Lewis County Fair

On the Thursday of fair week in Nezperce, the livestock go onto the scale. Weigh-in at the Wemhoff Livestock Pavilion runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a controlled re-weigh at 5:15 for animals that come in underweight. Meanwhile 4-H members sit for interviews on their animal projects, and small animals are checked in at the Bateman Barn. The 2026 Lewis County Fair ran from Thursday, October 1, through Sunday, October 4, under the theme “From the Fields, to the Forest, to the Fair.” The fairgrounds lie at Fifth Avenue and Pine Street. About 450 people live in the town, with a couple hundred more on the farms around it, and the city describes the surrounding prairie as black-soil farmland in wheat, barley, dry peas, grass, canola and garbanzos.

The Lewis County Fair Board runs the fair, with Michelle Koepl of Nezperce as administrator. The University of Idaho’s Lewis County Extension office works alongside the board; Klae O’Brien is extension educator and Emma Jepsen is 4-H program coordinator.

Judging in the pavilion and Baldus Hall

On Thursday afternoon the open-class exhibits come into Baldus Hall, and 4-H members bring their miscellaneous projects to the Eller Building. At 4 p.m. the 4-H dog show fills the pavilion, and at 6 p.m. the livestock judging contest follows. Open-class entries must be grown, raised or crafted in Lewis County or in the adjacent counties of Nez Perce, Idaho and Clearwater. Entries from anywhere else may be shown only for display. Adults are judged on the American system, first through third place. Youth entries are judged on the Danish system, each on its own merit: blue for “well done,” red for “okay,” white for “needs work.” A blue ribbon carries a premium of $2.00, a red $1.50, a white $1.00.

The premium book prints what the judges look for. A yeast bread “should be nutty, agreeable to taste, and with no suggestion of sourness.” Pickles should be “olive to yellow green cucumbers with white translucent interiors.” Fruits and vegetables should be “in the best prime eating condition, not necessarily the biggest.”

Baldus Hall closes from 9 a.m. to noon on Friday while the open-class judges work. Over in the Bateman Barn, open-class poultry and rabbits are judged behind closed doors. The pavilion runs on a tight clock all day: cats at 8 a.m., then rabbits, then poultry and market beef quality at 9:30, breeding goats and sheep and market swine at 11, and market goats and sheep at 12:30. At 3 p.m. the Small Animal Round Robin brings the best showmen back for a final round. The Nezperce Service League serves a salad bar lunch at the Christian Church from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. That evening at 7, the 4-H Style Revue is held at the Nezperce School.

Saturday on Oak Street

Saturday begins with the Nezperce American Legion breakfast at the Legion Hall, from 7 to 9 a.m. in 2026. By 8 the market swine, goats and sheep are in the ring for fitting and showing, and market beef follows at 9:30. The city’s announcement of the 2026 fair called it a Saturday-morning parade. The printed schedule and the premium book both set it at 1 p.m. on Oak Street, with a kiddie parade stepping off first at 12:45. Parade classes include antique autos and antique farm equipment, commercial and church entries, 4-H and FFA, equestrian groups, novelty, the fair theme, and a political class that is not judged.

The fair royalty ride in that parade. The 2026 queen, Zoey Roemer, is the daughter of Dylan and Ally Roemer, a sophomore at Kamiah High School, and has been in 4-H for six years. She grew up watching her cousins show lambs at the fair and began showing lambs at ten. At thirteen she switched to pigs, and she still shows them. Princess Tylee Wilkins, daughter of Chris and Tara Wilkins, has six older siblings and was in her eleventh year of 4-H. Her sisters and cousins served as fair royalty before her. The two have been friends for sixteen years. “My favorite part about royalty was going to all the parades and seeing all the little girls smile and wave at us,” Queen Zoey wrote in the premium book. “It makes me think back to when I was one of those little girls.” Princess Tylee wrote of the same girls: “I enjoyed their compliments, them copying our waves, and their smiles.” She thanked her mother “for always being there to fix our hair or fluff our dresses last minute.” The year before, in 2025, Paetyn LaBudie of Clearwater Valley High School in Kooskia was queen and Kairys Grant, a Nezperce High School senior, was princess.

