Johnson County Fair

At 18 Fairgrounds Road on the edge of Buffalo, the gates stay unlocked. A traveler hauling horses across Wyoming can pull in, put the animals in an indoor, covered, or outdoor stall, and pay $25 a head into an honor box. The Johnson County Fair Board manages the grounds for the county. It asks summer travelers to call ahead, since an event may have every stall rented. The board also states that the fairgrounds are not a public campground. Camping is allowed only for people boarding horses overnight on the road, and for contestants at planned events. The grounds sit at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains. They hold a Main Arena and a second arena, a show ring, the Block Barn, an exhibit hall, a cook shack, a community building, a pergola, and a grandstand above a track.

For ten days at the end of July, the stalls are closed to travelers. No outside horses and no overnight camping are allowed during the Johnson County Fair & Rodeo, which the county tourism association calls the oldest in Wyoming. The 2026 edition ran July 24 through August 2. On August 3 the fair board thanked “everyone that made the 141th JCFnR great” and closed its office for two days “for some rest and recovery.” By September the grounds were under construction, with big piles of dirt and large equipment along a narrow pass-through. The board had also called a rodeo workshop for September 23 to hear ideas on improving the country rodeo.

Breakfast at six, lamb at five

Fair days began early. On the 2026 schedule, free breakfasts were served at 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning by a different host each day. The Johnson County Fairgrounds Foundation served on Monday, Farm Bureau on Tuesday, and MTR Ranch Supply and Bear Track Outfitters on Wednesday and Thursday.

Evenings had their own suppers. On Tuesday at 5:00 the JC Wool Growers held a lamb feed in the Community Building, and Sheridan College in Johnson County set out sweet treats. On Wednesday, HUB sponsored ice cream sundaes at 4:00, and the Buffalo FFA Alumni put on a pig feed under the pergola an hour later.

The pie contest is held under the grandstands on Friday morning. Members of Beta Sigma Phi, the local chapter of an international women’s organization, coordinate it. The Buffalo Bulletin reported in 2023 that they slice and serve the pies afterward and collect the judging sheets.

Between meals the week runs on judging. The first Friday opens with fabric and fashion judging and a make-it-with-wool contest. In 2023 the fabric judging was held at Summit Church, where Evelyn Conklin told the judges wool was her favorite material to work with. Her outfit took about five yards of fabric and a month to make.

Open class exhibits came in on Sunday and were judged Monday morning, and the exhibit hall opened Tuesday afternoon. In 2023 the Bulletin photographed blue-ribbon vegetables on its tables. Dogs show in front of the grandstands Sunday morning, and the Fairgrounds Foundation runs dog races on the track. Cats and pocket pets go before the judges in the Block Barn on Monday. At the 2023 cat show, Kiana Miller’s cat Tortilla won the longest whisker competition. The six pocket pets that year included three bearded dragons and two snakes.

The show ring and the sheep lead

Livestock shows fill the week, and each species has a superintendent named in the fair book. The horse show runs Monday in the Main Arena. Sheep show Tuesday morning, swine and goats on Wednesday, and beef on Thursday. Rabbits and poultry show in the Block Barn.

In 2023 Kaitlyn Evans, in her seventh year showing sheep, wore an earring shaped like a sheep tag that she had gotten at the fair the year before. “I like sheep because of the challenge,” she said. At the next day’s swine showmanship, volunteers formed an arch for the pigs to walk under. The judge, Matthew Chaney, wanted to see how the pigs did as people got closer.

Tuesday evening goes to wool. At the sheep lead, contestants and their sheep both wear clothing made primarily from wool. The Bulletin explained that the outfits are judged on creativity and on how they represent Johnson County’s wool industry. The 2023 sheep lead was the 42nd. Stock dog trials follow in the Main Arena. In 2023 a calcutta auction on the dog trial came first, and then Wendy Auzqui and her dog Bo herded sheep in the trials.

