Haxtun Corn Festival

Corn Festival Saturday in Haxtun begins at seven in the morning at the fire hall, on the corner of North Colorado Avenue and Strohm Street. The Haxtun Volunteer Firemen serve pancakes, eggs and bacon there until nine. The breakfast is a freewill offering, and the money goes to the department or to other needs in town. In 2024 it paid for training and equipment. The Haxtun-Fleming Herald says festival goers have started the day this way “for decades.”

The festival falls on the last Saturday in September and fills downtown Haxtun, a statutory town in Phillips County that counted 981 people at the 2020 census and stands at 4,032 feet. The Haxtun Chamber of Commerce runs it, and admission is free. The listing says it goes on rain or shine. The 105th annual festival was held Saturday, September 26, 2026, from 7 a.m. to midnight. Its theme was “250 Years of Freedom, 150 Years of Colorado and 105 Years of Haxtun Corn Festival Tradition.” The Grand Marshals were Trever and Roxanne Fix, who have owned a business in Haxtun for nearly 30 years. The titles of Little Mr. and Miss Corn Festival went to John Starkebaum and Caroline Miracle.

Down Colorado Avenue at ten

At eight o’clock, runners and walkers line up on Colorado Avenue for the J. Jeffryes Memorial run/walk. The race honors a former Haxtun High School science teacher and raises scholarship money for the school’s graduates. It began as the “Race for Scouts,” and Jeffryes was one of the people who got it started. The 2022 run was its 25th. That year the route went north toward the schools, west around the Haxtun Cemetery, and back down Colorado to finish in front of Town Hall.

The Kiddie Parade goes first. Children decorate their rides to the year’s theme, gather north of the Berean Church at Bryan Street and Colorado Avenue, and head south at 9:45. Nothing with a motor may enter: no motorcycles, four-wheelers or golf carts. The chamber made that rule for safety after complaints, though small power-wheel toys are allowed. Every child who rides receives a ribbon and one dollar.

The main parade follows at ten, moving south down Colorado Avenue from the elementary school. In 2022 it turned west just past the Haxtun Building Center. The American Legion color guard leads it, and the Grand Marshals come next. In 2022 Jula Bornhoft, Jeri Anderson and Kristin Hadeen sang the National Anthem as the Legion presented the colors, and John Chapdelaine announced the entries from the stage downtown. Judges divide the floats among clubs and organizations, businesses and youth. They also give prizes for best saddle club, best horse and rider, and best hitch or novelty.

Auction, quilts and a duck drop

Once the parade has passed, the day spreads across town. In 2025 three things opened at noon: the FFA member auction, the Johnny Miller Memorial Tractor Pull, and the beer garden, where ID was required and no one under 21 was admitted. The High Plains Heritage Quilters hung their show from noon to four. Street games started at one, and Kiddie Land ran through the afternoon. The rest of the program included the Violet Mae Anderson Memorial Flower Show, a photography display, a craft show, a food court and valve cover races. In 2022 the beer garden stood south of the Points West Community Bank lawn, with DJ Gary Wisdom playing. On the evening of the 2026 festival, the chamber posted that a phone had been found on that lawn and a credit card had been left at Brain Freeze.

The 2025 festival added three events. Team roping took place at the Haxtun arena, in the 500 block of Fairview Avenue on the west end of town. The Colorado Garden Tractor Pullers Association brought a lawn mower tractor pull, free to watch. The local early childhood council held a duck drop, letting ducks fall from the top of a bucket truck into the street south of the fire hall; any duck that landed in the bucket was a winner. The day ends with country music. Mud County played in 2025, followed by the comedy act Questionable Advice. In 2026 the bill was Casey Muessigmann with guest Madelyn Grace, followed by a street dance. Sunday brings a Triple R Saddle Club gymkhana, a golf tournament and an antique tractor pull.

Best ten ears and the Corn Kings

The Chuck Allen Memorial Crop and Garden Show is set up in the east room of the Haxtun Community Center. The Herald wrote in 2022 that the show “represents the reason Haxtun celebrates its annual Corn Festival.” The festival started as a celebration of harvest, honoring the corn fields around Haxtun and the gardens on farms and in town. The festival’s own listing says it “celebrates what everyone hopes is the end of a plentiful corn harvest.” The 2025 entry list judged corn for best ten ears, best hidden ear and tallest stalk. It also took sheaves of wheat, heads of milo, five heads of garlic, rhubarb, black walnuts, jars of honey, jack-o’-lantern pumpkins and the spiciest pepper. In 2022 the show also named a dry-land Corn King and an irrigated Corn King. Each received $100 and a place of honor in the parade.

A Grand Marshal the festival’s age

The 2022 festival was the 101st, and its Grand Marshal was Fran Gilliland, who had turned 101 two weeks before. The Herald called it “an honor just one Haxtun citizen holds; being the same age as the community’s most popular day of the year.” She was born in Plainview, Nebraska, on September 8, 1921. She met her husband Keith at Doane University in Crete. “He asked me to play bridge,” she said. “Everybody was playing bridge. That was the game of the time.” Keith joined the Navy in the winter of 1942 to become a fighter pilot. They married on February 16, 1943, in a small chapel on the Pensacola base. “The Navy only wanted single men to train as fighter pilots,” Fran told the Herald. “So, in the morning he became an ensign and that night we got married.”

The couple later moved to Haxtun with their two high-school-aged daughters. “They just engrossed themselves in Haxtun when we moved here,” her daughter Cindy said, “and Corn Festival is a big deal for Haxtun and it’s something they never missed.” The 2022 theme was “Pulling Together Since 1909,” the year Haxtun was incorporated.

The Johnny Miller pull

The tractor pull honors the late Johnny Miller, who owned and ran Miller Implement in Haxtun for many years. It became an annual part of the festival in 1990. The first Johnny Miller Memorial Pull was organized by Arnie Constance, August Krehmeyer, Charlie Triplette, Dave Fetzer, Robert L. Fetzer, Dennis Ulmer, Mary Miller, Rex Hadeen, Roland Barkey, Ron Thompson and Tommy Thompson. In 2005 the Platte Valley Tractor Association sponsored a second pull, which made the festival a two-day event. The Herald counted the 2025 pull as the 35th.

The 2025 Grand Marshals were Phil and LaVonne Hart, and that year’s theme was “Home is Where the Heart Is.” LaVonne was head cook for the Haxtun School District for more than 25 years and also worked at her mother’s café on Highway 6. She has served 25 years as alumni coordinator for Haxtun High School and runs the alumni meeting held during the festival. Phil farmed until he retired in 2007 and has helped run the Johnny Miller pull for more than two decades. He owns a John Deere 35A and a 1950 John Deere G. He takes them to pulls all summer, the Herald reported, “ending with the grand finale event Corn Festival weekend.”