Ouray County Fair & Rodeo

The 4-H Livestock Barn at the Ouray County Fairgrounds, on Highway 550 in Ridgway, is a covered show arena with overnight stalls and a sound system, roofed for use the year round. Smoking is not allowed within 10 feet of it, and no alcohol is allowed anywhere on the grounds. In mid-August the barn holds the animals Ouray County’s children have raised all year, and on the last afternoon of the fair it holds the sale.

Rabbits, swine and the two o’clock sale

The 109th annual Ouray County Fair ran August 13 to 15, 2026. Local youth, many of them in Ouray County 4-H, showed rabbits, sheep, chickens and other farm animals. Chickens and swine were shown on the Friday. Nearby, the Open General Projects category laid out baked goods, wines, needlework, art and photographs. The public fair day, Saturday the 15th, ran from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. At 2 o’clock the livestock sale began, offering locally raised beef, pork and lamb.

All week the fairgrounds staff asked people to come and fill the stands. “Remember if you can’t buy an animal you can support these kids with add ons, or just being in the stands so they see your face!” one post read on the Friday. Another, the same morning, spoke of the sellers: “Saying good bye to animals they have raised and became attached to is not for the faint at heart.” Before the fair opened, the staff had invited visitors to “come see why Ouray county is a right to farm county.”

Parade on Sherman Street, rodeo at noon

Three weeks after the fair, the Labor Day Rodeo comes to the same ground. In 2026 the day began at 10 a.m. Monday, September 7, with a parade on Sherman Street between Amelia and Railroad Streets. Visit Ridgway advised the crowd about the fire engines: “If you’re hot and dry, stay on the sidewalk when the firetrucks appear. If you’re cool and don’t want a soaking, stand back a far piece.”

The fairgrounds gates opened at 11, and the CPRA-sanctioned rodeo started at noon. The program included barrel racing, bronc riding, team roping and wild cow milking. In 2026 the milking was a locals-only contest, “being brought back by popular demand from many years ago,” the fairgrounds announced. RRL ranch donated “the cows who don’t want to be milked.” In mutton bustin’, children aged 3 to 10 and weighing no more than 50 pounds rode sheep. The rodeo royalty and the grand marshals were introduced the evening before. Dogs are not allowed.

The arena measures 320 feet by 150. Ouray County bills it as the largest equestrian and rodeo arena in western Colorado, and the grounds also have a barn, overnight stalls and a racetrack. The Ouray County Rodeo Association, which puts on the rodeo, completed its Rough Stock/Equestrian Arena in 2014 “with the help of Ouray County and a very generous donor.” By the association’s account, the new arena made the fairgrounds one of the largest outdoor arenas in Colorado. Before the 2026 rodeo, a volunteer crew worked the ground with a tractor lent by Montrose Implement & Motorsports. The Ridgway Fire Protection District supplied water for dust control.

A fire camp in the arena

That work followed a summer in which the fairgrounds were headquarters for operations on the Gold Mountain Fire. On July 22, 2026, the Ouray County Plaindealer reported that the fair would proceed as planned even if the fire command stayed. A blood draw scheduled there with Montrose Memorial Hospital was moved to Ridgway Elementary School. The fairgrounds thanked Rocky Mountain incident teams 3, 2 and 1, and team 1 had wrapped up its stay by August 9, four days before the fair opened.

Once the fair was over, the county closed the event center until September 6. It also closed the arena, open riding included, until the rodeo, for cleaning after what it called “the lengthy fire camp.” Volunteers hauled six dump-truck loads of debris out of the arena, some of it nails, screws and staples, along with lots of rocks. “This is the best it’s looked in many years!” the fairgrounds posted on the Friday before the rodeo. After the rodeo, the fairgrounds page thanked the volunteers who stayed late to break down “for making my first rodeo event a whole lot of fun.”

Ranch rodeos and a weekend in town

By the Ouray County Ranch History Museum’s account, the rodeo came first. Ranching in the county began in the late 1870s, and ranch rodeos were a favorite social activity. They started as spectator sports with little to no barrier between the people watching and the people riding. The county fair was added later to show produce, handiwork and livestock. The Rodeo Association dates the Labor Day Rodeo to 1917.

The museum’s sketch of Harry McClure records what Labor Day meant to one rancher. McClure built a cattle ranch of more than 13,000 acres known for its high-country Herefords. Labor Day weekend was the only time he thought it all right to leave ranch work undone and go to town. “The Labor Day Weekend in Ridgway was the big time of year,” the museum writes. “The town was open to gambling, along with the fair and rodeo.”

The group that now runs the rodeo is younger than the event. It was formed in 1982 as the Ouray County Sheriff’s Posse and later re-formed as the Ouray County Rodeo Association, a nonprofit. Its stated goals include “keeping our Western heritage alive and healthy.”

Victoria Hearst’s hall and the county’s ledger

The fairgrounds are two parcels, about 23 acres, used together. More than 125 years ago, the western parcel, holding the grandstands and racetrack, was granted to the town of Ridgway on condition that it stay in public use. Ouray County has leased and managed it since 1972. The county has owned the eastern parcel since 1957. According to the Plaindealer, the original livestock barn there was built around 1950 for $900 and was rebuilt and enlarged over the decades.

The 4-H club and the fair still wanted more space. In 2001 Victoria Hearst stepped forward. A publishing heiress and granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, she paid for a new building through Praise Him Ministries, which she founded in Ridgway that year. “In January of 2001, the LORD told me to give the 4H exhibit hall that they had waited nearly 20 years for,” she later wrote. The result is the 4-H Event Center: 4,600 square feet with a stage and a commercial kitchen. Weddings are held on its south patio against the San Juan Mountains. Community theater, chamber music concerts and the skijoring competition use it as well.

The weddings started a quarrel. Hearst wrote that she had first planned a smaller exhibit hall for 4-H alone. She later approved a larger multipurpose building capped at $983,000, and the final bill came to $1.49 million. A 2002 agreement gave 4-H groups preference and free use and left other uses to the commissioners. Hearst argued she had never agreed to weddings and other paying events. In August 2004 she wrote to every county resident to “set the record straight.” The commissioners answered with a pamphlet of their own: “Ms. Hearst presents the insoluble dilemma that a large and expensive building should be operated without revenue in spite of ongoing operational and maintenance expenses.” In October she wrote again, saying the pamphlet “contained some misinformation, half truths, and items taken completely out of context.”

The Plaindealer reported in March 2026 that for two decades the county had spent more than $100,000 a year from its general fund to keep the hall open. Erin Stadelman managed it for ten years and said she had it booked almost every weekend of 2025 before she left that April for Craig, to run a wild horse rescue. Her replacement quit after less than six months. Don Batchelder was a commissioner when the hall was built, and he had told her he wanted “butts in seats and cars in the parking lot.” In the fall of 2025 the county paused hiring a new manager. “We’ve had four fairgrounds managers. They’ve been excellent, and nobody’s ever been able to crack this,” Commissioner Lynn Padgett said. In February 2026, commissioners directed County Manager Antonio Mendez to design a manager’s position paid by bookings. “We’re not going to continue running it at a loss. We’re going to find a way,” Commissioner Jake Niece said.

Batchelder was less sure. “I think you can minimize it, but you never are going to get out of the dilemma — which wasn’t really seen initially — of having a facility like this owned by the county,” he said. Commissioners have rejected selling the building in recent public meetings. If the county ever did sell it, the 2002 agreement gives Hearst the right of first refusal through January 1, 2027.