King County Fair

The Rainier Expo Wheel stands 65 feet over the midway at the Enumclaw Expo Center. From the top, riders see the barns, show halls and arena of the King County Fair.

The 2026 fair ran July 16 through 19. Gates opened at 10 in the morning and the carnival at 11. Rainier Amusements brought the rides:

• an Ali Baba that lifts riders 50 feet without turning them over
• a Loop O Plane with two 16-foot arms
• a Spider and a Pirate Ship
• a three-lane Super Slide where riders race to the bottom

The main midway held ten rides and the kiddie land eight. Ride tickets sold for fifty cents apiece, and a ride took ten to twelve of them. Nearby, Safeway sponsors the Kid Zone. It is free and fenced, with games, puzzles and a teepee for story time.

Barns, ground acts and the mainstage

“Agriculture is the cornerstone of the fair!” Rene Popke, the fair’s chief executive and general manager, wrote in 2024. 4-H, FFA and Open Class exhibitors show their stock at the King County Junior Livestock Show and the King County Jr. Dairy Show, and Open Class still-life entries fill the halls. The King County Junior Livestock Sale is held in the covered arena. Popke called it “really what the fair is all about! Our local youth, and their livestock!” The barns close at 9 each evening and at 6 on Sunday.

Between the barns, the ground acts run on a posted clock, all included with admission. The Canine Stars perform three shows a day. Children under 55 pounds sign up half an hour ahead for mutton bustin’. Pirates of the Plateau, Reptile Isle, the XPogo Stunt Team and BMX Pros take turns through the day. Freckle Farm brings pony rides and a petting zoo, and a mechanical bull takes paying riders. On the opening Thursday of 2026, Chicken Rider and Leapin’ Louie led a parade to the mainstage at 11:45.

The 2026 freestyle motocross team was:

• Cody McDonough
• Rob Routley
• X Games gold medalist Destin Cantrell
• X Games bronze medalist Robert Haslam

McDonough promised “four days of big air, backflips, and nonstop Freestyle Motocross action.”

The mainstage plays all four days. The 2026 Thursday bill opened with ceremonies at noon. It carried Whyskey Creek, a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band formed in Puyallup in 1982, and closed with three hours of Hometown Talent from Enumclaw’s own musicians.

Saturday ran from morning to night:

• Folklore Mexicano Tonantzin, a Kent group that teaches and performs traditional Mexican folklore dances
• the Tacoma honky-tonk of Cody Bartels
• the line dancers of the Boot Boogie Babes
• Saltwater Sky to close

Sunday is Fiesta Day. It began at 9 with Cowboy Church, presented by Grace Point NW, then Los Flacos, New Age Flamenco and the dancers of Bailadores de Bronce. Earlier bills on this stage have included Chris LeDoux, Collin Raye, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Chris Cagle, Blaine Larsen and Martina McBride.

Saturday night in Kingdome seats

The Rough Stock Rodeo goes on Saturday evening. The arena uses stadium seats and ticket booths taken from Seattle’s old Kingdome. In 2026 the rodeo fell on July 18, with gates at 4 and the first chute at 6, and every ticket sold.

The show runs about two hours, with four events: bull riding, saddle bronc, chute dogging and cowboy mounted shooting. Each event is limited to twelve competitors. Rider and animal are scored equally.

A bronc rider must “mark out” or be disqualified. That means leaving the chute with spurs set above the horse’s shoulders and holding them there until its front feet strike ground after the first jump.

The shooters run a pattern of ten balloons, one of more than 50 approved layouts. Each carries two .45-caliber single-action revolvers loaded with five black-powder blanks apiece, effective at 10 to 15 feet. Every shot must be cocked by hand. After five, the rider holsters the first gun and draws the second at a run.

On Sunday the arena turns to roping. The 2026 team roping began at 10 a.m. as a round-robin of 12 headers and 12 heelers, 144 runs in all, for a buckle and a $2,000 purse. Elite breakaway roping followed at 1 p.m. for a buckle and $1,500.

From Georgetown to the plateau

The King County Agricultural Society held the first King County Agricultural Fair on October 21, 1863, 26 years before Washington became a state. It was held in Georgetown, just south of Seattle.

