Hot Sulphur Days

Hot Sulphur Days begins with pies. On the Friday evening of the festival, bakers bring them to Town Hall in Hot Sulphur Springs between five and half past, in a kids division and an adult division, with no entry fee. Judging starts at six. When it is finished, every pie is sold whole to the crowd, usually around 6:30 or 7:00. All of the proceeds go to the next year’s event.

The rest of the hall fills the same evening. The Kids Carnival runs from six to 7:30 with games and prizes. The Calvary Church concession stand sells hot dogs, and the Grand County Library District holds a pop-up story time. Earlier in the day a botany walk, limited to 20 people and closed to dogs, carpools from the Pioneer Village Museum to Parshall Divide. The museum is run by the Grand County Historical Association, and its indoor and outdoor exhibits on the town are open free from 10 to 4 on all three days.

The 61st annual festival ran June 12 through 14, 2026. Hot Sulphur Springs lies on Highway 40 and is the county seat of Grand County. The festival’s sponsors page calls it the oldest town in the county. A small volunteer group puts on the weekend, most of them residents, with Christine Lee as event coordinator. “It’s a small town, but we can have a lot of fun in it,” Lee told the Sky-Hi News in 2018.

From the fire station to the Town Park

Saturday starts at eight at the Hot Sulphur Springs/Parshall Fire Station. Firefighters and volunteers serve maple pancakes and hot coffee there, for donations. At 11:30, parade entries line up at the Pioneer Park campground across the river. At noon the parade moves along Aspen and Grand to the Town Park, with candy thrown from the floats. The Sky-Hi News photographed the 2019 parade. Theresa Flowers and Pat Clerkin drove the route in a 1956 Cushman golf cart with their dogs, Sweet Pea and Minnie. Kevin Kaltenbaugh of Corral Creek Llamas walked three llamas named Lion, Luscious and Lineman. Harms & Sons Recycling took best in show with a truck of children tossing candy and squirting water guns.

The parade ends at the Town Park, where most of the weekend happens. Vendors fill the park with crafts, merchandise and food. The festival counted more than 40 of them in 2026, which it called the largest number in town history. Their goods included pebble art, paracord, salves, pottery, hats, mountain cookies and a taco truck. At 12:30 Rod McCann of Amber Flames BBQ serves lunch at the Town Park Pavilion: ribs, pulled pork, chicken and hot dogs. The dinners come with ranch beans, homemade coleslaw, a drink and a brownie. Through the afternoon there are a horseshoe tournament at the park pits and music from Tone & the Vibe. Children get a greased pole, a bouncy house, kite flying and an obstacle course. Families ride bicycles through North Pioneer Park, and KFFR community radio broadcasts live from the park from three to five.

The day is built to end with fireworks over the Town Park at dark. “People come from all over to see the fireworks at the end of the day,” Lee said in 2018. “You see a lot of people invite their friends and families over for that evening to barbecue, listen to the music and see the fireworks.” In 2025 the crowd watched them on June 7 from Pioneer Park. In 2026 the organizers announced on June 12 that the fireworks were canceled because of the county fire ban. The band, The Cause, still played from 7:30 to 9:30 that Saturday night, and food trucks stayed late. The organizers wrote that with drought conditions, fireworks “would just be completely irresponsible and dangerous.” Grand County moved to Stage 2 fire restrictions on June 26.

Sunday in Himebaugh Gulch

Sunday opens at 8:30 with the Sulphur 7K Trail Run/Walk, which starts and finishes at the Pioneer Village Museum. The route runs 4.4 miles and climbs, then descends, the smooth single track of Himebaugh Gulch, through sagebrush, a few aspens and spring wildflowers. In 2026 it was free and self-timed. Volunteers and members of the Hot Sulphur Run Club marked the route, set out drinks and snacks at the finish, and cheered at the turns. At 10:30 Calvary Church holds its service outdoors in the Town Park in place of its usual Sunday service.

