Owyhee County Fair & Rodeo

From the four-way stop in the middle of Homedale, the fair book’s directions run west on Idaho Avenue for three blocks, then north on 3rd Street West for about seven more, following the signs. The Owyhee County Fairgrounds lie off Highway 95 on the banks of the Snake River. There are two big parking lots, and no parking anywhere inside. The 2026 fair ran August 3 through 8 under the theme “Heritage to Harvest.” Its Livestock Barn is dedicated to the memory of Mary Blackstock.

The week opens on horseback. On Monday and Tuesday the Owyhee County 4-H Horse Show fills the fairgrounds arena from 8 a.m. The classes run through showmanship, Western and bareback equitation, English, green horse and cow work, then ranch horse, trail and reining. Tuesday’s program begins with a parade of clubs, a flag salute and recognition of graduating seniors. That evening sheep and goats are weighed in at the Livestock Barn.

On Wednesday the barns take over. Cloverbud goats show at 9 a.m., market goats at 10 and sheep at 1. Beef follows at 8 Thursday morning and dairy cattle that afternoon. Rabbits, dogs, poultry and cats go before the judges at the Tumbleweed Theatre. Through the week the fair’s Facebook page posted short interviews from the barns: the Hipwell kids with their horses, the Brown sisters after the beef show, and Jaci Gould and Nieko De Winkle at the goat show. On August 5 Easton Brown took grand champion in sheep showmanship, with reserve to Greyson Landa. Saturday begins with the Large Animal Round Robin at 8 a.m. Buyers sit down to lunch at 11 outside the Livestock Barn, and the junior sale of beef, swine, sheep and goats follows. The fair’s page gave the 2026 sale a noon start.

Cow patties, salt blocks and a siphon tube

Between the shows run the open contests, entered at the Exhibit Hall on Tuesday. They include apple pies, commissioners’ cookies, salt block lick art, a category called “Items Made by a Man!” and another called OC Nature’s Wonder. The cow patty toss is at noon Wednesday by the Goat Barn, and corn eating is at 2 by the Tumbleweed Theatre. Thursday brings the veggie creature contest in the morning and watermelon eating at 3. DeLamar Mine gold panning sets up in the Siphon Tube Area from 10 to 4, and a siphon tube setting contest is also on the list. Friday belongs to the children: a roping contest at 1, a stickhorse race at 2 and a pedal tractor pull at 3. Saturday closes with the Farm Olympics.

Evenings move outdoors. A cornhole tournament starts Monday at 6. The 4-H Style Revue walks on Wednesday, and a foam party runs from 7 to 11 that night in the Exhibit Hall parking lot. A Barnyard Fashion Show follows on Thursday. Buckin’ Country and the Jeff Palmer Band each played the Tumbleweed Theatre at 7:30 p.m. The parade comes down Homedale’s main streets at 9 p.m. Tuesday. It lines up at the fairgrounds and is judged at 8:30, with no pre-registration and cash prizes.

The fair holds its own local rodeo on the weekend. Slack runs Thursday at 6 p.m., with performances Friday and Saturday at 7. The program covers saddle bronc, open and #4 team roping, breakaway, bull riding, junior steer riding and the ladies’ cowhide race. Afterward the fair’s page asked people to post their videos and added, “My favorite part was the ladies cowhide race.”

The board, the grand marshal and the grounds crew

The Owyhee County Fair Board draws members from Bruneau, Marsing, Grand View, Homedale, Murphy, Wilson and Pleasant Valley. Doug Rutan chairs it. Sonya Criffield is fair manager and board secretary, and Francisco Garibay keeps the grounds. The Owyhee Avalanche composed the 2026 fair book.

