Santa Cruz County Fair & Rodeo

A rock wall, built in 1961, marks the entrance to the Sonoita Fairgrounds on Arizona Route 83, just south of its junction with Route 82. At the gate stand a bronze cowboy by Deborah Copenhaver Fellows, titled “Tribute to Ranching” in a photograph filed with the Historical Marker Database, and an American Quarter Horse marker, AQHHMP #27, erected in 2000. Plaques for the working ranch horse competition are fixed to the back of the marker. The grounds lie at 5,000 feet, 40 miles southeast of Tucson, and the association that runs them says the temperature here is typically 10 to 15 degrees cooler than in the city.

The grounds cover 36.5 acres. They hold a covered grandstand seating 2,200, a lighted rodeo arena and a performance arena, a half-mile race track, 180 horse stalls, exhibition halls, a club house with a kitchen, and parking for about 2,000 vehicles. The Santa Cruz County Fair & Rodeo Association owns and operates the place through its membership. Its 2026 board was led by Bryce Wright, president, and Dale Davies, vice president, with Juli Miller as treasurer and Traci Dixon as secretary. Events run through most of the year: spring barrel races, the Arizona high school and junior high rodeo finals in May, the Friday Nights Under the Lights livestock show series in summer, pancake and breakfast-burrito mornings, a community Halloween party with a chili cook-off on October 30, 2026, and Sonoita Small Town Christmas in December. The heaviest weeks fall in September.

The Labor Day Rodeo and the steak fry

The 111th Sonoita Labor Day Rodeo ran September 5, 6, and 7, 2026, under the billing “Best Little Rodeo in Arizona.” Gates opened at 10 each morning. The junior rodeo started at noon and the main performance at 2. Each day carried a dedication: First Responder Appreciation Day on Saturday, Tough Enough to Wear Pink on Sunday, and Military Appreciation Day on Monday. On Saturday and Sunday evenings a steak fry ran from 5 to 7, and at 7 the live music and dance began, with Southern Rein on Saturday and Zander Rodriguez on Sunday. The Sonoita Ranch Rodeo followed on September 12 and 13.

Watermelons and steers in Pioneer Hall

The 111th Santa Cruz County Fair ran September 18 through 20, 2026, with a demolition derby called the Sonoita Smash on the program. Friday is school day, and children 15 and under entered free until noon.

Richard and Diane Collins described school day at the 104th fair, on September 20, 2019. At mid-morning, 18 yellow school buses from all over the county rolled past the bronze cowboy. Carnival rides stood next to the baseball park, and cars were parked on the soccer field. The students marched into Pioneer Hall, where the tables held locally grown vegetables, fruits, ornamental plants, and flowers. Dr. Bob Hyland, the vegetable supervisor, had the children guess the weight of an enormous watermelon, and a large, cheerful honeybee served as the backdrop for class pictures. Food was served on the patio, and the bandstand carried Country and Western, Mariachi, and O’odham music. At the Livestock Pavilion, 4-H and FFA members readied sheep, hogs, steers, and small stock for the show ring and for the auction on Sunday. “Sunday sale day is both a sad time of separation and a pay day for their work, worry, and learning,” the Collinses wrote.

Pioneer Hall also houses the Bowman Stradling History Museum, which Betty Barr and Diane Collins opened in May 2009. Much of the collection came from Anne Stradling’s Museum of the Horse, formerly in Patagonia, and from the private collection of Bob Bowman of Sonoita. The museum holds:

• the desk and chair from the Kentucky Camp post office
• the postal scale from the Elgin post office
• a gold flake from a nearby hillside
• saddles from across the cowboy era in the region
• buffalo hide chaps, oxen shoes, spittoons, and Confederate bills

The walls carry images and awards from past Sonoita horse races and behind-the-scenes photographs from films made in the area. One shows a young Harrison Ford posing with Pattie Oliver (née Holbrook) of Elgin, a local extra in “The Frisco Kid.” Barr kept the museum for fourteen years. In 2023 she handed the keys to Cami Schlappy of Sonoita, who took over as historian and began researching Elgin and its pioneer families.

