Humboldt County Fair & Event Center

The gate at 1250 Fifth Street opens onto 64 acres at the edge of Ferndale. Campers can walk from the grounds to the Victorian Village, and redwood forest covers the hills behind the pastures. The Humboldt County Fair Association runs the place year-round as an event center, campground, horse barn and storage yard. For five days each August it becomes the Humboldt County Fair. The 130th fair ran August 12 through 16, 2026, under the slogan “Where the Trees Meet the Seas!” Visitors entered past a Welcome Garden of sea creatures painted by Griffin Loch.

Five days in August

Gates opened at noon and closed at ten. On opening afternoon admission was $5 until 3 o’clock, and on Friday children and seniors came in free. Toward the front of the grounds were the vendors, the food and the Zipper. Toward the back were the barns, where the Pinewood Tractor Derby was held on the final Sunday at the Receiving Barn behind the Flower House. Antique tractors ran daily on the Livestock field.

Shows ran all day between the two ends:

• Patrick Contreras played Latin fusion, rock and classical violin as Violin on Fire.
• Trainer J.D. Platt’s eight rescue and shelter dogs leapt through the K9 Kings Flying Dog Show, and a meet, greet and pet followed.
• The Sea Lion Splash, billed as the only traveling, self-contained sea lion attraction, put on daily shows.
• Mermaids posed and performed outside the Hindley Hall vendor building.
• Captain Tall Tale, an entertainer eight feet three inches tall, worked the crowd with comedy and circus skills.
• Mark Colp carved bears, wildlife and nautical figures out of logs with a chainsaw.

Food and drink gathered in the Corral. Eel River Brewing of Fortuna, Lost Coast Brewery of Eureka and Mad River Brewing of Blue Lake poured beer. Beside them were ciders from Humboldt Cider Company and spirits from Alchemy Distillery of Arcata and Humboldt Distillery of Fortuna. Cook’s BBQ of Petrolia served pit-smoked pulled pork, brisket, ribs and hot links. Other stands sold fresh-squeezed lemonade, Korean corn dogs, mini donuts and kettle corn from Bandon’s Best out of Brookings, Oregon.

The 2026 fair added a Friday festival, the first Shell-ebration, devoted to Humboldt Bay and the Pacific Coast. It brought seafood restaurants, live tanks, ocean and nature booths, an oyster cookoff, and barbecued and raw oysters. That evening the Starhoppers, a trio that plays space-themed surf music, played in the Grandstands while Bootscootin Contessa taught swing dancing underneath. The night before, Nevada Gomes of NVSKY Productions had held a dance called Siren’s Tavern in the same space under the stands. Gomes founded the company at 21.

The Exhibit Halls held quilts, rugs, hand-spun yarn, barn quilts, scarecrows and decorated potatoes. The homebrew competition returned that year, and the apple pie contest was judged live for prizes from King Arthur Baking Company. Through the week, youth exhibitors from FFA, 4-H and independent programs showed cattle, goats, sheep, swine, poultry, rabbits and cavies, and competed in tractor driving. On Sunday they sold their steers, lambs, goats, hogs, poultry and rabbits at the Junior Livestock Auction in the Livestock Covered Arena. A barbecue lunch came first at 11, and the bidding began at 1 p.m. Meg Ruiz played acoustic sets in the livestock area that day, and there were camel rides.

The grounds the rest of the year

The grounds keep a calendar outside fair week. In 2026:

• The Redwood Region Logging Conference, the timber industry’s regional show, ran March 19 to 22.
• The STAMPEDE country-music and beer-and-wine festival filled May 30 and 31.
• The Lost Coast Kennel Club held four all-breed shows and trials over three days in early July.
• In September, Ferndale’s townwide Bargain Lovers Weekend spread yard-sale tables across the fair’s parking lot.
• The North Coast Stand Down marked its 20th year of services for veterans and their families on September 24 to 26.

Belotti Hall serves as a Voting Center on Election Day.

In October the grounds become the SCAREGROUNDS, Griffin Loch’s Scream-A-Torium haunt, open October 16 to 18, 23 to 25 and 29 to 31 in 2026. The haunt lists three mazes: Alien Autopsy, a cursed pirate vessel called Ghost Ship, and Toxic Zombie. A fourth room, Dead Air, is an ASMR experience built around radio equipment said to come from a forgotten 1920s scientist. Drinks are served at Marie Laveau’s Voodoo Bar and the Phantom Tides Tiki Lounge, and there is a pumpkin patch. A milder daytime version, the Spooktacular Family Festival, runs on Sundays late in the month.

The 2026 Winter Fair follows, from November 13 to January 10, 2027. It brings an outdoor ice rink with hot cocoa, pizza and nachos, a walking tour of lights, and a bazaar on Thanksgiving weekend. At the Holiday of Trees, fully decorated trees go to the highest bidder by silent auction.

Travelers can stay on the grounds year-round. The RV park has more than 60 spaces with hookups, and dry campers park in the carnival lot. A small fenced section between two buildings is held first-come, first-served for hikers and cyclists who make the long ride into Ferndale. Riders buy day or monthly passes for the covered arena.

Hydesville, Rohnerville, Ferndale

The fair is older than the grounds, and its sources do not agree on how it began.

