Logan County Fair & Rodeo

When the Logan County Fair & Rodeo is on, the rodeo runs in the lighted main arena at the Sterling fairgrounds, under a grandstand that seats 4,460. The arena has rodeo and roping chutes and pens for stock, and there is a 70-by-250-foot exhibit hall beneath the grandstand. In the livestock pavilion, cattle, sheep, and hogs fill the stalls around a center sale arena with seating, a wash area, and a scale. According to The Fence Post, the fair today centers on livestock exhibition, especially by young people in 4-H and FFA.

The children’s program includes a pedal tractor pull, a Catch-a-Calf contest, mutton busting, and a junior rodeo. There is also a tail-wagging competition for dogs. Since 1948, the Miss Rodeo Logan County contest has crowned a rodeo queen to preside over the fair. Kay Rich, curator of the Overland Trail Museum in Sterling, puts attendance at 25,000 to 35,000 people a year. “You see everything that’s good in the world at the Logan County Fair,” Rich said. “It’s a family event. Everyone is always looking out for each other, and the kids have so much fun.”

The 2026 fair took the theme “Stars, Stripes and Prairie Skies.” It marked 150 years of Colorado statehood and 250 years of the nation. After it closed, the county thanked the community, its team members, and its volunteers.

The grounds on Pawnee Avenue

Logan County Buildings and Grounds keeps the fairgrounds, which were built in 1959 across from Sterling Middle School. They stay in use after the fair ends. The Exhibit Center is an indoor arena 140 feet by 280 feet, with roping chutes and seats for 600. Its ceiling rises 19 feet to the large fans and 25 feet to the roof. From October 1 through April 30, the public may ride there with a purchased open-riding pass, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and on Saturdays. The North Arena outdoors has roping and bucking chutes. The Gary DeSoto Youth Building gives its meeting rooms and kitchen to youth activities first, and no alcohol may be served there, “No exceptions!” The newest building is the Mitchek Event Center, finished in the summer of 2024. It hosts wedding receptions, trade shows, and class reunions.

Inside the Pawnee Avenue gate is a drop box with envelopes. Travelers stopping overnight with a horse pay $15 a head on the honor system and use the pens in the outdoor arena. Stalls are not available during the school year, and owners clean up after their animals. The RV spaces are for people taking part in fairground events, not for general camping. The county points campers to North Sterling State Park, about 13 miles due north on County Road 39.

A tent across the Union Pacific tracks

The fair is older than its grounds. Sterling, which calls itself the Queen City of the Plains, grew up on the Union Pacific line after 1881. Railroad surveyor David Leavitt, of Sterling, Illinois, laid out the townsite. The town was incorporated on December 13, 1884, and Governor Alva Adams made it the county seat in 1887. The Fence Post notes that 1888 was the first year after Logan County split from Weld County. On June 13 of that year, ten men organized and incorporated a fair association, among them H. C. Sherman, F. S. Lewis, and R. J. Patterson. Their fair showed “corn that was two thousand years old, alligators, and other unusual features.” State senators and local people offered special prizes to the farmer who kept his premises best.

The county’s own history says little more could be learned of that first fair. No other fair was held until 1897, when George A. Henderson, George E. McConley, and H. C. Sherman organized the second. For a few years it ran in a tent across the U.P. tracks from town, out by the feed and railroad yards. Automobiles were unknown then, and long freight trains did not yet block the crossing. Pens for swine and sheep stood outside the tent, and horses were kept in nearby barns. Premiums ran from fifty cents to a dollar. Admission was fifteen and twenty-five cents, and the grounds had no fence, but there was no difficulty collecting fares. Probably fifteen hundred people came. Homer Rogers sold tickets. The county history calls it “the first fair,” while The Fence Post places him at the 1897 fair. Rogers recalled about a dozen sheep and “seven hogs and three pigs.”

