Lyon County Fair & Rodeo

It rained in Yerington on the Thursday night of the 2026 fair, and the mutton bustin’ went on in the mud. Twenty-seven children rode sheep in three heats in the main arena of the Lyon County Fairgrounds. The fair board’s account records “rain, mud, smiles, and even a few tears.” The top two riders from each heat came back on Saturday to ride again during the rodeo. Uriah Hendricks placed first, Taytum Tibbals second and Tilden Tibbals third, and the Mason Valley Moose Lodge paid for the winner’s buckle.

The full name is the Lyon County Fair, Rodeo & Silver State Youth Livestock Show & Expo. It runs four days, Thursday through Sunday, on the grounds at 100 Highway 95 East. The 2026 fair ran August 13 to 16 under the theme “Stars, Stripes & Summer Nights.” An eleven-member Lyon County Fair Board runs it. In 2026 Curtis Jordan was chairman, Donna McDonald vice chairman and Lisa Tibbals secretary. Gate admission is five dollars a day, children three and under get in free, and parking costs nothing. The arena events are ticketed separately.

Kid’s Night in the main arena

The gates open at four on Thursday, and the evening belongs to children. In 2026 the Lions Club BMX bike race ran on the main arena track at six while a horseshoe contest went on nearby. Once the bikes had cleared the arena, around half past seven, came the free pedal tractor pull, sponsored by Smith Valley Garage. Then the pig scramble: a five-dollar entry, classes set by weight, and every child weighed before the start. The mutton bustin’ followed, and then a slot for Dare to Be a Cowboy, a national nonprofit that pays for gear, entry fees, training and travel for young people who want to rodeo and lack the means.

The children’s entertainer Kiddle Karoo and her animal puppets played the grounds that year with a show the fair book called the “Piggy-Wiggy Hoe-down, where the prize pig himself leads the charge.”

Pulls on Friday, the rodeo and the derby on Saturday

On Friday the livestock rings run from morning on. At six in the evening the Moose Lodge holds its frog jump, and the fair book’s only instruction to entrants is “BRING YOUR OWN FROG!!” At half past six L & L Productions starts its truck and tractor pull on the arena track.

After dark there is music on two stages. In 2026 Greg Austin & Southern Justice played country on the main stage from nine to midnight. Austin had been writing and performing for 35 years and had opened for Montgomery Gentry at the Wildhorse Saloon in Nashville in 2001. On the back stage a Hispanic band played from eight. The fair book lists it as “Tahoe Musical” and the brochure as “Tahoe Magical.” The Yerington Hispanic Committee, which spent months raising money for the purpose, hosted Hispanic dances on August 14 and 15.

Saturday begins downtown with the fair parade on Main Street at ten. At noon the open rodeo starts in the main arena. In 2026 it was produced by Four Star Rodeo Company under CCPRA sanction. During the performance teams of three children tried to catch and ride wild ponies brought in by Camacho Livestock. NV Steer sponsored that race, and the board named two winning teams.

Visiting rodeo queens worked the grounds through the weekend. The fair board lists Miss Rodeo Nevada McKinna Jackson, Miss Reno Rodeo Emily Cady, Miss Truckee Pro Rodeo Maddee Smith and Miss CCPRA Trinity Reynolds. A photo caption in the Pizen Switch Times names Gianna Caselli as Miss Reno Rodeo Queen. Trinity Reynolds helped run the Littlest Cowgirl & Cowboy Contest on the main stage at five, which has two age groups, one to three and four to six. Brian Bon Powerhouse judged it. Addie Jean Smith, Stefana Brinkley, Jacob Hall and Aaron Jones went home with the buckles.

At six the Yerington Volunteer Fire Department runs the demolition derby in the main arena, the highest-priced ticket of the fair at fifteen dollars. The stages then take over again. In 2026 The Lost Reverends of the High Sierra played the main stage. On the back stage the fair book lists Banda Pura Sangre De Eric Rosales and the brochure lists “Cenenario Norteno.”

The Miss Lyon County program, run with the Hispanic Committee, belongs to the same weekend. Three young women competed in 2026, and Mireya Yasmin Zarazua was crowned. The committee’s president, Omar Rodriguez Lopez, served as master of ceremonies. Zarazua told the Pizen Switch Times that her favorite part was being among the community. Glorybell Navarro Gutierrez, another contestant, said she hoped the competition would keep growing.

Between events, Schoeppner Shows runs the carnival midway. Discount wristbands go on sale in town weeks ahead, cash only, at Wild West Chevrolet, Giomi Ace Hardware and Chapla’s. The 2026 bill also included the Tanzanite Acrobats from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and the Magic of Rafael, a comedy-magic act whose performer has appeared on “America’s Got Talent” and “Tengo Talento, Mucho Talento.” There was a tap, clogging and Irish step troupe called Powerhouse, the Nevada Gunfighters, and the Tiki Shack, who strolled the grounds with beach tunes and hula hoops. Show times are posted at the venue.