• 1861 at Hydesville. Ferndale Museum volunteer Ann Roberts, speaking for the 2017 fair, put the first Humboldt County Fair at Hydesville in 1861. Justyn Sequoia of the fairgrounds gave the same year to the Ferndale Chamber of Commerce.
• 1862 at Hydesville. The Humboldt Times of 19 October 1862, transcribed in Susie Van Kirk’s Russ family notes, reported that the first annual fair of the Humboldt County Agricultural Society had been held at Hydesville the week before. The paper said it was “pronounced by both members and visitors to have been a decided success.” Joseph Russ was among the cattle judges.
• October 1870. The Society of Humboldt County Pioneers honored the fair in 2026 and recognized Seth Shaw as president of the first Humboldt Agricultural Society Fair, held in October 1870.

Shaw had come to the Ferndale area in 1853 and became its first postmaster. He replaced his first cabin with a Victorian residence he named Fern Dale, and the town took its name from the house. At the county fair in Ferndale in 1870, a $50 prize went to the owner of the horse team that pulled the most weight. The best plowing team won $10, and so did the winner of a wood-chopping trial. Shaw died in November 1872.

By Roberts’ account, the fair moved from town to town before it settled, and Rohnerville held it longest. The sources differ on the dates there too:

• The Humboldt County Historical Society says a racetrack opened at Rohnerville in 1866 and was the fair’s setting until 1895.
• The North Coast Journal says the fair was inaugurated at Rohnerville in 1880 and ran there until 1896, which gave the harness races more stability.
• The Van Kirk notes place the fourth annual fair of the Humboldt Agricultural Society at Rohnerville in 1866. That year Joseph Russ and H.H. Severns split a $10 premium for the best 50-pound keg of fresh butter, not less than three months old.

In 1896 the fair came to Ferndale to stay. Edward Baker Carr, later owner and editor of the Ferndale Enterprise, was the association’s volunteer secretary that year. By 1906 the Enterprise was printing premium winners from the Ferndale Fair, with the Hereford and Durham cattle classes going to Z. Russ & Sons Co. of Ferndale. The fair has been held there every year since, except 1942 through 1945, while the United States was in the Second World War.

The Hindleys and the racetrack

N.D. “Doc” Hindley became the first official fair manager in the 1920s. Horse racing, banished for a time, was legalized again, and in 1935 it became a mainstay of the fair. In 1937 the association bought the 32-acre grounds from the ranching family that had leased them each year for the fair.

Works Progress Administration relief crews came next. In 1939 the WPA approved work that moved the pavilion and stock buildings and improved the grandstand. In 1941 the crews returned to build an exhibition hall. The record of that work says it could not confirm which of today’s buildings are the ones the crews worked on.

Doc Hindley died in 1958. That same year C.J. Hindley took over management, held the post well into the 1980s, and developed the racing program. He also headed the County Office of Emergency Services, and during the 1964 flood he coordinated rescue and relief from the fairgrounds. “The fair was C.J.’s passion,” Pioneers president Dona Moxon said in 2026, “and he showed that passion throughout the county, making the Humboldt County Fair and fairgrounds a community affair.” Ferndale rancher Joseph Russ, born at Fern Cottage on the Centerville Road in 1876, sat on the association’s board and in later years served as racing steward.

Management passed through harder years later on. Fair Manager Stuart Titus had been in the job 17 years by the 111th fair in 2007. In 2013 a divided board declined to renew his contract, and the next year he and his wife sued the association. Also in 2014, the association became a nonprofit and began arguing that state open-meeting and records laws no longer bound it. The grounds are county property today, and the association operates them under an eight-year lease with the county.

Racing kept its place for a long time. Many in the fair’s circle believe it was the largest draw for more than a century. In 2018 Sequoia told the chamber that Ferndale had the oldest continuously running fair and racetrack in the state, war years excepted, and the only small fair in California still running live horse racing.

The numbers turned against it. Preliminary figures for 2024 showed racing bringing in $956,000 against $962,000 in expenses, a $6,000 loss. Board president Andy Titus said those numbers did not capture racing’s effect on attendance. Two racehorses were euthanized after injuries on the track that year. For 2025 the association said it could not absorb the cost of licensing and staffing the two-weekend meet and that it had lost more than $300,000, so there was no racing. Chief executive Moira Kenny counts 128 years of racing at the grounds, leaving out the war years.

Shoring and a rodeo on the oval

The earthquake of December 20, 2022, damaged the grandstands. An inspection in early 2023 found them unsafe for the public. In June the county’s Public Works director, Tom Mattson, briefed the fair board on a draft report, and the association asked the county for help. The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved up to $1 million for repairs, and in July it passed the budget and construction agreements. Crews installed metal supports around the structure and finished the shoring on August 11, 2023, in time for the fair. The shoring is temporary, made safe for public use while permanent repairs are designed.

The 2026 fair was the second in a row without racing. Kelly and Gianna O’Day, coaches of College of the Redwoods’ new rodeo team, offered to put on the county’s first collegiate rodeo, and the fair board approved it only in March. Flying U Rodeo Co., a 60-year-old outfit, turned the oval in front of the grandstands into a rodeo arena. Teams came from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cuesta College, Feather River College, CSU Bakersfield, Fresno State and West Hills Community College, along with CR’s own.

The Outlaw Rodeo College Invitational opened at 2 p.m. on August 15. Children ages 4 to 8 climbed onto sheep for mutton busting, and Wiley McCanless of Ferndale won the $100 prize. A low overcast kept a skydiver from dropping an American flag, so CR football players unfurled one in the arena.

During the saddle bronc riding, two horses were injured. An on-site veterinarian examined both, and both were euthanized. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo was named champion team. At the end of the day, Kelly O’Day gave her estimate of the crowd: “That crowd today was about the same as on the best day of horseracing.”