After the parade the royalty go to an invitation-only luncheon at the Nezperce Christian Church. Back at the pavilion, the Large Animal Round Robin runs at 2:30, and the 4-H/FFA livestock auction begins at 5, with a buyer’s dinner served in the same building. From 9 to 11 p.m. DJ Joe plays the family dance on the pavilion floor. On Sunday the barns close for load-out, and at noon the Lions Club holds its Tough Trucks competition in the Cecil Hill Arena.

Snow on the 1965 barn

A photograph in the University of Idaho Library, which the library dates to about 1932, shows the “Fairgrounds and tourist park. Nez Perce, Idaho.” The Nez Perce Historical Club donated it as an 8-by-10 black-and-white print. In 1965 the county put up an 80-by-120-foot metal building there. It held the swine pens, two livestock show arenas, and bleachers, and the Lewiston Tribune wrote in 2022 that it had been the center of the fair at the end of September for more than six decades. The city still gives the fair’s traditional date as the last weekend in September.

On January 6, 2022, the roof gave way under heavy snow. Lewis County Commission Chairman Greg Johnson drove straight to Nezperce when he got word. “It just made me sick,” he said. The building had almost completely caved in. Only a 20-foot section facing Pine Street was left standing. No one was inside. “It’s a total loss,” Johnson said, “and that’s coming from our insurance carrier that came up and looked at it.”

That fall the fair moved to the Idaho County Fairgrounds in Cottonwood and ran September 29 to October 2. On Friday, under cloudy skies and intermittent rain, Becky Thompson, 17, of Nezperce, lay crosswise on her pregnant cow, Pebbles, feeling the unborn calf wiggle. She had owned Pebbles for five years. She would be selling Pebbles’s first calf, a red 2-year-old steer, at the market sale. “I’m a little nervous to sell him and get rid of him, but there’ll be more,” she said. Nicolas Whitten, 16, also of Nezperce, waited for showtime beside his Hampshire-York-Duroc FFA pig. Selling had stopped making him sad, he said, and his pig’s name showed it: “Bacon. Kind of a last minute name.” The parade went down Main Street in Cottonwood that Saturday, and the barn dance was held in the Agee building.

Audra Cochran, in her first year as Lewis County extension agent, reported that exhibit numbers were equal to or greater than in past fairs, with art, horticulture and canning entries up. Moving a fair to a different town, and the last fair in the state at that, was not an easy transition, she said. “But everybody just said, ‘We’re going to get through it,’ so that’s what we’re doing.”

The R.A. Wemhoff Livestock Pavilion

In April 2023, Johnson arrived for a commission meeting and found a big pile of metal on the fairgrounds. “People want to know what’s going on,” he said. “If they see metal on the ground they know something is going on.” The new building went up on the same spot, measuring 100 by 120 feet. It is wider and shorter than the old one, which leaves more walking room in the alleyway to the sheep, rabbit, poultry and specialty pet sheds, and that alleyway was paved. Some salvaged livestock pens went back inside. Arnzen Construction of Cottonwood was the primary contractor on the $925,000 building. The county’s insurer, the Idaho Counties Risk Management Program, paid all of it but a $1,000 deductible. Donations paid for insulation and bathrooms: $50,000 from Ag West Farm Credit, $15,000 each from Avista, Cottonwood Credit Union and Freedom Northwest in Kamiah, and $5,000 from Cloninger’s Markets.

The pavilion was dedicated on the Thursday the 2023 fair opened, as the first livestock projects were being weighed in. About 100 people came. Hog entries alone were up by 40 that year. “4-H and FFA are just really a cultural thing in this community,” Cochran said. Commissioner Justin McLeod said of the Cottonwood year, “There’s a lot of families that I think didn’t come last year because it wasn’t in town as usual.” The building is named for Ray Wemhoff of Nezperce, who attended. He and his wife, Raylene, longtime 4-H and FFA supporters, were major backers of the construction. Their son Quinn, a member of the fair board, cut the ceremonial ribbon with a pair of oversized scissors, opening a fair titled “There’s No Place Like Home.”