Mineral County Fair & Rodeo

At seven in the morning on each day of the Mineral County Fair, the Methodist Men start serving pancakes, sausage, bacon, eggs and coffee under a tent at the main entrance of the fairgrounds on Pennsylvania Avenue in Superior. They serve until 11. In 2025 Charlie Quick worked the end of the chow line, handing out utensils, napkins and cups for coffee and juice. The Mineral Independent called the breakfast one of the oldest traditions of the fair and noted that the Methodist Men had women helping.

Three days at the fairgrounds

The county gives the fair’s date as the first weekend in August. The Mineral County Fair Board runs it, and the county’s page lists Sydny Cataldo as chairman. Mary Jo Berry chaired the board in 2025. The 2026 fair ran from Thursday, July 30, through Saturday, Aug. 1. The board and the Mineral Independent both counted it as the 80th. After the Saturday parade there was birthday cake, the Dixie Land Band, and a celebration of the nation’s 250th year, which the Montana 250th Commission supported with $1,500. The numbering does not agree across the record. The same newspaper called the 2023 fair the 48th, and in 2024 it said only that the fair and rodeo had been “the premier three days of socializing for at least 50 years.”

In 2026 Thursday brought the Kid Zone in the afternoon and Mineral County Alumni Night from 4 to 8 for returning graduates. Family Night Jackpot Barrel Racing ran in the arena from 7 to 9, and the Tamarack Ridge Band played until midnight. On Friday the Science Discovery Zone opened at noon. Montana Action Paintball and Airsoft ran foam parties and Orbeez shooters on the school lawn, and children ate watermelon against each other at 3. At 5:30 a woman named Traci taught the fair’s first line dancing lessons, open to complete beginners. She gave a second round on Saturday. After the Friday rodeo the Tanner Laws Band played from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Saturday had the most going on. The 4-H auction, bingo and a dog show filled the afternoon. Animal Wonders brought live exotic animals from 2 to 4. A talent show also ran that weekend. In its results the board noted that a contestant named David “also placed but relinquished his winnings due to his wife being the organizer.” The Hankers closed the fair after the Saturday rodeo, playing from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. They are a five-piece band from Colfax, Wash., led by Keith and Julie Niehenke. In 2025, Superior Taxi and the Mineral County DUI Task Force gave free rides home after the Friday and Saturday dances, anywhere between Alberton and St. Regis, with pickup at the front gate.

The 2026 midway listed Island Noodles, Izumi Sushi, Shady Grady Hawaiian Ice, Poppity’s Popcorn, the Rooster Cafe and the Beanie Brew Hut. Nonprofit tables stood among them for the Disabled American Veterans, the US Forest Service and the Superior Volunteer Fire Department. The Catholic hamburger booth and the Superior Senior Center booth are older fixtures. In 2025 the Senior Center added specialty pastries to its usual goods. Carole Johnson, a retired Superior forest ranger, said the booth “might be the oldest” at the fair. It was built for drag races held at the Mineral County Airport in the late 1960s.

That same 2025 fair, wind from a Thursday-night thunderstorm wrecked a couple of vendor canopies. Replacements were found by Friday morning. Berry made the rounds after the downpour and stopped at Twin Creek Creations, where owner Janet Hughs reported the damage as one cutting board.

Quilts in the high school, steers behind the barns

Some of the exhibits are at Superior High School, across from the grounds’ school lawn. The Cabin Fever Quilters held their 25th annual show in the school’s multipurpose room and hallways in 2026. In 2025 the guild asked Mineral County veterans to write down their names, so that every veteran could receive a quilt. That year the floral entries also went into the multipurpose room, where the cooler air kept them fresh for the judges. Open class entries include garden vegetables, pies, quilts, photography and woodworking. Baked goods and breads are judged on Thursday and then displayed in the 4-H Quonset Hut.

The 4-H livestock show runs through the weekend. In 2025 Heather Haskins readied her steer, Cheeto, for Friday morning judging. It was her fourth or fifth steer for 4-H. The lambs were regroomed after judging for the buyers, and the hog show was noisy with squealing. The market auction starts at 1 p.m. Saturday behind the 4-H barns. In 2023 it sold 33 hogs, steers and lambs, and Superior Meats handled processing for the buyers. The paper’s advice that year was that “it doesn’t hurt to bring some sunscreen.”

The Saturday parade

The parade forms downtown at 11 a.m. Saturday. It has dune buggies, side-by-sides, horses and classic cars, and the Tractor Tyrants appear every year. The Rodeo Royalty lead with the American flag. Ginny Tubbs, the board treasurer, organized the 2025 parade and told entrants to wave, chat and throw candy, because “judging is based on crowd involvement.” Ribbons are handed out back at the fairgrounds. The grand marshals have been Al and Nancy Acheson in 2023, Herman Berneking in 2024 and Paul Wilkinson in 2025. Winners in 2026 included the Skyline Drifters Drill Team, the Class of 1996, the Cabin Fever Quilters, and Mike & His Red Tractor.

