Kern County Fair

The Kern County Fair holds a tract in southeast Bakersfield bounded by South P Street and Ming, Union and Belle Terrace avenues. The fair’s history page and its marketing specialist, Chelsey Roberts, both put it at 160 acres; the fair’s rental page says 168. Its tree-lined lanes give shade, and that shade mattered in 2026, when crowds went into the final weekend in triple-digit heat. The grounds hold four large exhibit buildings, an auction barn, sheep and swine show rings, a grandstand arena, a north arena, horse stalls and an outdoor theater, with flowers, large trees and shrubs kept up all year. The 15th District Agricultural Association runs it. The 2026 fair ran twelve days, September 23 through October 4.

Twelve nights on South P Street

Every night of the 2026 fair a concert began at 8 o’clock at the Budweiser Pavilion, an open-air stage. The concerts came with fair admission, and seats went first come, first served. ERNEST played opening night. Collective Soul, Barenaked Ladies, Ezequiel Peña, Gretchen Wilson, Carly Pearce, Daughtry and Joe Nichols followed. The second Friday brought Treach of Naughty by Nature, The Sugarhill Gang and C&C Music Factory on one bill, and Industria del Amor closed the run on Sunday, October 4.

Earlier in the day the free attractions worked the grounds: Sea Lion Splash, a Stingray Encounter, the All Alaskan Racing Pigs, the All Star Stunt Dog Challenge, Capt’n Jack Spareribs and a petting farm. Local and touring acts filled the stage lineup. The final Sunday alone listed The Wilder Show, the Magic of Frank Thurston, the Drumheads, Ballet Folklorico Huaztecalli, Grupo Folklorico Corazon de Mexico, Los 2 De Michoacan, Tina Marie, Master Hypnotist, and Mento Buru. The carnival ran every day of the fair, from the Ferris wheel to the carousel. On both Fridays the fair sold sunrise rides on the wheel: a private gondola for up to four people, with cinnamon rolls and coffee.

The grandstand seats 3,000 for concerts and 3,700 for rodeos, and it charges its own admission. On the fair’s first weekend, September 24 through 26, it held three nights of PRCA rodeo with the Flying U Rodeo: bull riding, bronc riding and roping, with children’s mutton bustin’ before each show. On Sunday, September 27, the Fiesta del Charro Rodeo gave two shows, at 3 and 6 p.m., with charros, escaramuzas, horse dancing and roping. Monster trucks took the arena on the last three days.

Karmel Korn and a Korean churro dog

On Friday, September 25, at 5:30 p.m., the fair held its third annual Foodie Face Off on the Main Plaza Stage. The judges were radio personalities, members of the fair board and local food writers who post online, and The Wilder Show served as emcee. The entries included a pork chop on a stick from Eat at Joe’s, a pickle corn dog and tanghulu from Extreme Food & Beverage, a taquito cup from Noel’s, and a Dubai StrawBrownie from Sweets by J. Three won. Extreme Food & Beverage took the beverage title with a Cinnamon Roll Martini, its glass rimmed in frosting from Old West Cinnamon Rolls. West Coast Weenies took savory with a Korean Churro Dog. The sweets title went to the Mill Creek Christian Church Karmel Korn Booth for its traditional kettle Karmel Korn.

Elsewhere, Bakersfield Eats reported the grape tanghulu “crunchy and sweet” and a kiwi sando “fluffy and creamy.” Fairgoers interviewed on camera named funnel cakes, curly fries, green corn dogs and ice cream as their favorites. One funnel cake vendor advertised three locations and ten kinds. The Boy Scout Baked Potato Booth worked among the commercial stands.

In the second week, with a heat advisory posted, the fair put out its plan under the name of its mascot, KC the Bull. It pointed visitors to the air-conditioned exhibit and shopping buildings, to marked Cool Zones and to shaded picnic tables.

