Lovelock Frontier Days

On the Saturday morning of Frontier Days, lawn chairs line the sidewalks of Main Street in Lovelock. In 2025, by one newspaper account, they were set out “like clockwork by 7:30 a.m.” Then the parade closes the street. Candy flies from the floats, the floats honk, children wave, and parents walk alongside their own. The 2024 parade had 30 entries, among them groups of antique and classic cars.

The parade sits at the middle of a three-day celebration held each summer in Courthouse Park, at 400 Main Street, in the seat of Pershing County. The 2026 edition ran July 31 through August 2 under the theme “Country Roads,” chosen by the organizer, Misty Moepono-Wood. She said the theme came from the country atmosphere she associates with Lovelock, especially in the evening when the sky turns yellow and orange. She also had in mind the visitors, vendors and participants who travel country roads to get there.

Three days in Courthouse Park

Friday opens with music. In 2026 DJ Munoz played from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. River Rogue followed with a free concert from 6 to 8. The band is made up of musicians from the Schurz, Fallon and Carson City area and plays country, classic rock and blues. DJ Kraven took the evening until 10. The same night there was racing at Lovelock Speedway.

Saturday begins with the D.A.R.E. French Toast Breakfast, a fundraiser, and then the parade. Through the afternoon the Blood Mobile stood in the library parking lot, and the park held a talent show, “Lovelock Has Talent.” At 4 p.m. the Nevada Gunfighters gave their exhibition. Their program is set between the 1860s and the 1890s and promises “stories, some true, some are just lies!” River Rogue played again in the late afternoon, as did Leilani & The Distractions, a band led by vocalist Leilani Villamor that plays pop, rock, blues, funk and world rhythms. The speedway ran a second night of races.

Sunday opens with the Unity of Churches in the Park service, and the tractor pull follows. The organizers describe the tractor as one that “hasn’t run in years.” Contestants are harnessed to it and haul it down the street. The weight carry, which the program calls “a classic at Frontier Days,” settles who is Lovelock’s strongest. Kids’ bike races, scholarship presentations, raffles and awards close the weekend.

Some events run through all three days. Horseshoe tournaments are pitched at the McDougal Sports Complex, and there is a cribbage tournament and adult tricycle races. Children have crafts, games and the quarter dive, which they enter in swimsuits and goggles to dive for coins. Fun Events Nevada runs a Fun Zone with a mechanical bull, Euro-Bungee and Human Hamster Balls.

Vendors in 2026 offered barbecue, frozen treats, breakfast, custom gifts and community information. The 2025 account in the Lovelock Review-Miner adds funnel cakes, iced coffee, food trucks, bounce houses, shaved ice and sunscreen. Vendors rolled in Thursday to set up, and more than a few sold out. A stand called Beach Bucket served ice cream topped with chocolate rocks, gummy worms, edible sand and a small umbrella. On the last day the woman selling creams and salves at Found Essentials told customers, “Come by early before I hobble off into the sunset.”

A wagon for the raffle

For many years the Sunday raffle has carried woodwork by Jeff Kearns, Pershing County’s public administrator. In 2024 his donation was a replica wagon with hand-carved oxen and working wheels. Assembled, it is about 15 feet long. He had seen the plans about 30 years earlier. “They intrigued me,” he said. Asked about the hardest part, he answered, “Making the wheels round.” Each wheel is built from eight sections cut at exact angles. The 2024 Review-Miner report calls the piece a Conestoga wagon and spells his name Kerns. A 2026 article in the same paper calls it a Calistoga wagon. That year Kearns and Moepono-Wood rode as co-grand marshals of the parade.

Darlene Moura bought tickets because she liked the wagon and the oxen. “There was no chance that I would win,” she said. “Besides, where would you put something that large?” She won it. No one in her family had room, so she offered it to the Marzen House Museum, where Bonnie Skoglie accepted it and began planning a display. The wagon now stands in the museum’s Cowboy Room as the centerpiece of its 40 Mile Desert exhibit. That stretch lay just south of present-day Lovelock. Emigrants leaving the Carson Sink crossed about 40 miles without dependable water before reaching the Humboldt River. For the 2026 raffle Kearns expected to give a buckboard bench. “Buckboards were the pickup trucks of the day,” he said.

From the centennial to the county commission

The celebration traces its roots to Lovelock’s centennial in 1968. Elaine Pommerening and Pat Rowe, great-great-granddaughters of town founder George Lovelock, suggested Frontier Days as the theme for the 100th anniversary. In the decades since, the weekend has brought parades, games, contests and music. Roger Mancebo recalls years when the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Eagles and Lions used it for fundraising. Lisa Albalos, a former committee member, said the event once ran under the Chamber of Commerce before becoming a separate nonprofit. She said the earlier organization had detailed bylaws, but as volunteers fell away those safeguards did not work as intended.

Moepono-Wood moved to Lovelock from Hawaii in 2016 and became committee president in 2024. She said the eight years before had been slow. Her first year drew what the Review-Miner called the best turnout in nearly a decade. The live music that year came from Leilani & The Distractions, a Reno band whose singer had been her high school classmate in Hawaii. “My mission is to keep it how it’s always been and bring back some of the traditional things they’ve always had,” she said. She named the three-legged race, tug-of-war and arm wrestling. By her account, she moved the event that year from a DBA under the Chamber of Commerce to a DBA under her own nonprofit, Polynesian Discoveries, because the Chamber’s business license and filings were not current.

After the 2026 weekend, residents took their concerns about the event’s organization and finances to the City Council and the Pershing County Recreation Board. At the board’s August meeting, Steve Evenson said Frontier Days had been “hijacked” from the community. A longtime former volunteer asked how a private individual could have registered the name. Another resident said her daughter had given $600 to sponsor a dog show that was later canceled. County Manager Kristin Gonzalez said an investigation had begun. She also said she would not support letting the current organization use Courthouse Park in the future.

Moepono-Wood was not at the meeting. Reached afterward, she disputed the claims. “Nothing has been taken away from the community,” she said. “The goal has always been to preserve Frontier Days, protect it legally, and keep it running for future generations.” She said no one involved draws a salary and that a volunteer committee still decides the activities. She said the dog show was canceled when no one signed up, and that the donor would be refunded on request.

Evenson, Dan Murphy, Mancebo and others then formed a separate group, Pershing County Frontier Days. In September the City Council tabled the group’s request for formal recognition. At the Recreation Board, Commissioner Connie Gottschalk proposed putting the event under a board with local government representation. “If it had that oversight of government, no matter what happened, we could solidify it into codes that actually said this is an event for the community and this is the way it’s going to happen every year, regardless of who is on the board,” she said. Board member Lee Ann Gallagher cautioned that a lack of people stepping forward had helped create the trouble in the first place.

On September 16 Murphy told county commissioners that talks with Moepono-Wood about transferring the existing organization’s rights had stalled. He added that he was “92% sure” the transfer would happen. “One way or another, we’re going to make it happen for 2027,” he said. He asked the commissioners to reserve Courthouse Park for July 29 through August 1, 2027. The request was not on the agenda as an action item, so they did not vote on it.