Sunday morning starts with a mud volleyball tournament at nine, and every roster must include women. The Moto X Barrel Race follows at ten. After the 2026 race the board thanked Blaine Tibbals for getting it rolling “after a few hiccups.” It also thanked Affordable Propane, Jim Menesini Petroleum and D & S Waste for the prize money, and Michael Giorgi, a board member, for driving the tractor and the water truck. The carnival closes at two and the fair at four.

Jars in the exhibit hall, lambs in the ring

The open home arts exhibits hang and stand in the Ray Voshal Building, which opens to the public on the fair’s first afternoon. The class list in the fair book runs long. Jams and jellies include chokecherry, currant, gooseberry and zucchini. There are classes for jerky, piccalilli and homemade vinegar. The vegetable classes run from okra and kohlrabi to Swiss chard (“1 plant in water”) and the oversized vegetable. Quilts are entered hand-tied and whole-cloth, and photographs on film and on cell phone. One division takes recycled work, defined as “anything that would normally be discarded, but through ingenuity and creativity have been restored to use.” In 2016 entries took blue, red or white ribbons, with a Best of Show in each section. “You can even enter your chicken or duck eggs,” Donna McDonald said that year.

The Silver State Youth Livestock Show runs all four days in two show rings, a scale area and the poultry and rabbit barns. The barns open at six each morning and are locked at seven each night. In 2026 swine, market sheep and meat goats entered the rings at eight on Friday morning. Turkeys and chickens were judged at midday, beef cattle in the combined ring at half past three and dairy cattle at five. Saturday brought the breeding shows and a master showmanship contest. On Sunday buyers sign up at nine and sit down to lunch at half past ten. The scholarship and buckle presentations follow at eleven, and the market auction begins at noon. McDonald told the Mason Valley News in 2016 that the show was the second largest in Nevada, drawing children from across the state and from California, Idaho and Utah. For local FFA and 4-H members, she said, the auction is a way to earn money for college.

Farmers at the end of the season

McDonald described the fair in 2016 as one of the longest continuously running fairs in Nevada. She said it began nearly a hundred years earlier as a chance for farmers to get together and exchange goods at the end of the season.

Admission that year was two dollars. “It’s been a tough couple of years due to the economy,” McDonald said, and the board was still looking for sponsors after budget cuts. The pig scramble needed money of its own. “Pigs are surprisingly expensive,” McDonald said, and Lisa Tibbals put the market at “about $80 a pig, and we use about 30 a pigs.” She counted 296 children signed up. “It’s been a tradition since I was a kid, and I was born and raised here,” Tibbals said. “It’s been here a long time, and now my grandkids are here.” She remembered an older version, a barnyard scramble in which goats and rabbits ran with the pigs and children took home whatever they caught.

Three Yerington High School interns, Tyler Fowler, Andres Gunter and Jacob Olmstead, spent that summer weeding, lifting and painting park benches on the grounds. Battle Born Civil War Reenactments staged three battles and set up an encampment. A new Sunday arena event, “Motorcycle Mania,” offered a flat track, a moto X barrel race and a wheelie contest. The board paid for that year’s live bands with money from running a snack bar at Night in the Country.

Earlier pages fill in other names. Harold Lee Cornmesser was born in Torrington, Wyoming, in 1930. He rodeoed in Oregon and Northern California and came to Mason Valley in 1966. He sat on the fair board for many years and raised pigs. His memorial service was held at the fairgrounds in October 2003, and his family asked that donations go to the board for trees and shrubs on the grounds. Tom Grady, Yerington’s mayor from 1981 to 1993, listed himself as a past president of the board. In July 2007 the county commissioners approved a tractor-pull contract with the Pacific Tractor Pullers Association. They also approved temporary liquor permits for the Pizen Switch Shrine Club for the fair of August 16 to 19, 2007. Commissioner Don Tibbals mentioned improvements then underway at the fairgrounds.

In 1964, with Don Tibbals as president of the Mason Valley Chamber of Commerce, Yerington staged the “Race of the Century.” It re-enacted a 1910 feat in which a beekeeper, Harry Warren, accepted a challenge from ranch hands and carried a 120-pound sack of grain about ten miles from the Wabuska area into town. In the 1964 race a Nevada team and a team from Edinboro, Pennsylvania, each carried 120-pound sacks ten miles. The Nevada men took four of the first five places, and the teacher and coach Mike Lommori won in 2:27.59. Fifty years later the six Nevada sack toters were named grand marshals of the 2014 fair parade, two of them honored after their deaths.

August 1988

In August 1988 Jeff Crockett, an Idaho cowboy, was killed in a bull-riding accident at the Lyon County Fair Rodeo while making his run for the National Finals. His family writes that he was soon to be a father. In 2024 the Crocketts, a family of seven, founded a foundation in Mountain Home, Idaho, to help other rodeo families after a death.

His best friend, the bull rider Cody Custer, was at home recovering from a serious injury when the news reached him. Custer later said the death turned him back to his faith. “I responded with truly repenting and being born again,” he said. A week after Crockett died, Custer was baptized. He had “Jesus is Lord” written on the bottom of his chaps, and he went on to win the PRCA world championship in 1992.