Niobrara County Fair

On Monday, July 27, the sixth day on the 2026 Niobrara County Fair schedule, free breakfast went out at the fairgrounds from 6:30 to 8:00 a.m., sponsored by Lusk ROCS. At eight the youth horse show began. Breakfast came again on Wednesday from the Niobrara County Fairgrounds Foundation and on Thursday from Ranchers Feed & Supply. Supper was free most evenings between five and six. Tuesday’s was the Ron Lund Memorial BBQ, sponsored by Harmony Lodge 24 and Gene and Claudia Bartow. Bloomers and Hickory Creek Catering put on Wednesday’s. Friday’s came from the NEA and the Niobrara County Cattlewomen.

The barns and the auditorium

The fairgrounds lie at 4080 West Highway 20, and the Niobrara County Extension office, part of the University of Wyoming Extension, works from the same address. One local history says the fair is managed by the Niobrara County Fair Board, which the Board of County Commissioners appoints. The Wyoming Association of Fairs lists Kellie Chichester of the Extension office as its contact. The 2026 fair took the theme “Stars & Stripes since 1776” for the nation’s 250th year, and its fair book added two specialty classes: a fair theme idea in patriotic fabric, and the best specialty cookie made with apples.

The dates depend on who is counting. The schedule opened Monday, July 20, with setup. The state association listed the fair as July 24 through August 1, and a Lusk campground’s events page gave July 20 through August 1. Indoor judging and the youth dog show came on Wednesday, July 22. That evening the Style Revue followed a 6:00 reception.

The second week belonged to the animals. Youth poultry and rabbits were shown Tuesday at 11:00 a.m. and swine at 6:30 that evening. Goats went into the ring Wednesday at nine, with sheep after a 45-minute break, and the 4-H livestock judging contest and a youth livestock ultrasound contest filled the afternoon. That evening the corn hole tournament ran by the pavilion. At the Legend Stage there were kids’ yard games and a Farm Bureau ice cream social. The youth beef show came Thursday morning. That evening, after its own free barbecue, the Junior Livestock Sale began at 6:30, and the youth fair dance followed it. Friday brought the youth round robin contest, a pet show at one o’clock, and at 6:30 the Ag Olympics in the arena, free to spectators. Market animals went home after the Ag Olympics. On Saturday, August 1, the fair board served a State Fair sign-up breakfast for 4-H and FFA families, and cleanup began at nine.

The open-class divisions fill the auditorium: Agriculture, Family Consumer, and Crafts and Hobbies. The fair book’s class list runs to Baled Hay, Wool Fleeces, Canned Meat, Cooking with Honey, Cowboy Crafts, Indian Artifacts, Antique Collections, Special Lapidary Exhibits, and Needlework 25 Years and Older. In July the fair’s Facebook page named “cell phone photos, garden goodies, baked goods, knitting projects,” noted there was no cost to enter, and added, “If each of us brings in one item, we will fill the auditorium.” Open-class winners get blue, red and white stickers, one of each per class. 4-H and FFA work is sorted into ribbon groups, with purple for superior merit. A blue ribbon in the agriculture department pays $3.50. A Born and Raised Market Contest recognizes market animals born and raised in Niobrara County.

Four-man teams in the arena

The fair’s first weekend, Friday and Saturday, July 24 and 25, went to the Rawhide Ranch Rodeo. The campground’s listing called the 2026 edition the second annual. Four-man teams competed in ranch sorting, calf branding, trailer loading and cow milking for prizes and money. A trade show opened at nine on Friday, the first round started at ten, and a rodeo concert played at 7:30 that night. On Saturday, round two began at nine and a calcutta was held for the finals at five. The finals rode at six as the trade show closed. Tickets were sold through Eventbrite.

Two days in September 1913

The fair is older than its grounds. The Niobrara County Fair and Race Association was formed in 1911. Its first president was Ralph Olinger (1885–1965), son-in-law of Harry Snyder and master of the Harmony Masonic Lodge. The first fair was held on Thursday and Friday, September 25 and 26, 1913. By the county library’s account there was no fairgrounds yet, and exhibits were set out at various places around town. The Jireh Record nonetheless placed the racing “out at the fair grounds,” in front of a grand stand.

