and the Bell-A Ranch

The 2026 schedule began on Tuesday, September 8, with a kids’ playday and the 4-H dog show. On Wednesday the Stock Horse Futurity did its herd work at the Bell-A Ranch, the open class and static exhibits were judged, and the first demonstration was held, “From Seed to Fair.” Thursday was given to market and production classes for swine, sheep, goats, and beef. The Futurity moved to the Morgan Arena that day, a talk on extending the autumn harvest was given at five, and the Family Night Rodeo started at seven.

Friday opened at eight with swine showmanship and went on to goats, sheep, small animals, and beef. Team branding was held at ten, and a carcass ultrasound class, open to all, was held at eleven. Adult showmanship was set for two in the afternoon. At five a beekeeping demonstration and the mutton busting both began, followed by the NPRA rodeo at six. The week closed on Sunday morning, September 13, with a judged roping competition at nine.

The rodeo nights have themes. For 2026 the fair called Thursday “Denim on Denim” and suggested its crowd think “Canadian tuxedo.” Friday was “Tough Enough to Wear Pink,” with the note that purple was welcome “BUT, you might not look quite as cool as everybody else.” Saturday was red, white, and blue.

The 2026 carnival nearly did not happen. In August the fair posted “unexpected news” about the scheduled carnival. A week later it announced, “WE WILL HAVE A CARNIVAL,” with ride wristbands sold through Wold Amusements. The difficulty was not new. In March 2023 Robertson told the county court that twenty-six carnival providers had once served Oregon, California, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, and parts of Canada, and that their number had dwindled to six. One owner told her it would cost at least $100,000 a week to bring a carnival to Harney County. The same 2023 report described a new event center planned for the grounds. In late August 2026 that building was still closed while its lights were installed.

Volunteers carry much of the week. The 2025 grand marshals were Steve and Kristi Rickman. Steve gave the services of Burns Electric to the fairgrounds for years, and their son Paul Zipser continues to. Kristi, a longtime quilt exhibitor, decided “there must be more to retirement.” She started the Lemondrop, a food truck at the fair that sells lemonade and walking tacos. The 2026 grand marshals were Gary and Becky Rose. Gary worked as a young buckaroo in Nevada and southeastern Oregon, and Becky grew up horseback at Crooked Creek Ranch. The couple married in 1969 and ran the Princeton Store and Post Office. Becky led a 4-H horse club called Roses Rough and Ready Riders and is known, according to the county’s page, as the county’s unofficial veterinarian.

Queens, a sheep, and a hay bale float

Kailynn Grinder, a senior at Crane Union High School, was crowned queen of the 2026 Fair Court at the Saturday night rodeo of September 6, 2025. She is active in 4-H, FFA, and trapshooting. After the 2026 fair, she wrote on the fair’s page: “One of my favorite moments was riding into our Rodeo Arena proudly carrying the American Flag. What a feeling!”

In the Queen’s Race, rodeo queens from across the region run their horses down a straightaway. In 2023, nineteen visiting and past royals entered, and four preliminary heats were run. Rylee Wilkinson won her heat and then the final for the buckle. She was crowned queen for 2024. Smith described her as a sixth-generation Harney County rancher and a third-generation Harney County Rodeo Queen.

The 2024 fair, held September 3 to 7, was the 100th. For the centennial the board president, Craig Neher, said, “This year we are bringing bull and bronc riding back.” The fair added homesteading classes in beekeeping, fermenting, home butchering, and candle making, along with an Old Time Tractor Show. A procession of 100 sponsored horses led the parade through downtown Burns and rode in the rodeo’s grand entry.

The Oregonian recorded the Friday evening of that centennial fair. It opened with mutton busting, in which children under 50 pounds try to ride a sheep. Most rides ended in tears, followed by a bag of candy and a $1 bill. When one child landed face down, the announcer said he was going home with “a little extra taste of Harney County.” Seven-year-old Thatcher Haigh won. His father, Kenny, described the event: “It’s like riding a wild carpet that doesn’t know which way it’s going.” Asked afterward whether he would ride again, Thatcher said, “Yes, I would.”

That night 100 riders carried banners and flags into the arena, many of them past queens and princesses invited back for the occasion. Delta Jenkins Maupin, a rodeo princess in 1955, rode in on a hay bale float. Beside her sat her former classmate Jan Howard Pedersen, queen in 1957. Both wore the fringed suede jackets they had been given with their titles. “I don’t think I’ve missed one of them since I was old enough to come to the rodeo, and I’m 86 years old,” Maupin said. Pedersen said the old court was “nothing like the glitz and glamour they get now.”

On Saturday morning, Nellie Peila Franklin, queen in 1978, rode in the parade. Four of her sisters had also been Harney County queens. Beside her rode her granddaughter Reese, 11, Little Miss Northwest Professional Rodeo Association Queen, in pink and lavender chaps lettered “Queen Reese.”

A column in the Herald, 1888

Kate Marsh wrote the Oregon Encyclopedia’s account of the fair, and she also told the story in the Burns Times-Herald. In her words, the first fair in Harney County “was a media event.” On July 4, 1888, a local paper announced: “As no fair is held in this valley for the public exhibition of the growth and excellence of its productions, the Herald proposes to open a column to all producers, farmers, and stockmen.” That same month horse racers organized the Jockey Club and opened a new half-mile track, and the Herald printed the winning horses, riders, and purses.

In April 1900 the Harney County Fair Association incorporated. It leased land near the Silvies River northeast of Burns and planned a five-day September fair with horse races, a rodeo, and premiums for produce and stock. Local cowboys signed on for the ranch rodeos. In 1901 premiums were offered for team driving, a dozen heads of cabbage, and ten pounds of butter and cheese. A few years later, after fire took some buildings and the riverside site proved a haven for mosquitoes, the fair moved to the Jockey Club’s tracks on the southern outskirts of Burns.

The 1908 fair had a parade, livestock, and exhibits of garden produce, cooking, and needlework. Spectators watched Thoroughbred, Roman chariot, and sulky races. One popular race had Paiute riders running bareback a mile out, turning without stopping, and racing back. By 1918 Burns had the first sanctioned racetrack in Oregon.

World War I put a stop to the fair. For a few years, by Marsh’s account, a rodeo organization folded some fair and racing events into its annual Round-Up. The Oregonian’s 2024 account says the association “eventually fell apart.” In 1924 a revitalized association put its first Fair Queen and Court at the head of the parade, and the event became the Harney County Fair, Rodeo, and Race Meet. The current numbering counts from that year, and the centennial fell in 2024. The fair was doing well when the Depression came. In 1933 the state allowed pari-mutuel betting, and racing money paid for improvements. Marsh’s newspaper version dates the renewed interest in the fair to 1935. The fair stopped again for World War II. In 1953 Paiute Chief Jimmie Louie rode in the parade. Fair manager Don Slone put attendance at about 18,000 in 2010.

Families still bring horses and stock from a distance. Marsh’s Times-Herald piece says ranch families come from sixty or more miles away. Her encyclopedia entry says as far as a hundred. Many animals bought at the 4-H and FFA auctions are donated as food to the Harney County Senior Center, and for more than fifty-five years they have also gone to the Shriners Hospitals for Children.