The car show, new in 2026, parked across from the tennis courts and park restrooms, and visitors voted for a favorite. At one, Don Dailey leads a $5 tour of the Hot Sulphur Springs Cemetery. The weekend closes at 2:30 with a disc golf tournament in North Pioneer Park, billed in 2026 as the first annual.

1965 and a pictorial postmark

The festival’s start date was once uncertain. When the 60th anniversary came up in 2025, the Sky-Hi News reported some initial confusion over whether that year truly marked it. Donald Daily, a resident historian, was fairly sure of the answer because his father had served on the “kid’s games committee” when the event was new. He checked old newspaper records and confirmed that the first Hot Sulphur Days took place in 1965.

For the 60th, the Hot Sulphur Springs post office offered a pictorial postmark until July 5, 2025. Andrew O’Neil designed it, and Daily worked on it with Samantha Davis of the Grand County Historical Association. According to Linn’s, the cancel shows pies, hamburgers, pancakes, horseshoes, music and fireworks. Daily said he was “elated” when the Postal Service approved it.

The intervening decades are thin in the record. In 2020 the committee canceled the festival because state Covid-19 rules forbade large gatherings. It said it hoped to hold a shortened event later that summer, and it gave $500 to the Grand County Rural Health Network. The free museum admission has its own history. Tim Nicklas, who directed the Pioneer Village Museum until 2018, credited Dan Nolan, a former president of the historical association, with pushing to open the museum free on Hot Sulphur Days, and Nicklas called it a major boost for donations. Nolan’s name now appears on the festival’s committee roster as co-chair of the parade.

Linn’s gives the town’s own outline. The first permanent residents arrived during the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858–59 and founded the town in 1860, first called Saratoga West and sometimes Warm Springs. It took its present name in 1863. In 1864 William Newton Byers, founder of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, bought the town, planned to make it a spa and resort, and surveyed and named its streets.

Texas Charlie in the street

For years the festival’s Saturday included the Texas Charlie Shootout, a reenactment in which residents played out the killing of a young troublemaker in the town’s street. In 2018 it was dropped, along with the rubber duck race. Lee put the cuts largely down to a lack of volunteers. “This year we’re cutting back a tad,” she said. “A lot of people are moving out and into town, so we don’t have the volunteers we need.” The reenactment was back for the 55th festival in 2019, when the Sky-Hi News called it one of the weekend’s most popular attractions and ran it just before the parade. The 2026 schedule did not list it, though the committee roster still names a Texas Charlie Shootout chair, Sarah Villa.

The story the reenactment follows is told by Abbott Fay on the Grand County Historical Association’s history site, drawing on Robert C. Black’s Island in the Rockies. Charles Wilson, a 19-year-old, came to Grand County in 1883. He called himself Texas Charlie, always wore a sombrero, and gathered two others into a small gang. In early December 1883 they invaded a saloon in Hot Sulphur Springs and threatened the barkeeper’s life. They then went to a general store and pistol-whipped a customer chosen at random. When threatened with arrest, Charlie tore up the warrant, and the gang left town.

They came back on December 9. They got off their horses at the Justice of the Peace office and drew their pistols. A shot knocked Charlie’s revolver out of his right hand, and his companions pulled back. He picked the gun up with his left hand and was shot from many directions. At the inquest, everyone admitted hearing the gunfire and seeing the body, but no one knew which of the town’s “leading citizens” had fired. The jury found “that said C.W. Wilson came to his own death by gunshot wounds at the hands of some person or persons to us unknown.” His partners left and were never seen in Hot Sulphur Springs again.

The 2018 Sky-Hi News account dates the shooting to 1884; Fay and Nicklas both place it in 1883. Nicklas said in 2018 that the Pioneer Village Museum holds Charlie’s personal effects. The Sky-Hi News described his grave as unmarked and in town. Fay wrote that he was buried on a hill in an unknown spot, outside the town cemetery.