The Record reported that stormy days early in the week gave way to Thursday sun and a chilly wind that kept many home. On Friday “everybody and his wife, his sisters and his cousins and his aunts, yea, and his best girl, all were there,” about 800 people. Shows lined Main Street between 2nd and 3rd streets, where the merry-go-round and “the giggle” drew the crowds. A team of fancy riders from Wheatland performed both afternoons, and an acrobat and a clown filled the gaps between events. The bucking horses were I Be Dam, Lightning Creek and Old Woman Creek. C.E. Lee of Jireh took first and Arthur Thompson of Kirtley second. Friday opened with a ball game against the soldier team from Fort Robinson. The soldiers had a morning train to catch, so the game ran only five innings. They led 10 to 1 when the locals came up in the fifth, and the locals scored nine and tied it.

There was an automobile race over three blocks. Dr. Stephenson’s Metz made it in 32 seconds on Thursday evening, and on Friday Emil Wasleben’s Ford did it in a little better than 29. The doctor was absent Friday, and the paper reported that he “claims the right to another ‘try.’” Merchants paid special premiums in goods. J.E. Mayes gave a bushel box of apples for the best peck of wheat, and Geo. A. Kellar gave one square meal for the best ear of corn. The Lusk Standard offered a year’s subscription for a peck of onions, but no onions were exhibited. Nobody competed for the baby bonnet offered for the best-looking baby. Jim Todd’s boy was thrown in a race and knocked unconscious, and the paper expected him to be all right when the wrist mended. Dances at the I.O.O.F. hall both nights took in about $140, and the Lusk Band played throughout.

Max Bell, a sixth-grade boy, wrote his own account for the Lusk Herald. He watched a horse named Blackbird run off with its saddle through the crowd and into the automobile where he stood, and it “missed me about an inch.” Of a boy who tried to ride Blackbird, he wrote that one of the judges “said he put up a good ride but he had too much horse.” Afterward, “I went up town and got bamberger and ate it.” He closed: “I hope they have another fair next year.”

Thirty-three acres and the Legend of Rawhide

In 1914 the Fair Committee began looking for land for a permanent fairgrounds. The first land came in 1925. The largest parcel, 33 acres, was bought in 1931 for $990.00 from J.E. Mayes, the same man who had put up the apples in 1913. The county kept adding land, by purchase or by Treasurer’s Deeds for unpaid taxes, until 1997. No fairs were held from 1942 through 1945.

In 1946 the fair board wanted a spectacular event to mark the end of the war, and it partnered with Doc Reckling, Dr. Walter E. Reckling of Lusk, who conceived the pageant and promoted it. EvaLou Bonsell, known as “Bonnie” Paris, wrote the script at his request. The Legend of Rawhide was first performed at the fair that year.

The story concerns an emigrant train bound for the California gold fields in 1849. A man in the train had sworn to kill the first Indian he saw, and he shot an Indian girl near where Lusk now stands. Her people surrounded the train. In the historian Mae Urbanek’s telling, he gave himself up to save his sweetheart. The Wyoming Tales and Trails version says he did it to save the train. He was skinned alive, and the incident supposedly named the Rawhide Buttes south of town. Wyoming Tales and Trails calls that naming “quite apocryphal.” It notes that Rawhide Creek already bore the name in the early 1840s and gives another origin: the mountain men’s term for a dressed beaver pelt. The same page sets beside the legend a 1910 account by William F. Drannan of a similar killing in Nebraska in 1850.

The pageant used many covered wagons, some drawn by oxen. Several hundred county people took part, some of them painted as Indians. It was also shown at Crawford, Nebraska, and at the Wyoming State Fair in Douglas. Its earnings, about $6,000.00, paid for two Quonset-type buildings at the fairgrounds, built from local materials and labor by the fair board and the Legend of Rawhide Pageant Corporation. The library’s file dates them to the late summer of 1948, and a photography book it cites says 1949. The first public event in the fairground auditorium was a contest between Lusk and Casper on 9 December 1949.

Accounts of how long the pageant ran differ. Urbanek, writing in 1984, said it was produced every summer for about 20 years. Wyoming Tales and Trails describes an annual celebration held with the county fair, with a parade down Main Street. The campground’s 2026 listing puts the Legend of Rawhide on the second weekend of July, with a performance, a parade and food vendors, ongoing since 1946. In the early 1960s, by the Tales and Trails account, there was a movement to rename the town Rawhide.