Edible Seattle calls it the first county fair west of the Mississippi. Citing Clarence Bagley’s 1916 History of Seattle, it lists the exhibits: horses, swine, dairy products, grain, vegetables, hay, fruits and “domestic products.” The same account says some early fairs met in the Pioneer Building, at First and James in Pioneer Square, and that the fair later moved among Grange halls around the county.

The fair’s own history and a 2014 Patch post put the move to Renton around 1900. The Federal Way Mirror says 1900.

The arrival in Enumclaw is dated several ways:

• Edible Seattle gives 1947.
• The Expo’s history gives 1965, “following World War II.”
• The Mirror and Patch say only that the move came after the war.

A Courier-Herald article of November 15, 1962, already describes fair buildings standing east of the football field at the Enumclaw Recreation Park. The fairgrounds became part of the city of Enumclaw in 1969. In 1991 the fair reached its peak attendance: 270,316 visitors in five days.

World’s Fair halls and Pete’s Pool

That 1962 article reported a purchase by the county park department. South District County Commissioner Ed Munro said it had bought three buildings from the recently closed Seattle World’s Fair. During the fair’s six-month run they had housed the Argentine Grill, the Wax Museum and the Flor de Mexico restaurant.

Appraisers valued the fabricated-steel structures at about $250,000. The county paid the Century 21 organization about $15,000. The buildings were dismantled, hauled to Enumclaw, and set on concrete footings at the north end of the Paul Moore farm, which the county had added to the park. County park director George Wyse and county extension agent Duane Weeks chose the sites. The three now serve as the Admin Building, RestorX Hall and Les Schwab Hall.

The Fieldhouse, formerly Pete’s Pool, is a King County Historic Landmark. A Courier-Herald caption from 2009 says resident Pete Chorak and community members created the pool. The spring-fed pool drew summer crowds until it was closed and cut down to a wading pool in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

The stadium beside it still carries the name. The Courier-Herald reported in 2023 that it was built in 1938 by Enumclaw residents in partnership with the Federal Works Projects Administration. The Enumclaw School District plays football, soccer and lacrosse there. “If you fit within 17 inches, [capacity is] about 950 people,” said Phil Engebretsen, the district’s director of facilities.

The hearing at the field house

By the 2000s, city crowds were going to the larger fairs at Puyallup and Monroe. Craig Holmes, a 4-H poultry superintendent who has researched the fair’s history, described the change to Edible Seattle: “They brought in carnival rides and it became more of a money-making thing. But it was always promoted as an agricultural fair. We never got into that arena that Puyallup did.”

In October 2008, King County Executive Ron Sims proposed shutting the fair down, citing poor attendance and tight budgets. The closure would have saved the county $315,000. “It’s the culminating event for 4-H, and we work up to it all year long,” Holmes said.

On October 22 the Metropolitan King County Council held a public hearing in the field house at Enumclaw. More than 200 parents, 4-H and FFA members, and other residents came. Councilmembers Pete von Reichbauer, Reagan Dunn and Larry Phillips spoke for the fair. “What impressed the councilmembers more than anything,” Holmes said, “was when the kids got up there—whether they were in FFA or 4-H—and talked about what the programs meant to them.”

The council restored funding for one year. On February 23, 2009, it adopted an agreement handing the 2009 fair to the city of Enumclaw. The city received:

• the fairground site
• the county’s budgeted subsidy of $311,000
• eligibility for roughly $37,000 in state support

In return, the city had to stage 4-H and FFA competitions good enough to qualify entrants for the State Fair in Puyallup. “The citizens of Enumclaw spoke out when the Executive tried to cut the Fair and now they are leading the way again,” said Dunn, the ordinance’s prime sponsor. Brad Gaolach of the county’s WSU Extension office was less certain: “The fair is in limbo.”

Ownership had already changed hands in 2006, when the county transferred the fairgrounds to the city. On July 1, 2015, management passed to the Enumclaw Expo & Events Association, the fair’s own nonprofit. Attendance was 33,000 in 2019. Assistant fair manager Jaclyn VanHoof reported just over 50,000 in 2023 and set a goal of 60,000. The association has dated the next fair July 15–18, 2027.