For years the Neal family of Living Waters Church gave away bicycles during the parade. When they retired in 2026, the fair board and the Superior Volunteer Fire Department kept the giveaway going as a Bike Rodeo at the fairgrounds after the parade. Tickets there gave children a chance at a bike, a scooter, a helmet or a fishing pole.

The Go for the Gold arena

On Friday and Saturday evenings the Superior Lions Club holds its Go for the Gold Rodeo. The 2026 edition appeared on the Northern Rodeo Association’s schedule. The bleachers hold 860 reserved seats and a little over 1,000 spectators in all. “Saturday is pretty well sold out each year,” Roger Keasting of the Lions said in 2024. “Friday, if we sell 75%, we’ve done really good.” At the 2025 Saturday rodeo, Honorary Fair Lady Eleanor Hollenback was welcomed into the arena. Ranier Acker carried the flag around the ring while Brynley Conrow sang the national anthem, and a saddle bronc rider tried for eight seconds in front of a sold-out crowd. The 2026 royalty were Queen Josie Crabb, Princess Miekolani “Loni” Ruthford and Junior Princess Juniper Spence.

The Lions repair and upgrade the arena every year, working Wednesday evenings in the weeks before the rodeo. Their beer booth earns most of the club’s money, which pays for Christmas baskets, school scholarships, Shakespeare in the Park and an Easter egg hunt. The club’s own page gives the 2027 dates: a free Family Night on August 5, and rodeos on August 6 and 7 from 8 to 10:30 p.m.

Telephone poles from Tarkio to Dry Creek

Before the rodeo, the Lions put on other summer events. In 2024 several founders gathered in Dick Feldburgge’s basement, once a ceramic shop, to remember them. Gary Chambers recalled a River Derby. “They floated a big ball from the Lozeau bridge to Superior and people made rickety rafts,” he said. Many rafts never reached town and had to be driven back for the awards. Then came Logging Days, with chopping, ax throwing, log rolling and sawing, held across the river in the Montana Bar parking lot, where the Mineral County Food Bank’s lot is now. Insurance ruled out a third year there. The event moved to the present fairgrounds and drew poorly, because there were not enough bars close by.

“We had to do something,” Chambers said. “We met in Duff Brockway’s garage and decided what we were going to do.” The answer was a rodeo. “The plan was sorta sketched out on a napkin, but it worked well,” Keasting recalled. Roger Brockway, a bulldogger, and Alan Brockway knew how an arena should be laid out. The Mineral County Fair board gave permission, and then the county commissioners did.

The phone company was replacing its lines and gave the Lions every old pole they could pull out of the ground. Starting in March they pulled them with Chambers’ old winch truck. “From Tarkio to Dry Creek, the standing telephone poles started disappearing,” the paper wrote. The poles became chutes and corrals. The Diamond Match mill gave “tons of lumber,” and the Kalispell rodeo outfit gave roping chutes and drill pipe. The site was chosen because it already had a chain-link fence and bleachers left from Logger Days. Wally Zimmer remembered that everything was built in place. The school lent its shop and metal-cutting band saw, and separate crews cut, welded and boarded. Alan Brockway brought his backhoe to dig the rocky ground. “Not everyone was a Lion but everyone helped,” Chambers said. “We’d have a little BBQ sometimes after we were done.”

“In August, we had a rodeo. That was 1982,” Gary Tourtellotte said. On the first Thursday night, Zimmer said, the Catholic booth sold every hamburger it had bought for the whole fair and had to get more from Daily’s Meats in Missoula. The fair then shifted its days to match the rodeo. At first Friday was a roping exhibition that paid the insurance for rodeos on Saturday and Sunday. A few years later the schedule changed to the present one, so people could go home on Sunday. When the arena was later rebuilt mostly in metal, Roger Billadeau said, the Kalispell contractor John Carpenter gave much of the material. Billadeau thought the company was called Rocky Mountain Rodeo Company.

An ounce a year

In 1988 the event became the Go for the Gold Rodeo. “We used to give out saddles but they became too expensive so we came up with this idea. Gold was $300 an ounce then,” Keasting said. An ounce went into the purse each year until one cowboy or cowgirl had won the overall title in three different years, not necessarily in a row.

Dan Cross won the first two years. Then he was hurt and did not rodeo for 10 years or more. He came back and won a third time, 18 years after his first, in 2005. The purse was presented to him at the Regional Finals in Billings, in hopes of drawing more contestants to Superior, and after that contestants came from farther away. Guy Gould, a Lion since 1984 and rodeo chairman for 25 years, tells it this way: Cross was driving I-90 toward the Washington coast, saw the sign that the rodeo was that evening, pulled off at Exit 47, entered, and won. As of 2024 no one had won the purse since. Kaly Goyins, whom Gould believed to be from Helena, had two barrel-racing wins, and Sam Lavene of Wolf Creek had two wins.

The club can no longer afford an ounce every year, Feldburgge said, once the price outgrew the budget. Gould said they still add gold in good years, buying raw gold that is close to pure from a local miner. Asked in 2024 how much was in the purse, he answered with a wink: “It’s an undisclosed amount, but it’s more than an ounce.”