Mohave County Fair

Gates opened at 10 each morning of the 2026 Mohave County Fair, held September 17 through 20 at the county fairgrounds on Fairgrounds Boulevard in Kingman. The carnival ran on the midway from Thursday afternoon until half past eleven on Saturday night. According to Allen Scott of The Standard, corn dogs “were in abundant supply.” Scott’s paper counted it the 79th annual fair. Mohave County Parks manages the grounds, and Western Arizona Regional Medical Center presented the 2026 edition.

Seashells, livestock and the midway

The expo halls stayed open from 10 in the morning to 8 at night. Children’s projects filled them. Scott found a pre-schooler named Dakota standing beside her colorful seashell necklace entry, already picturing a future as an oceanographer. In the livestock barns, nervous young exhibitors showed animals of every kind while their parents watched from the sidelines. Blue ribbons, Scott wrote, were plentiful. A balloon artist worked for the children, and vendors lined the walkways with goods, information and community outreach. Creative arts and crafts hung for browsing, live music played each day, and the MCYLA livestock auction ran on Saturday night.

Some of the program started before the gates opened. Two evenings before the fair, qualifying began for mutton busting. The fairgrounds reported good weather and “tons of participants.” On the last day, Sunday the 20th, admission was $5 from 10 until 6. That morning the fairgrounds posted its farewell: “The fair felt alive, it felt as if the spark had been lit again, and we truly can’t wait until next year.”

Andy Devine Days and the Kingsmen rodeo

The fair shares its weekend with Andy Devine Days, which honors the Western character actor the Kingman Historic District site calls Kingman’s favorite son. That site says John Ford cast Devine as Buck, the stagecoach driver in Stagecoach (1939), because he had actually driven a six-horse team. It also says his high, gravelly voice came from a childhood fall with a stick in his mouth, and that for almost a year afterward he could not speak.

Early on the Saturday of the 2026 fair, spectators lined Beale Street for the 56th Annual Andy Devine Days Parade. It had 18 floats, nearly 60 horses, close to 100 vehicles, and the Kingman High School and Lee Williams High School bands. Police Chief Rusty Cooper rode in a restored 1954 police cruiser. The grand marshal was Sam Elters, a former Mohave County manager and state engineer.

Back at the fairgrounds, the Kingsmen Club put on its rodeo. It opened with a rodeo queen’s ride-by and went on through calf roping and steer wrestling. The historic district site describes the Kingsmen as local businessmen dedicated to preserving the area’s ranching and rodeo heritage, joined by the Kingsmen Cowgirls. It lists the Andy Devine Days rodeo as a PRCA event that brings cowboys from across the country to compete in eight events. The Standard traces Kingman’s rodeo history to Labor Day 1919, when working cowboys began staging competitions to show their skills.

Barracks on bare ground, 1947

Labor Day was also when the fair began. The account below comes from Jim Hudson’s history in the Lake Havasu City Herald of August 4, 1976.

An organizing meeting was called for August 29, 1946, for all those interested in promoting a county fair for the following year. The newspaper notice invited all the civic organizations of Kingman to send representatives and called the planned event the first of its kind in the county’s history. A committee formed at that meeting: Dene Pattillo, John Mullen, Frank Mylius, Dr. W. J. Richards, John Odle and Jay Gates. On its recommendation, five days later the Board of Supervisors named Jameson, a local rancher and president of the chamber of commerce, county fair commissioner. The same meeting directed county engineer Ross Housholder to draw plans for a fair and race track on a 40-acre plot. The site lay about half a mile northwest of Highway 66 and two miles east of Kingman, next to Port Kingman.

The first fair was held over Labor Day weekend in 1947. Hudson wrote that it was “frankly” just an added attraction to Dig ‘n Dogie Days, the yearly fiesta of rodeo events and street dances that residents in Western wear staged to draw visitors to town. That year Dig ‘n Dogie Days was celebrating its 15th year.

The supervisors acquired two former barracks buildings from the Kingman air base and set them on bare ground covered with greasewood and large ant hills. Nelle Clack, Fanny Woodward and Amy Neal of the original committee came to the grounds with hoes, shovels and rakes and got the building in shape. Lucille Gordon covered the rough, broken walls with cedar branches and crepe paper. Dust was the next problem, so they wet down the floors. That made mud, so Nelle Clack brought several old carpets to lay over it.

That weekend, Choc Hamilton and Claude Neal were praised for their speed in team tying. The editorial comment in the Mohave County Miner went to the women. The Miner reported ceramics, flowers, sewing and some very nice-looking pastries filling the racks and display counters. It predicted that interest in the fair would one day match interest in the rodeo. Four years later there was no rodeo, and the fair had to stand on its own. More spectators came that year than in any year before.

A North Wing at thirty

By 1976 the fair had moved off Labor Day. It ran September 9, 10 and 11 to mark its 30th anniversary, and a new North Wing of the exhibit buildings was under construction. Part of the parking and outdoor exhibit area had been paved earlier that year. New fencing and entrance gates were planned to handle the large crowds and control parking. Indian arts was added as a new exhibit class. Opening ceremonies moved from the traditional Friday night to Friday morning, and rodeo performances were scheduled for Friday and Saturday nights, which was also new that year.

Hudson credited most of what the fair had become to volunteers who gave their time on very limited budgets. “Yes it’s been that way for 30 years,” he wrote. “A lot of people giving a lot of time.”