Montezuma County Fair

In the rabbit tent at the Montezuma County Fairgrounds during the 2026 fair, a Journal photographer caught seven-year-old Zeke Martin helping a rabbit named Carrots over an obstacle course. Beyond the tent stand the barns that hold the fair. The fowl and rabbit barns sit near the swine barn. Animals are weighed in the scale barn. The Main Barn hosts most of the shows, the contests, and the closing sale. An outdoor arena and the Montezuma County Racetrack lie nearby. The grounds are at 30100 Highway 160 and are busy most of the year: the county counted major events or practices on 156 days in 2022, and 62,115 visitors. The fair itself belongs to the Montezuma County Fair Board, seven members appointed by the county commissioners.

Two weeks on Highway 160

The 2026 fair ran from Saturday, July 18, to Sunday, August 2. It opened with a 4-H archery shoot and a horse show in the Main Barn, where the Dolores FFA Chapter began serving the concessions it ran for the rest of the fair. The following Friday and Saturday nights, 360 sprint cars raced at the county racetrack, and the fair’s own page called the races the kickoff of fair week. On Sunday at seven in the morning, club rockets went up from the racetrack. Two hours later families rode a gymkhana in the outdoor arena.

On Tuesday the animals arrived. Rabbits and fowl were checked in first. Then goats, beef, sheep, and swine crossed the scales in turn, and an ultrasound contest followed the weigh-in. That evening a color run started west of the outdoor arena.

Exhibits opened to the public on Wednesday, July 29. Open class and 4-H project work filled the barns, from the ducks in the poultry barn to the quilts in the exhibit hall. The 4-H, FFA, and open-class shows came one a day or two a day: rabbits Wednesday morning and goats that afternoon, fowl Thursday morning, then bucket calves and beef. Swine and sheep showed on Friday. More than 120 exhibitors entered the livestock competitions.

The evenings went to the outdoor arena. Goat roping was on Wednesday. On Thursday came the ranch rodeo, with fifteen teams entered. Open team roping closed Friday night, with handmade buckles by Joshua Grounds for the winners.

Red Friday in the Main Barn

Friday, July 31, was Red Friday. It began at nine with a rooster crowing contest in the fowl barn. A rabbit expo followed, then the Hoofbeats Oreo eating contest at eleven and the Round Up watermelon eating contest half an hour later. Barnyard Critters ran a Minute-to-Win-It at the south end of the Main Barn. In the afternoon came an Easter egg hunt and three Four Corners Community Bank money hunts, one for each age group from three to eight. At 4:30 the Greatest Pie in the County Contest was judged in the Main Barn kitchen. Family Night in the Main Barn closed the day.

Saturday began at the swine barn with the First National Bank greased pig chase. Then came Kalvin’s Kids Kickball, the Master Showman contest, a salsa contest in the kitchen, and the Battle Rock Tug-of-War. In the afternoon buyers walked the livestock barns to meet the young exhibitors. At five the Junior Livestock Sale began in the Main Barn, where junior exhibitors sell their market animals. The 4-H dance followed there from 9:30 to 11.

Six percent of the sale

Chelsea Philpott, in her second year on the fair’s seven-member livestock committee, told The Journal how the sale pays for the barns around it. The committee keeps 6 percent of the auction. That money goes to fairgrounds improvements, to rent of the grounds for fair week, and to scholarships for 4-H seniors, along with what a jackpot fundraiser brings in each early summer. “In the past year, we bought new pens for the poultry barn and a new show ring for the swine,” Philpott said. Before the 2026 fair, Border States donated electrical boxes to upgrade the fitting area.

Many of the animals in the ring were raised in the county under a Bred-and-Fed program. These animals earn a separate drive through the ring against other local stock. “We have quite a few ‘Bred-and-Fed’ animals here every year,” Philpott said, “and many of those animals will make it back here to the county fair.” Former 4-H members come back to help the younger children and track results. “I grew up around this, and I realize that it takes a village,” she said. “There are so many moving parts – we need all of the volunteers that we have.”

Apples, 1902 to 1918

The fair began with fruit. A 2021 study by the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project, funded by History Colorado, found that fruit growers organized the first fairs in 1902. They timed the fairs to the fall crop and met to share knowledge and compare varieties. Their orchards stood in Weber Canyon, McElmo Canyon, Lewis, Lakeview, Arriola, and Lebanon, at elevations where fruit was believed impossible. The area was once called “the most favored district in Colorado.” In 1904 Montezuma County won three of the four gold medals awarded to Colorado at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Two years later its fruit took 101 of the 104 ribbons at the State Fair, 97 of them first place. The orchard project calls it a record “that has never been approached, much less equaled.”

The fairs ran for sixteen years. Influenza swept the county right after the October 1918 fair and ended them. By the end of the 1920s the national trade had turned to the shiny red apple, and orchardists were told to grow no more than three kinds.

A first annual fair in 1945

In 1945 organizers announced the “First Annual Montezuma County Fair.” According to The Journal, they had seemingly forgotten the fairs of decades before. The fair has continued every year since. The Journal adds that fruit has anchored it since then, though with less variety than in the early years, and that the county’s heritage orchards now supply a growing group of regional cider makers. The paper says the fairgrounds were “built by hand, in hard times.” The 2026 fair also marked Cortez’s 140th year and the nation’s 250th.

The fair did return in some years between 1918 and 1945. A 1928 premium list printed by the Cortez Journal-Herald offered prizes for the “best original poem on Montezuma theme,” for the best rural school display, and for the best account of “the Legend of Montezuma Valley.” In 2026, children at the CSU Extension’s Craftivities booth learned beef brands and made rag bunnies.