Market lambs and the auction block

The livestock barns hold the fair’s oldest purpose. Market Show Day fell on Saturday, September 26, in 2026. In the last days of the run the Junior Livestock Auction sold what the young exhibitors had raised. On Thursday evening, October 1, the Sales Pavilion sold dairy replacement heifers, beef heifers, market beef and ag mechanics projects. On Friday afternoon the Swine Arena sold hogs, rabbits, fryers, turkeys and pens of poultry. On Saturday the Sales Pavilion sold goats and lambs. According to the fair, each young exhibitor spends three to nine months raising an animal. Only animals judged “market-ready” may sell, and the grand champions are among them. The money goes to the exhibitors themselves.

Some families come back to these rings for more than one generation. Kristen Westerfield showed sheep as a child, and her daughter, Sydney Sinclair, now shows them too. Scott Pavletich, a sheep breeder, opens his show ring free so children can practice with their sheep and goats before the fair. Lorrie Roberts has not missed a Kern County Fair since 1967. The fair named Herman Porter its 2026 Person of the Year.

Inside the exhibit buildings hang the blue-ribbon entries: pies and preserves, quilts and cross-stitch, painted pumpkins and scarecrows, honey, ceramics, photographs, fossils, gems and Lego models. On Tuesday, September 29, anyone who brought six cans of food got in free. The CAPK Food Bank counted 23,313 pounds collected.

“When you get to see people coming out and walk through the gate and see the big rides or see livestock animals for the first time, and enjoying food, running into all different people within the community that you only see maybe once a year, it’s the best feeling,” Chelsey Roberts said.

Tents on Chester Avenue

The fair started on the other side of town. Before there were fairgrounds, Solomon and Philo Jewett farmed the land, growing crops and raising sheep. On August 5, 1916, the fair’s official birth date, the Kern County Agricultural Fair opened on 106 acres on Chester Avenue, two blocks north of 34th Street and just south of the Kern River Bridge. There were no buildings, so the fair used tents.

By 1925 the fair had grown large. The six-day fair that opened October 6, 1925, passed 65,000 people through its gates, 20,000 of them county schoolchildren. Visitors watched parachute jumps, aerialists, a balloon ascension, motorcycle races and a fifteen-mile sweepstakes race. October 8 was Governor’s Day, planned around Governor Richardson, but he did not come; his daughter had suddenly fallen ill.

In 1926 the architect Charles H. Biggar designed an exhibit building on the grounds where farm communities displayed what they grew. A photograph from 1929 shows one such community exhibit: produce from around Weedpatch.

On September 24, 1930, at 11 o’clock, the fair opened what its own history calls the Sixth Annual Kern County Fair. A parade formed at City Hall and marched to the fairgrounds. Captain Leslie S. Robinson was grand marshal, and the parade escorted the day’s principal guest, Mayor James Rolph Jr. of San Francisco, then the Republican nominee for governor. After a speech, Rolph threw the latch on the main gates and the fair was open. Inside were 14 community exhibits, 112 Kern County school exhibits and 100 commercial exhibitors. The fair showed oil and minerals that year for the first time. McFarland Farm Center won first prize for Best Community Exhibit and was chosen to represent Kern County at the 1931 State Fair.

Later in the Depression, during the 1930s, no fair was held for two years.

From five days to twelve

In 1952 the fair left North Chester for its present grounds. That first year on the new site it ran five days. It went to seven days in 1956, nine in 1967, ten in 1977 and eleven in 1979, and it has run twelve days since 1983. In 1987 the fair added Satellite Watch and Wager Racing in the Albert S. Goode Auditorium, where, the fair notes, the Kentucky Derby is one of the big days.

The old Chester Avenue grounds now belong to the Metropolitan Recreation Complex, with the Kern County Museum and its clock tower, Sam Lynn Ball Park, Stramler Park, ball fields and a BMX track. To the right of the entrance to the museum’s Pioneer Village, a marker put up by the Kern County Museum stands beside Biggar’s exhibit building. It carries photographs of the building’s interior in 1927 and an aerial view of the fairgrounds around 1930.

On the present grounds, the Kern County Swap Meet has run since 1984 at the corner of Ming and Union avenues. Its hundreds of vendors set up in the Union Avenue parking lot on Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday mornings at 6, and again on Friday nights, selling produce, tools, antiques and secondhand goods for fifty weeks of the year that the fair is not running.