The 2026 grand marshal was Kelly Aberasturi, District 2 county commissioner for five terms. He had served on the fair board before his election. “I served the county strictly for the citizens, and I was humbled to be able to serve the citizens for 16 years,” he said in the book. The same pages honored Lath Callaway, a former board chairman. The board’s Facebook page said of him that he “sees something that needs to be done and just jumps in,” lending time and equipment through fair week. April Binford was also recognized as she finished 10 years on the board. She grew up in Homedale, and all three of her children showed animals at the fair before leaving for college.

When the 2026 fair closed, Criffield wrote on the fair’s page about the months of planning and then the week itself: “The barns fill up. The exhibits start coming in. Kids are everywhere.” She closed with: “Was everything perfect? Probably not. But there was a whole lot of heart behind it.” A post-fair meeting followed on September 3 at the Homedale Community Center.

The grounds are used outside fair week too. In 2023 the Homedale Lions Club held its 42nd annual Fourth of July Demolition Derby there, and its drivers met beforehand in the fairgrounds pig barn. In September 2026 the board posted that the fairgrounds and arena were open for rentals, including horse clinics, roping practices and workshops.

Yellow chutes on the Snake River

The Owyhee County Rodeo runs separately, under its own board, and bills itself as “Thrilling PRCA Rodeo Action In the Shadows of the Owyhee Mountains.” Its site gave August 13 to 15 as the 2026 dates, a week after the fair. Performances started at 7:30 each night, and the slack on the morning of the 13th was free to all.

The professional program covers bareback, steer wrestling, team roping, saddle bronc, tie-down roping, barrel racing and bull riding. Local events fill out the bill:

• open breakaway roping
• a local team roping in which one roper must live in Owyhee County, in one of its school districts, or in Jordan Valley or Adrian
• steer riding for ages 8 to 13, with the top six riders returning Saturday
• mutton busting for children 5 to 7 and no heavier than 55 pounds
• a wild horse race, run when at least three teams enter

Kade Rogge announces, Corey & Lange supply the stock, and Austin Singley works as barrelman and funny man. The arena records the site lists include Ryder Wright’s 87.5 points on a saddle bronc, Mossy Waite’s 85 on a bull, and a 16.85-second barrel run by Megan McLeod-Sprague.

That professional standing dates to 2023. Until then, the Avalanche reported, cowboys “rocketed out of the chutes from directly under the announcer’s stand.” Through the early summer of 2023, rodeo directors tore out the old chutes and moved the announcer’s stand to the east. They put in new bright yellow bucking chutes with the alleyway in the middle, and finished new rough stock pens on the south end of the arena a few weeks before the show. The county commissioners put $75,000 toward the work. Of that, $20,203 came from an insurance settlement after an arsonist burned down the rodeo grounds beer garden. According to County Clerk Angie Barkell, the remaining $54,797 came from federal American Rescue Plan Act money.

The sanction made Homedale one of more than 650 PRCA rodeos and a stop on the Wilderness Circuit, carrying $35,000 in added money according to ProRodeo.com. The rodeo board welcomed fans that August to what it called “the biggest small-town rodeo in Idaho.” The Avalanche predicted the action would change little at “the rodeo on the Snake River that comes around every first full week in August.” That year the fair and rodeo shared the week. Danika Stewart of Dana Designs painted storefront windows along Homedale’s streets as businesses got ready.

Queens since 1946

The rodeo’s site dates its start to 1946. Its list of queens begins that year with Evelyn Kiester and runs without a gap: Ruth Foreman in 1947, Louise Mears in 1948 and Mary Jesenko in 1949. Jesenko’s name appears again in 1958, and Elsie Jesenko wore the crown in 1953. Queens still work the crowd. On Thursday of the 2023 rodeo, Kick Cancer Night, queen Becky Green and the three contestants for the 2023–24 crown moved through the stands collecting donations to fight breast cancer, and the new queen was crowned at the Saturday performance. Kyndel Harpe, Allison Hubler and Trinity Neeser were the contestants that year, and Hubler is listed as queen for 2024. The list ends with Riley Shearn, 2025.