Kane County Fair

At 475 North State Street in Orderville, the Kane County North Fairgrounds lie next to Carroll Arena, a rodeo ground with covered bleachers that was first known as Carroll Field. The county says the arena has held livestock shows and rodeos since the mid-20th century. It also says the fairgrounds fill each August for the Kane County Fair, with livestock exhibitions, arts and crafts displays, parades, and entertainment for families. The fair is planned and run by the Kane County Fair Board, which the county describes as an independent organization.

The program the county tourism office lists for the fair has these divisions: 4-H, crafts, home arts, horticulture, floriculture, fine arts, a children’s fair, and livestock, with a separate set of rules for pee wees. The Miss Kane County Pageant crowns the fair’s royalty, and a grand marshal is named.

Rodeo night and a chuckwagon supper in Kanab

The 2026 fair opened with two evenings in Kanab. On Friday, July 31, the Legacy Rodeo started at 7:30 PM at the Kaneplex Arena. The Independent of St. George called it a night that “honors the deep-rooted ranching history of the area.”

On Saturday, August 1, the Kanab Center Ballroom was set for the return of Circle the Wagons, a dinner show and dance. The paper said the event took its idea from pioneer gatherings where neighbors shared food and music inside a circle of wagons. Giff’s Barbeque cooked a chuckwagon supper of roast beef, Dutch oven potatoes, chili, and sourdough biscuits, then fresh salad and apple cobbler. When the plates were cleared, Lyndsey and Russell Wulfenstein, a husband and wife who perform as Lyndsey and the Wulf, took the stage. Local musicians Matthew Stewart, Jack Allen, and John Crowley played with them. The show used concert lighting and synchronized video, and the set ran from Western standards to “Crazy” and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Guests were urged to line dance and two-step. Camberly Anderson, the fair’s events coordinator, told the paper she hoped Circle the Wagons would become a highlight of the summer for families.

Sourdough, a bull, and a hog sold six times

The Southern Utah News printed a page of photographs from the 2026 fair and livestock show on August 12, taken by Jerry Melrose and Celeste Meyeres. On the Saturday, the Baker Bunch played American Songbook numbers from the 1940s and 1950s in the North Events Center from 11 to 1. In the barrel race, Lizzy Reese was caught rounding her second barrel and starting for her third. Cody Cluff of Alton, the reigning World Champion Little Britches Bull Rider, stayed on “the snorting bull” for the full eight seconds while Tell Cox and Tyler Baird shouted him on.

In the Dutch Oven Cook Off, Sarah Esplin won the Bread category with a homemade sourdough loaf. She was photographed holding her one-year-old daughter, Lizzy, beside her prize, a high-pressure stove. In fine arts, the Judge’s Choice in the senior oil painting portrait class went to “Jesus With Lamb” by Rain Stotlar. She graduated recently from Kanab High School and was serving an LDS mission in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The paper gave the most space to the annual Jeff Wood Memorial Scholarship Fund auction. Jeff Wood died years ago, without warning, after a hard-hit baseball struck him in the chest while he was pitching on the mound at Valley High School. In 2026, his niece McKadie Cox, age seven, and her brother DJ, age five, herded what the paper called “a sacrificial hog” in front of the bidders. Their father, David Wyatt Cox, called the auction from the table, with Joeie Harris beside him keeping the record. Six times the crowd shouted “sell it again!” Each round paid $1,000 to one student:

• McKaydee Bauer, Jake Brinkerhoff, and Conner Smith of Valley High
• Kaya Wheeler and Kyler Brown of Kanab High
• Maddie Cox, whose sister Kassidee stood in for her

The livestock show of the valley high school

On August 29, 1947, the Kane County Standard ran a piece titled “Kane County Fair Has Grown Up.”

The 1947 newspaper account. Three years before the article, the paper said, the Future Farmers of America of “the valley high school” had grown ambitious. With the help and guidance of the agriculture teacher, J. Bryant Anderson, they put on the first livestock show in Kane County. What had begun “as a mere experiment and diversion for the youngsters” had become “the nucleus of a countywide fair.”

Anderson’s work caught the attention of the Utah centennial committee, which saw the possibilities of a permanent county fair. The 1947 fair, held at Orderville, was “in reality the first fair of any size and importance.” The paper explained the location this way: the fair “logically belongs to Orderville,” as “the center of the county’s livestock operations.” It gave the following credit:

• The county commissioners. Chairman Ordell Watson, Hans Chamberlain, and Hoyt Chamberlain approved the fair and set aside special funds to promote it.
• Orderville’s mayor. Charles T. Hepworth lined up his little city solidly behind it.
• County staff. County agent J. Reed Moore and Rachel Dalley of the extension service were thanked for their work.
• The founder. Anderson, the writer said, “can really be named the father of it since he is the founder and originator.”

The writer predicted a three-day Kane County fair in the years to come.

Two later accounts. These date the start differently:

• The county tourism office says the Long Valley Sale began around 1946. Children who wanted to show and sell their animals had to haul them to Cedar City, so residents around Long Valley started their own sale and show. The office’s fair page counts 79 years of the fair.
• The county’s fairgrounds page calls the fair a tradition since 1948.

The fair’s purpose in 1947. The Standard said the main object of the fair was education. Future farmers learned to judge livestock and its finer points. Girls in the 4-H clubs learned sewing, cooking, and home furnishing, and their exhibits drew prizes the writer expected them to treasure for a lifetime. There would also be plays to keep the little ones busy, refreshments of all kinds, and, to top it off, “the big dance in the evening with good and lively music.”