After that, the fair moved around. It was held on a vacant lot north and west of the junior high school, in an empty building on the J. C. Penney site, and once on North Second Street. In the spring of 1911, William House and W. E. Whittier laid out a race track, and a grandstand followed the next year. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History holds a real photo postcard from these years, dated after 1907. It is captioned “Pete Johnson, Logan County Fair, Sterling, Colorado” and catalogued under horses and cowboys.

In 1914 the Logan County Fair and Amusement Park Association organized, with G. H. Green as president. The secretary, C. B. Timberlake, led a stock sale, and the county history says the response was “generous and prompt.” The money bought Propst’s Park from its owner, S. R. Propst, and the first fair under the new management was held that fall. The association’s seventy-page premium book opened: “Fairs are timekeepers that mark the progress of communities. They record our advancement.” After two years, the Colorado Legislature allowed county commissioners to run agricultural fairs, and the association turned the fair over to them. C. J. Funk managed it from 1917 to 1921, J. H. King from 1921 to 1926, and then H. A. Sandhouse.

Leopards, a grounded wedding, and Uncle Billy

Kay Rich has collected the stories. In 1917 the animal trainer Olga Celeste brought her trained leopards. In 1923 a couple planned to marry in an airplane in flight. The plane could not hold the preacher, the pilot, the bride, and the groom, so the wedding was held in front of it, on the ground.

The fair’s farm exhibits supplied the county’s entries at the Colorado State Fair, including those of the boys’ and girls’ clubs that came before 4-H. The Sterling Advocate wrote on January 3, 1925, that Logan County had “stood at the head of the lists for the Colorado State fair” so long “that second or third place now would seem a humiliating defeat.”

In 1926 Funk started a cowboys’ reunion, meant to be an annual event for the cowboys of northeastern Colorado. That year the community exhibits were split into irrigated and dry-land classes. The county had twenty communities, and eight to ten agricultural booths of women’s work came in each year. The county’s schools also staged a pageant of the county’s history, led by Mrs. Anne Rogers, the junior high school principal. Hundreds of schoolchildren took part, along with teachers, parents, and local clubs.

The 1927 parade included the oldest and youngest cowboys in the county. Roy Travis Johnson, age 5, was “all togged out in his cowboy outfit.” W. S. Hadfield was 88, and Rich says he was known as “Uncle Billy” and was the county’s first permanent resident. The City of Sterling’s account says Hadfield came from Derbyshire, England, in 1871 and made his home on an island in the South Platte called Sarinda. The city credits him as the first permanent white settler. That same year the fair added Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska state days, which turned into reunions of friends who had not met in years. Gross receipts rose by about $4,000. Exhibitors showed 261 head of cattle, 153 horses and mules, 535 hogs, and 761 poultry.

In 1959, the year the present grounds were built, local historian Nell Brown Propst wrote and directed a historical drama, “Where the Buffaloes Roamed.” Hundreds of people and live animals took part. In the late 1970s the fair held a tire-changing competition for women, and a pet rock contest ran from the 1980s into the 2000s.

Minnie Pearl to Jo Dee Messina

The county’s list of grandstand entertainers begins in 1966, with Minnie Pearl, Ernest Tubb, the Texas Troubadors, Jack Green, and Cal Smith. Kitty Wells and Red Sovine came in 1967, and Tanya Tucker played in 1975 and again in 2000. In the 1980s the stage brought Charley Pride, Reba McEntire with Ronnie Milsap, and in 1986 George Strait with Sawyer Brown. Sawyer Brown returned in 2006 and 2022. Alabama played in 1993, and Faith Hill shared a bill with Brooks and Dunn in 1994. Creedence Clearwater Revival came in 2001. In 2002 the lineup was Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Rascal Flatts, and Sara Evans. Luke Bryan played in 2010. The list skips from 2019 to 2021, when Travis Tritt played. The 2025 entertainers were Jo Dee Messina and Clare Dunn.