La Paz County Fair

Three days in March on Hillside Drive

The 2027 La Paz County Fair opens at eight in the morning on Thursday, March 11, at the county fairgrounds on Hillside Drive in Parker. The first judging starts in the Livestock Arena at the same hour, with small stock in the meat and breed classes. The 4-H Opening Program follows at 8:45. At nine the large market animals come into the ring: swine, sheep, and beef. The fair’s banner reads “Where the Dirt Road Ends & the Fun Begins.” Gates stay open until ten each night through Saturday, March 13, and parking is free.

The arena sets the pace for the three days. Friday brings showmanship, first for small stock and then for swine, sheep, and beef, with championship drives at times to be announced. On Saturday a round robin showmanship begins at nine, awards are presented at 11:45, and the Livestock Auction starts at one in the afternoon. The fair association is a 501(c)3 non-profit. Its stated goal is “to provide a facility for the youth in La Paz County for agricultural and educational purposes.”

The pageant and the auction are tied together. The Miss La Paz Pageant takes the Rotary Stage at six on Friday evening. According to the Parker Pioneer, the first official duty of the new titleholders is to pose for photographs with the grand and reserve champions of the Youth Livestock Auction the next afternoon. On Saturday morning at ten, Parker Youth Pageants presents Little Miss, Junior Miss, and Teen Miss La Paz County on the same stage. At that hour sign-ups close for the Evander Page Horse Shoe Tournament, which began taking names at nine.

Other entertainment runs on its own schedule. Adam the Great performs on the Exhibit Hall Stage at one, three, and five each day, and Tyzen and Louie Foxx are on that stage’s lineup as well. PAACE plays the Main Stage at six on Thursday, and the Golden Riders are listed among the acts. Steve’s Fun Balloons and Flo the Clown walk the grounds all three days. The Black Hat Bar opens at ten each morning, with its music not yet announced. City of Fun Amusements runs the carnival until eleven at night. It opens at 2:30 on Thursday, at one on Friday, and at noon on Saturday.

In 2008 the Pioneer listed the classic fair food as corn dogs, cotton candy, and fry bread. In the fall of 2026 the association ran a bracket on its Facebook page to name a “Fair Food Flavorite.” It drew the “top 16 fair foods from around the country (with some local favorites).” The early rounds set corn dogs against candy apples, funnel cake against fried alligator, frybread against frozen lemonade, and elote against kettle corn. Richard Silva presides over the board. Shayla Garza manages the fair, with Jane Silva as assistant manager, and eight commissioners sit alongside the board members.

Dates by the quart, baskets by tribe

The Exhibit Hall is open from noon to nine each day. Its entries come in two divisions, Adult (18 and over) and Junior (17 and under). The agriculture classes follow what the county grows. Dates and figs are entered by the quart, and grapefruit, kumquats, lemons, tangelos, and pomegranates in fives. Pecans come by the ten and pistachios by the pint. The field crops take more space. Each cotton display box holds 20 open bolls of seed cotton, a pound of seed, and a pound of lint. Alfalfa hay is entered by the bale, with separate lots for first, second, and third cuttings, alongside Bermuda, rye, and Sudan grass. Other lots call for jojoba, durum wheat, and Indian corn. The rules add that a photograph of the grower standing in the field “will be greatly appreciated, but not required.”

The Indian Arts & Crafts department has its own lots for Hopi, Chemehuevi, and Navajo baskets and for Mohave, Hopi, and Navajo pottery. It also takes Navajo rugs, cradle straps, cradle boards, ribbon skirts, squash blossom necklaces, concho belts, and beaded hatbands. Every entry must carry the maker’s name, address, and tribe. Fine arts includes a class called Oldest Painting or Art Object, and the exhibitor need not have made the object. Hobbies cover clocks of wood, stone, and metal, as well as stained-glass lamps.

Judging follows the Danish System. Each entry “will be judged on their own merit and not in competition,” and ribbons carry points: purple 12, blue 6, red 4, white 2. The overall ribbon-point winner in each division receives $50. Exhibitors must live in La Paz County, which the rules define as including everything on Highway 95 and the Vidal, Big River, and Parker Dam areas. Winter visitors who produce their exhibits within the area are also eligible.

Tables by the Santa Fe Depot

The fair began as an exhibition held without a fairground. Randy Hartless, director of the Parker Area Chamber, read a speech on the fair board’s behalf in 2007. In it the 4-H boys and girls of Parker Valley of years past “exhibited their articles on tables and tied their animals to light poles in a vacant lot next to the Santa Fe Depot.” Before there was a fair, 4-H held an Achievement Day to show its livestock and get ready for the Yuma County Fair. Parker then lay in the northern part of Yuma County.

