Leamarado Days

On Labor Day the program at the Leamington Town Hall, 61 West Main, opens at 10 o’clock in the morning with a talent show. Lunch follows at noon, the children’s games and races at 2 p.m., and the rodeo at 3:30. All day the Leamington museum is open in the basement of the Town Hall. The town’s own page adds a parade. This is Leamarado Days, held each Labor Day since 1946 in a town that counted 256 residents at the 2020 census. According to the town’s history page, the name is “a playful blend of ‘Leamington’ and ‘Colorado.’” The town calls the celebration a homecoming. Its history page says the day “continues to draw many back to their hometown, as well as many others.”

Greased pigs and a raffle rifle

The 2026 celebration fell on Labor Day Monday. At its August 12, 2026 meeting, the town council went over the preparations. The Butlers were preparing the grounds, and the Moodys were running the concessions. The council also raised the cap on dinner tickets to 550, based on projected attendance. That is more than twice the town’s census count.

The celebration’s own page filled in the rest of the program. In the morning there was an Out West Little Britches rodeo, and in the afternoon a kids’ rodeo. “We will also have some greased pigs,” the organizers posted. The 2026 program also listed a 5K and vendor booths. In June the organizers announced a raffle prize, a new Browning 300 Win Mag. They wrote that the $1,500-plus rifle would “help to off set Leamarado Days costs and hopefully draw a few more folk out to our Town’s celebration this year!” The town’s Celebrations Committee had met in the Town Hall on July 14 at 7 p.m. and invited all residents to help. On the Saturday night before the holiday, a final notice went up: “Updated Meal Ticket Prices! Hope to see many folks on Monday.”

The town website keeps Leamarado photo galleries for each year from 2003 through 2009, along with a set of rodeo articles.

A dam that washed out the next day

Leamington sits on the northern border of Millard County, in what the town history calls a small but fertile valley of the winding Sevier River. The town lies on the south side of the river, about three miles below the mouth of Leamington Canyon and 131 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The town page says the Wasatch range surrounds the valley on the north, east, and south. A 1950s-style Phillips 66 station stands on Highway 132 near the middle of town, with period cars in front of and around the garage. Inside the fence, just east of the station, is a 1950s-era American Linen Supply Company delivery van, and nearby is a growing collection of retired farm implements.

In 1871 a party from Oak City came to look at the site. The town history notes that, unlike other Utah settlements, they were not sent by Church authorities. Bishop Platt Lyman of Oak City did send John Lovell to act as presiding elder. In the autumn of 1871 the Oak City group built a small dam across the river, and it washed away the following day. In 1872 they built a second dam on a survey by Thomas Morgan. It broke every year. In the end the settlers extended an existing ditch farther up the river, to a point where water could be taken without a dam.

The sources differ on when the town itself began. The town’s history says the first permanent settlers built their homes in 1873. Wikipedia says the town was settled in 1871 by Thomas Morgan. Morgan built an old picket house on the riverbank. Frank Young, a nephew of Brigham Young, built two log houses facing each other and named the town after a town in England, which Wikipedia identifies as Leamington Spa.

The railroad came through the valley in 1879, when the population had reached about 150. Leamington grew as a “string town,” with one principal street running east and west, parallel with the tracks. In 1888 twenty teams left for Idaho, and new farmers bought most of their farms. Elder Andrew Jensen visited in 1893 and wrote: “The settlement composes only about twenty families, of which nineteen (or 151 souls) belong to the church.”

Wikipedia records how people lived in those years. Townspeople went up into the canyons for firewood, both for their homes and for the cone kilns that made charcoal for the trains. In winter they cut blocks of ice from the Sevier and stored them under straw in small caves. The town was incorporated in 1936.

The homecoming of 1946

The census of 1940 counted 279 people in Leamington. In 1946 the residents planned a homecoming celebration for the town’s World War II soldiers and held it on Labor Day. There was a program in the morning, a barbecue in the afternoon, and a dance in the evening.

The following year, the veterans decided to give the party themselves. The town’s history records that it was successful.