Mariposa County Fairgrounds

In the last weeks of September 2026 the Mariposa County Fairgrounds held a fire camp. Firefighters and emergency personnel working the Dome Fire made the grounds a base of operations, and the events scheduled around them gave way. A Mariposa County High School football game moved to the high school campus. The Friends of the Fairgrounds canceled its Sausage and Suds because fire equipment was staged on the grounds. The organizers of the Yosemite Goddess Festival, set for October 3 and 4, called it off in a notice posted September 22 that also mourned two aircrew members who had died supporting the response. “There are moments when everything else becomes secondary,” the festival team wrote. “This is one of them.”

The grounds lie a few minutes south of town down Highway 49, at 5007 Fairgrounds Road. They cover 36 acres by the fairgrounds’ own count and 37 by the Mariposa Gazette’s. Among the lawns and shade trees stand Sequoia Hall, Manzanita Hall, the Redbud Room and Building D, with the Butterfly Stand at the center of the grounds. The livestock area holds a horse barn of 28 stalls, a tie barn for cattle, pens for sheep, goats and swine, and cages for poultry and rabbits, along with four show rings and the Strathearn Pavilion, a covered pavilion with a concrete floor and bleachers. The Gold Bowl Arena is a turf field inside a quarter-mile dirt track, with roping, bucking and loading chutes, lights for night events, and a grandstand seating 3,000. A deep-pit barbecue stands beside the Fiske Barbeque Area, and a landscaped patio with a waterfall is kept for weddings. The California State Mining and Mineral Museum and the county agricultural office are long-term tenants. A caretaker lives on site. RV and tent campers stay year round for up to 14 days at a time, and the Gazette counted 120 RV sites in 2024.

That same 2024 Gazette article described the grounds’ other use. It listed open ground for heavy vehicles and equipment, room for briefings, living quarters and emergency kitchens, and safe evacuation space for animals large and small, all on a state highway. In ordinary seasons the calendar fills with other gatherings. The 2026 listing opened with the Lions Club crab feed on February 7 and carried on through donkey basketball in March, the gem and mineral show in April, the Butterfly Festival and a pow wow in May, the high school graduation in June, and Toys for Tots on December 19. General manager Leslie Foley runs the office with Sharon Peterson, Tina Wiemer on exhibits, and Ben Turck on maintenance.

Labor Day weekend in the Gold Bowl

The fair comes on Labor Day weekend; its poster says always. The 2026 edition ran September 4 through 7 under the theme “Red, White, Blue & Ewe,” and its program counted 88 years of serving the community. Free shuttle buses ran each day from town and from Bootjack and Woodland Park, with stops at the Bootjack Store, the courthouse and the high school.

Friday began with poultry judging at 10 in the morning, and the gates opened at noon. Through the four days the free Amigo Stage changed over between Adam the Great and Tyzen, the Comedy Hypnotist. Flo the Clown walked the grounds, and the Beer Garden Band played afternoon sets. A working blacksmith shop and the mineral museum kept daytime hours, and the Classic Amusements carnival opened each afternoon. The exhibit buildings held baked goods, preserved foods, spirits, quilts and clothing, flowers, fruits and vegetables, paintings and photography. Friday evening was family fun night in the Goldbowl, with dachshund races at 6, stick horse races, a kid bounce horse race, and the Ultimate Cowboy and Ultimate Cowgirl contest.

On Saturday the open and junior beef went before the judges at 9 in the Strathearn Pavilion, the parade started in town at 10, and at 7 that evening Moondog Motorsports ran the destruction derby. Sunday opened at 8 with local team roping, saddle roping and kids’ dummy roping in the arena. The program calls these horse events part of the fair’s “mission to preserve our Western Heritage.” At 10 a nondenominational Cowboy Church service took the Amigo Stage. The junior livestock auction began at 2 in the Strathearn Pavilion, and the Mariposa Lions Club cooked a thank-you dinner for the buyers. Outside Building D, staff from Cal Fire, the Forest Service and the Mariposa volunteer fire companies stood beside a fire engine to meet the public. A diaper derby and a tricycle race ran on the Amigo dance slab, and Dave Stamey played from 5 to 7. The rodeo began at 8 with bull riding, saddle bronc riding, junior and senior barrel racing and team roping, and Tammi Richards served as grand marshal.

Admission was free on Monday. The day brought a calf branding contest, a senior citizens’ program with prize drawings, team penning, and a watermelon seed spitting contest. Amateur showmanship in the sheep barn was open to kids and grownups, with the animals provided. Mutton busting ran in the Gold Bowl from 3 to 4, and the grounds and carnival closed at 6. The program’s last line set the 2027 fair for September 3 through 6.

Mormon Bar, at the gate

At the entrance on Fairgrounds Road, just east of Highway 49, stands a plaque for California Historical Landmark No. 323, Mormon Bar. E Clampus Vitus, Matuca Chapter No. 1849, dedicated it June 21, 2003. Its text says that in 1849 a group of Mormons set up a tent encampment near here while looking for land to farm, and moved on after gold miners poured in. Thousands of Chinese miners, merchants and farmers came next, until Mormon Bar was the largest Chinese community in Mariposa County, with a hotel, a blacksmith shop, stores and gambling dens. In the 1860 returns the secession candidates beat the union candidates 21 to 17. In 1864 Abraham Lincoln drew 11 votes in the Mormon precinct. The camp was a stagecoach stop for travelers to and from Yosemite, and granite for the Mariposa jail was quarried nearby. Archaeological evidence, the plaque adds, shows that Native Americans lived here long before the Mormons came.