The livestock week ends at the junior livestock sale, Saturday at 6:00 in the show ring. At the 2023 sale, Weston DeCroo auctioned off his chickens dressed as Col. Sanders, holding up a KFC bucket. Trey Saur’s grand champion steer sold for nearly $7,000. Gov. Mark Gordon signed the paperwork to buy Casey LeDoux’s sheep.

Slack, a parade, and two afternoon rodeos

The rodeo builds toward its weekend. In 2026, slack ran in the arenas on the evenings of July 30 and 31. The youth rodeo, open to children ages 1 to 16, took the Main Arena at 9:00 Friday morning. In 2023 Callie Munsick was in the arena two days before the youth rodeo, pushing out a barrel so her daughter could practice. “Just a little rodeo practice before youth rodeo on Friday,” she said.

A band played in front of the pergola that Friday night. At the opening concert of the 2023 fair, the Dakota Country Band played on the lawn before the community building, and Lloyd and Karol Meineke danced to a George Strait song. Adults stayed near the music, the Bulletin noted, while the children wandered the rest of the grounds.

Saturday, August 1, began downtown. The Kiwanis pancake breakfast was served behind the courthouse at Fort and Adams Streets, the Klondike Rush 5K and 10K started from the YMCA at 7:30, and the parade came down Main Street at 10:00. The rodeo began at 12:30 that afternoon and again on Sunday.

New inductees to the Cowboy Hall of Fame are honored during Saturday’s performance. On Sunday the Parade of Champions runs during the rodeo, and the dog races, the band, and the buckle ceremony follow. Children under 15 may enter calf riding, junior barrels and poles, and mutton busting during the main performances. Families may also ask for an empty saddle to honor a fallen loved one at either show.

The first fair in the Territory

Buffalo grew up beside Fort McKinney, which was moved to Clear Creek in 1878. WyoHistory.org records that the town’s name was drawn from a hat and offered by a native of Buffalo, New York.

In late 1879 the legislature created Johnson County out of the northern portion of Pease County, which had never been organized. The new county was named for E. P. Johnson, a Cheyenne attorney. Its government was seated in Buffalo in 1881, and the town was incorporated in 1884.

In 1886, according to the Wyoming State Historical Society, the Johnson County Fair opened, the first fair held in the Territory. Ranchers in the county were in the middle of a cattle boom. The winter of 1886–87 decimated their herds. Records of the fair’s organization, administration, and activities from 1915 to 1929 survive among the Johnson County Clerk’s papers at the Wyoming State Archives.

Seven generations of Buells

In 2009 the fair board asked the Buell family to put up a booth, which they titled “The Buell Family- 130 years along the Big Horns.” The Bulletin’s JR Logan wrote that there had likely been a Buell in every fair and rodeo since its inception.

Charles E. Buell came to Johnson County in the 1800s. His son Miles ran the family ranch on Shell Creek. Miles’s son Charles married Pearl Bybee in 1939, and the couple attended every fair and rodeo in the county for years. “I lived down in Kaycee and coming to the fair was a big deal back then,” Pearl, then 87, told the paper. She recalled winning first prize in embroidery at ten. “We always did a lot of exhibiting,” she said. “Vegetables, sewing, cooking, arts and crafts. I was even in charge of the culinary events for many years.”

Charles, then 93, had been a trucker. He hauled broncs from Ten Sleep over the mountain for the rodeo, and ran steers, broncs, and bulls between the pens and chutes. His son Butch remembered him handing out quarters to children at the fair while he was a county commissioner. Charles’s brother Ralph, a world champion bronc rider, got his start at Johnson County rodeos. Butch’s sister Jeannie ran poles and barrels and was crowned fair and rodeo queen in 1965.

Butch roped, rode calves, and rode broncs at the fair as a boy. He told the Bulletin the rodeo was wilder then, and that the Pony Express and the wild horse race are no longer held. In his office he kept a photograph of himself on a calf. “I was probably about five or six,” he said, looking at it. “My hat’s right there. I must just be going off because I can’t see where I’m holding on at.”