Lassen County Fair

The last morning of the Lassen County Fair belongs to the 4-H and FFA members. At 8:30 on Sunday the junior livestock auction opens at the fairgrounds on Russell Avenue in the center of Susanville. The animals were shown Wednesday through Saturday after a year of raising. They are released at four in the afternoon, and at six the arena fills for the demolition derby. In 2026 the derby ran as the Susanville Traffic Jam Bash. More than $19,000 in awards went to three classes: a youth derby for drivers 12 to 16, a “1980s & Newer Chaos Class,” and the “1964 & Older Relics.”

The fair is held the third week of July. Its staff counts more than 35,000 patrons a year and calls it the longest-running community event in Lassen County. The county owns and manages it, and Bill Payer is listed as manager. The 2026 fair ran July 15 through 19 under the theme “Celebrating 250 years of Red, White, and You!”

Five days on Russell Avenue

The week began a day early. On Tuesday, July 14, gates opened at 4:30 for a 4-H barbecue at five. The Miss Lassen County Scholarship Competition followed, with a pre-show at seven and the pageant at eight. Its contestants spend the summer in weekly seminars, dance rehearsals, and community service. A separate Little Miss & Mr. pageant crowns a child of seven or eight after interview questions and games.

On Wednesday a ribbon was cut at Jensen Gate at noon, and monster trucks ran at seven. Thursday was Kids Day. Children carried a Kiddies’ Day Passport from booth to booth, collecting a sticker or stamp at each. That night the CCPRA-sanctioned rodeo filled the grandstand with ranch bronc riding, branding, doctoring, and team penning.

Friday was Seniors Day. At noon the Old Timers Luncheon, held under the grandstand, honored the 2026 Old Timers, Bob and Sue Thompson, and the Grand Marshal, Alice. Greg Sella and the Native Daughters of the Golden West put on the meal. That evening the ringside seats for micro wrestling sold out.

On Saturday at ten the parade went down Main Street, the largest annual parade in Susanville. It carries clubs, students, bands, fair performers, and floats from local businesses, and the Lassen County Chamber of Commerce sponsors it. A cornhole tournament ran from noon to five. At six the grandstand show brought three bands:

• Huckleberry Road, a country rock trio from Reno, with a setlist running from Prince’s “Purple Rain” to Chris Stapleton’s “Fire Away”
• Hazard County, a ‘90s country act working through Brooks & Dunn, Shania, Garth, and Alan
• Radio Ready, a Southern California dance band

Smaller stages kept their own bills each night. Timeless and Rummy played the LTS Stage, and steel drums played the JDX Stage at ten. The Jensen Free Stage had acts every day.

Corndogs, camels, and the Zipper

The 2026 concession row held Sun Rotary Corndogs, MuHa’s Indian Tacos, the Mini Donut Shack, K&P Kicking Kettle Corn, Funnel Cake Express, Pretzel Bros, Dills Deli, a baked-potato stand, and the Get Roasted Coffee Shop. Among the non-food vendors were Buckin’ A Trading Post, Airbrush Artwerks, a caricature artist, and the Pacific Northwest Camel Company. The children’s row had Dizzy Chickens, Pony Up and Pet Away Farms, and Ponyland. The carnival ran the Zipper, the Wrecking Ball, the Viper, the Starship, the Hampton Expo Wheel, Pirates Cove, and the New York Funhouse. Games included Goldfish, Ring a Bottle, and Break A Bottle.

The exhibit halls are open to anyone with “a prize sheep, award-winning cookie recipe, must-see photograph of the Susan River, or beautiful display of flowers,” in the fair’s words.

Outside fair week the grounds draw more than 90,000 people a year for auto racing, craft fairs, a children’s fair, gun shows, tool sales, and food banks. RV sites lie within walking distance of the town’s shops. Travelers moving a horse can rent a stall for $20 a night, with a paddock for walking it, by calling the fair office ahead. Christmas at the Fairgrounds, a holiday craft fair and market, is set for December 4–6, 2026.

From Main Street to the county

The history the fair publishes was written by Susan Couso. It begins in 1878, when a group of local men created the Plumas, Lassen and Modoc District Fair Association. They incorporated it and raised money through investments. The first Lassen County Fair was held around 1890 as an agricultural fair under the 24th Agricultural District, with William Brockman as president.