The landmark’s guidebook entry gives a different account. It says the bar was first mined in 1849 by members of the Mormon Battalion, who stayed only a short time before other miners took their places, and that thousands of Chinese later worked the same ground over again. The landmark was registered in 1939, on September 12 by one listing and July 12 by another. The compiler of one landmark register followed the state’s directions to a spot on a small side road about 500 feet southeast of Highway 49 and Ben Hur Road. As far as that compiler knew, nothing historical remains there.

Two weeks to a first fair

The landmark was registered the same year the fair began. In May 1939 the California Legislature authorized the 35-A District Agricultural Association, and Governor Olson appointed its first board: George M. Stark, Jay T. Norman, Daniel Kleiman, Stanley Fiske, James W. Warford, Ray M. Sullivan and E.O. Sumner. George W. Robinson served as secretary-treasurer for $150 covering May through December. J.M. Loyd of Auburn was retained to manage the fair, do the auditing, and prepare the 1940 budget, all for $500. Wilbur White, the grounds superintendent, earned $11 a day plus expenses. Electricians on fair work were paid 90 cents an hour and their helpers 75 cents.

According to the fairgrounds’ history, the event was planned and organized in two short weeks. The first premium list offered $6,558.25 in cash prizes for the horse show, livestock, poultry and rabbits, community booths, agriculture, horticulture, domestic science, bees and honey, lumber, minerals, and the Future Farmers of America. A committee chaired by A.C. McDonald organized an amateur rodeo. J.J. Castegnetto, John L. Dexter and one recorded only as Schottky put on a Distinguished Guests Banquet. The first fair opened in October 1939, took in $3,411.35, and spent $9,103.00. The same history records a special board meeting called to consider renting the grounds for an event outside fair time.

Rubble walls and a museum that moved

About two years later the Work Projects Administration took up the grounds under WPA Project No. 165-1-08-292, sponsored by the association. The job card called for a grandstand, exhibition buildings, barns, a comfort station, a concession hall and an office building, along with water lines, a tank, hydrants, and sewer and electric work. As of March 19, 1941, it recorded $72,092 in federal funds, an average of 270 men employed, and $142,742 in federal and sponsor money combined. Andrew Laverdiere documented the site for the Living New Deal in 2018. He was struck by how much landscaping the hilly ground required and by the rubble wall construction found everywhere, and his photographs show rubble-wall stairways, stables and the landscaping around the Gold Bowl. He also found concrete crumbling and loosening and the grounds slightly worn, with 38 events scheduled that year. The Living New Deal lists the site as unmarked.

In 1948 the old Gazette building, which had first been the Temperance Hall and a saloon near the Courthouse, was moved to the fairgrounds. It opened there as the John L. Dexter Museum, under a name that also appears among the 1939 banquet organizers. It stood on the grounds until 1993, when it moved again to the History Center in town.

The fair grew. By 1999 exhibit premiums passed $38,000 across 36 categories. The fairgrounds’ history puts the modern fair’s receipts at over $200,000, with expenses at least that much, and entertainment alone costs over $25,000. The rodeo is a California Cowboys Professional Rodeo Association event. In July 2011 the Mariposa Friends of the Fairgrounds Foundation was formed in response to the state budget crisis, as state funding was cut, to raise donations and sponsorships for upkeep. Its work has supplied the Wi-Fi, four tent cabin bungalows and a vacation home. It also runs the rodeo royalty program, which crowns a queen, princess and junior princess each August at a dinner on the grounds. The 2026–2027 royalty are Queen Anisa Degerli, Princess Scarlett Lucero and Junior Princess McKinley “Kiki” Joslin.

The first beer of 2019

The 2019 fair was the 80th. Brian Bullis, then the fairgrounds manager, told the Gazette, “The fair is a living, breathing thing. The facilities are the body, and the people are the heart and soul. It takes on its own life and motion.” Jet Dougherty, who is from Mariposa County but lives in Washington, flew back weeks ahead of each fair to work on the prep crew. That August the Gazette found her in the Junior Exhibit Building laying out children’s entries, each of which she said she “cherishes.” Bullis said the school district’s buses, run as a free shuttle, cost around $10,000. “It’s underutilized,” he said.

About twenty minutes before that fair opened on a Friday morning, three Wackermans stood in the beer garden. Fred Wackerman, a World War II veteran, had poured lager there for more than 50 years. Years earlier, just after getting his first brewing kit, his grandson Jake had told Hannah on a date in that same beer garden that it would be great to supply the beer for the fair one day. “I told him he was crazy,” Hannah said. “I still tell him he’s crazy!” In 2019 their 1850 Brewing became the first local brewery to supply the fair. It brought 42 kegs, including the first lager Jake had ever made, and part of the proceeds went to the local VFW, where Fred had been a member for decades. Fred had been through 13 heart procedures and used a walker. He drew the first beer of the 2019 fair, and Jake bought it. “I’ll charge you double,” Fred said. Jake paid the normal price. Asked how it felt to serve that first beer to his grandson, Fred said, “Very good.”