According to Pioneer archives, the first Northern Yuma County Fair was held February 27 to March 2, 1958. Governor Ernest W. McFarland attended, and Pete Homer Sr., Tribal Chairman of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, welcomed him. An estimated 10,000 people came despite cold and windy weather. Thirteen young women competed for the Miss Northern Yuma County Fair title, and Roberta Beaver won it. The Pioneer gave her later name as Roberta Hoffman. Her title became the Miss Parker Pageant in 1973. In 1983 La Paz County was formed, and the pageant took the name Miss La Paz.

For 50 years the fair was held at the tribes’ Manataba Park, at Second Avenue and Mohave Road. The 1958 fair had already moved to that site from the depot lot. The Pioneer described the 2008 fair in detail. It ran four days, March 13 to 16, under the theme “Barnyard Boogie.” Butler Amusements ran the rides, and the Michael Mezmer Comedy Hypnosis Show returned to the main stage. Linda Hulet, the Clown of Many Faces, made the rounds. Duck Enterprises of Texas staged duck races five times a day, and local bands played a Battle of the Bands for a $1,000 first prize. On Sunday Mariachi Azteca De Oro, led by Fidel Amador, gave a concert at two. At four Rigo Cardona, a singer and horse trainer, performed Spanish and Mexican songs on horseback while his horse danced. Megan Angel, Miss La Paz for 2007–08, crowned her successor that Friday. Admission was $7 for adults. The 2027 price is $9.

Forty acres near Twelve Mile Junction

The 2008 fair was meant to be the last at Manataba Park. The idea of a new fairground had been in the works for years, and a site plan was completed in March 1996. The proposal reached the county board of supervisors in November 2006, and the board accepted it in March 2007. On May 7 the association signed a Memorandum of Understanding for a 40-acre county site just outside the Parker Annex town limits. Fair board members broke ground there on November 1, 2007.

Jane McGee, then the fair manager, told the Pioneer that land leveling would begin once valley farmers finished planting their crops, and that volunteers would do most of the work. A livestock arena came first on the list, with camping and livestock parking for 4-H families. “We might have to have temporary structures or event tents the first year,” McGee said. The plan also called for an exhibit and community building, a 4-H exhibit building, food booth areas, a Native American village, and a carnival area. Last on the list were a rodeo arena with covered grandstands and a half-mile race track around it for possible stock cars. If the grounds were not ready by March 2008, the Colorado River Indian Tribes would host the fair one more year, and they did.

Miguel A. Torres was among those who built the new grounds. He came to the United States from Mexico in 1963, at about 12 or 13. He picked cotton for 16 hours a day, six days a week, and later farmed 1,450 acres of his own. In 2009 the Arizona Farm and Ranch Hall of Fame inducted him. It records that he served two terms as fair association president and volunteered “his time, effort, and equipment” to build the new fairgrounds. The Hall of Fame also lists him as fair manager since 2005. The Pioneer’s 2007 account names McGee as manager, three years in the post.

By March 2011 the fair was being held at the new grounds, which the Pioneer placed in Parker South. Its directions sent visitors out of town toward Quartzsite on State Route 95, to follow signs near Twelve Mile Junction, where Routes 95 and 72 meet. The 2011 theme was “Country Roots & Barnyard Boots.” That year added the Farm Olympics, with tractor pulling, hay bale rolling, pie eating, tug-o-war, a potato sack race, needle in a haystack, and egg tossing. Cook’s Racing Pigs and the Elledge Ranch Petting Zoo were on the grounds, and the Wallace Elementary School Band sold pre-fair carnival tickets at Little Brown Jug. A horseshoe tournament made its first appearance and ran alongside the Salsa Contest and Chili Cook-Off. That tournament now carries Evander Page’s name.

The 2011 Outstanding Teen field included Maycee Johnson. Her platform was “Stop the Abuse.” In 2021, the Miss La Paz County holder was a Maycee Johnson, crowned in 2020, and the pageant was not held at that year’s fair. The Miss Arizona competition had been postponed during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It is not just a La Paz County thing,” said Courtney Kom, head of the Miss La Paz County organization. “No locals are happening across the state for this very reason.”

The grounds now host more than the fair. On October 2–3, 2026, the association and the Parker Regional Chamber of Commerce scheduled the First Annual La Paz County Pumpkin Patch and Harvest Fest there, with a beer garden and RV camping. The rodeo arena from the 2007 plan has its own page on the fair’s website. That page reads “-in progress-“ and “Under Construction.”