Those first grounds lay between today’s Hall and Ash streets and ran from Main Street out to about 5th Street. They held a racetrack, horse stalls, exhibit buildings, and a grandstand. Horse racing was a big event in the county, Couso writes, and “big money was won and lost over the outcome of these events.” In 1902 Lena Long was crowned Fair Queen in front of the Elks Lodge at the top of Main Street.

By 1923 the old grounds had been abandoned. Wright Patrick Hall had subdivided them, and new homes were filling the lots. Local men then formed a nonprofit, the Lassen County Fair Association, bought the land the fair still uses, and put up buildings. In January 1927 the association announced the county’s first mid-winter fair. It was to run two afternoons and two evenings at the Memorial Building, with vaudeville, two novelty dances, a poultry show, and midway concessions, and was staged in part to help pay the association’s overhead.

The newspaper report on the fair of 1928 survives in detail. The paper called it the seventh annual fair; in 2025 the fair billed its edition as the 135th. Gate receipts in 1928 ran $300 Friday, $483 Saturday, and $1,790 Sunday, enough for a small profit. Five men were hurt over the three days, and a horse died on Sunday. The evening dances cleared $21.

The concessions, the paper said, “were awful and pitiful.” Their owner had paid a $20 deposit and was to pay the fair $300 for the three nights, but he packed up and left Sunday morning. Everett Lawson, credited with his assistant Mrs. Roy North for the fair’s success, “was hiding out all day Sunday for fear the man would ask for the money back in order to get out of town.” The lunch counter run by the ladies of the farm bureaus took in $840. The officers thanked the Liberty Theatre for not giving a matinee on Sunday afternoon.

The fair then fell on hard times again. The buildings were in disrepair, there was no money to fix them, and, Couso writes, “the fair was almost dead.” In 1933 House Bill 1267 provided for licensing and regulating horse racing to raise revenue for agriculture. From it came the idea to remake the fair as a livestock show paid for with racing money. The association dissolved and deeded the property to Lassen County. The first livestock show, in 1936, was received well enough that several new buildings went up, and the first horse show followed in 1938.

War years and a sale held online

On February 27, 1942, the advisory committee announced that the Lassen County Livestock Show and rodeo would go ahead, tentatively August 19–23. The decision followed a meeting of twenty-three northern California fairs at Marysville, and the committee added one condition: the show would proceed unless a conflict with military regulations should “unexpectedly arise.” Couso’s history records no fairs from 1942 through 1945. When the fair resumed, floriculture, home economics, entertainment, and the lumber industry became featured exhibits. A photograph from April 1947, held in the Eastman Archives at UC Davis, shows rodeo and races at the fairgrounds.

In June 2020 the Board of Supervisors cancelled the carnival rides because of COVID-19. Days later the Fair Advisory Board voted to recommend cancelling the fair and moving the junior livestock show and sale online. Fair Manager Jim Wolcott reported that only 11 vendors had signed on.

Tyler DeiRossi Wood was a fourth-year 4-H member who had cut his market animals from four down to one steer. He told the board: “The idea of a virtual show and sale is a guarantee for us. Not a maybe, not an if, it is a guarantee, and that is what we need right now – a guarantee.” Maddi Johnson read a statement for the Milford 4-H Club: “If we have a live fair and at the last minute get shut down, I will be very sad.” A UC Davis list dated June 30, 2020, shows the fair cancelled.

Jim Wolcott’s fifteen seasons

Wolcott managed the fair for 15 years. He died the week before the 2026 fair opened. A parade photograph shows him smiling in the Grand Marshal entry, with Fred Wemple at the wheel. Shelley Bennett, director of the Miss Lassen County Pageant, worked alongside him for 15 fair seasons. “He admittedly knew nothing about ‘beauty pageants’ but he was willing to learn and would do anything possible to make our event a success,” she said. “He loved to tease and joke around but he also had a deep appreciation for these young women and made sure they felt like true princesses whenever he was around.”

The pageant renamed its Community Service recognition for him. The contestant with the highest score in that category now receives The Jim Wolcott Community Service Award.