San Joaquin County Fairgrounds Flea Market

Shoes at $2 each, strawberries and watermelons on a produce vendor’s table, the beat of live music and the smell of food trucks moving between the booths: that is how Stocktonia’s Sammy Jimenez found the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds Flea Market on the Thursday morning of April 24, 2025. The market sets up on the fairgrounds’ carnival lot off South Airport Way in Stockton every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday and closes at 2 p.m. Most listings give 6 a.m. as the opening hour, though one of the market’s own Instagram accounts says 7. Families and people on their own walk the aisles looking for a deal, and parking and admission cost nothing.

Thursdays on the carnival lot

Thursday is the big day. Owner Carlos De La Torre counted about 250 vendors on Thursdays in 2025. Visit Stockton’s listing puts Wednesday at 100 vendors and says Thursday can run over 300, which by its count makes this the largest flea market in San Joaquin County. Goods are new and used. The market’s Instagram bio, written in capitals, reads “THE COUNTIES BIGGEST LITTLE MARKET.”

Mondays go out under the name “Stockton vintage Mondays,” weather permitting, advertised with the line “a little bit of this and a little bit of that.” The market says holidays are traditionally its biggest days. De La Torre puts Thanksgiving at up to 10,000 visitors, the most of any day in the year. For 2026 the market announced a Friday Night Market for the third Friday of each month, April through September, in the fairgrounds’ main parking lot. A July 14, 2026, post on one of its Instagram accounts said the Friday Night Market had been canceled and pointed shoppers back to the morning market.

Le’ Mignon’s and a table of air fresheners

Roosevelt Terry, 63, and Mignon Terry, 38, sell hats, colognes, toys and shoes under the name “Le’ Mignon’s.” They work several flea markets around Stockton and call it a “full-time gig.” In April 2025 they were eight months into it. “From the time when we started — and we’re eight months into it — it’s a well investment,” Mignon Terry said. “I’ll be honest, that’s why we’re still here.”

The couple say the stakes at the market are low, so they can try different products and swap items on any given day. “You know what the first rule of selling is? You find out what the market wants,” Roosevelt Terry said. As shoppers walked past their booth, Mignon Terry described the crowd: “Even though you may not speak the same language, verbally, your body language speaks to whether you’re welcoming.” The pair said the staff treat everyone fairly. “If you need help with something they’re gonna help you,” she said.

A few tables away, Deandre Stewart sold air fresheners and clothes while he looked for work. “I’ll come until I’m able to find me another job that’s steady,” he said. “I’m a warehouse worker, I like working in warehouses.”

The staff the Terrys spoke of are mostly family. Carlos and his wife, Lena De La Torre, share the owner’s duties. Their nephew Ruben Chaves, who also grew up near the fairgrounds, manages the market. “We’ve got a very diverse crowd,” De La Torre said. “We got everything out here.”

A Thursday permit in 1996

De La Torre was born in Stockton and grew up around the corner from the fairgrounds in south Stockton. “When I grew up, my dad took me to all the flea markets,” he said. “And when I used to come here as a kid, it was cool. It was a cool thing to do.”

In 1996 Forrest White, then CEO of the fairgrounds, gave De La Torre the go-ahead to open one day a week, on Thursdays, and he and Lena started the market. It drew about 25 to 30 vendors a week at first and grew slowly. Then the Stockton Open Air Mall and Flea Market opened, and soon afterward the fairgrounds market closed. “It killed all the flea markets,” De La Torre said.

He later persuaded White to let him reopen one day a week, and growth again came gradually. “It took a while, but once it sparked, it started picking up and started picking up,” De La Torre said. Vendor spaces that began at $5 now rent for $20 on Mondays. By late 2016 The Record described the market as the county’s largest and said it had grown from two days a week to three. The COVID-19 pandemic shut it down once more. “We were the last one to open up because we’re on state property,” De La Torre said.

Barbed wire on the fairgrounds

The state property in question covers 252 acres at Airport Way and Martin Luther King Boulevard. It holds a grandstand seating 3,800 and parking for 5,000 vehicles, and the fairgrounds’ own history says its facilities opened in 1860. In 2016 The Record reported that the county fair had been suspended in 2015, during state budget troubles that cut support for fairs, and had returned in 2016. Kelly Olds, CEO since 2014, said the grounds now host events “every day of the year, including Christmas.” Those events have included sprint car racing, tractor pulls, quinceañeras, dog shows, concerts and funerals. Olds said horse racing at the site dates to the Gold Rush era, and it was suspended for the rest of 2016. Some structures on the grounds date to the early 1940s. “It’s like a big park,” Olds said.

From May 10 to October 17, 1942, the fairgrounds served as the Stockton Assembly Center. Under Executive Order 9066, 4,217 San Joaquin County residents of Japanese ancestry, predominately American citizens, were held there in temporary barracks behind barbed wire. The site is California Historical Landmark No. 934, listed May 13, 1980, and its plaque stands at the fairgrounds’ Administration Building. The plaque closes: “May such usurpation of civil, social, and economic rights, without specific charges or trial, never again occur.”