Ten acres apiece

The hall stands where the grounds began. In 1915 a group of residents incorporated the Santa Cruz Fair Association “for the purpose of having an annual fair.” In 1916 Wade Purdum and Frank Rigsby of Sonoita each donated ten acres, and volunteers built a wood-frame building on the site of today’s Pioneer Hall. The association reincorporated in 1936 as the Santa Cruz County Fair and Rodeo Association.

By 1940 the association hosted two events with horse racing and rodeo. The 16th annual Fourth of July rodeo came first. The 25th annual county fair followed in October and was promised as the biggest and best yet, with a visit from the governor and a performance by the University of Arizona band. A cattle barn went up the same year.

Two later presidents have buildings named for them. Houghton “Bum” Hedgcock came from Indiana in 1945 with his wife, Frances, to run the Los Encinos guest ranch with his brother Harvey. The brothers added cattle, and Bum bought out Harvey in 1949. Rose E. Piper’s 1999 history of the association calls him a “tireless” worker. He sat on the committee that won a grant from the Arizona State Racing Commission to build a racetrack, which went in during 1953 or 1954, and he served as president in 1955 and 1956. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1957. The association then voted to name the 50-by-60-foot all-purpose building under construction for him, with an office in one corner and a plaque. Hedgcock Hall dates from 1958.

Joseph Reagan Gardner was born in Arizona in 1906, the son of a rancher in the Douglas area. He mined at Greaterville in 1930. By 1940 he was ranching in Elgin and driving a truck, eventually for the Arizona Highway Department. His wife, Hettie, was the Sonoita postmistress for many years. Gardner was president from 1950 to 1952, helped manage the Sonoita Rodeo, and sat on the same racetrack committee as Hedgcock. The 50-by-100-foot building southwest of Pioneer Hall went up in 1960 and was later named for him “in honor of his long service to the Association.” The rock wall at the entrance followed a year later.

Lightning Bar and Mark T Bars

Horses ran at Sonoita long before the association built its track. The marker at the gate traces the race and show tradition to early settlers in Arizona cattle country, for whom “seeing whose horse was fastest or who had the best working ranch horse was a natural form of competition.” Unofficial race meets are recorded as far back as 1915.

The Sonoita Quarter Horse Show began on these grounds in 1939. Exhibitors isolated by distance came to compete against regional horses such as Lightning Bar, sire of Doc Bar, whom the marker calls one of the most influential cutting horse sires in history. By 1949, early issues of The Quarter Horse Journal carried Sonoita show results to a national audience. In 1954, Sonoita race results first appeared in the AQHA Chart Books.

Except for a short span during World War II, the marker says, Sonoita has given owners an early-season look at how a particular horse will run. It names several horses that have raced here:

• the world champions Ed Grimley, Mars Blackman, and Sign it Super
• Mark T Bars, the all-time leading winner, with 64 wins in 115 official starts
• Pies Royal Request, co-holder of the record of 14 consecutive wins
• Fast Copy, dam of the champion Heza Fast Man

The 2026 Sonoita Quarter Horse Show is scheduled for October 9 through 11.

Keeping the gates open

Writing in 2019 against a proposal to move Sonoita and Elgin into Cochise County, the Collinses noted that these grounds were built, owned and operated by the local community and volunteers, unlike other county fairgrounds. Keeping the gates open then cost about $160,000 a year, paid from event profits and donations. When money ran short, the community put on barbecues, dances, and fundraisers. Santa Cruz County had begun contributing materials, equipment, labor, and $20,000 to the general fund, and the state had allocated $40,000 in recent years. Through Judge Keith Barth, trustee labor from the state prison in Tucson helped maintain the grounds.

Between the big events, the grounds host youth baseball and soccer. Pioneer Hall hosts weddings, funerals, quinceañeras, and birthdays. The Collinses drove the 81 miles to the Cochise County Fairgrounds in Douglas and judged it extremely unlikely that people would make that trip for their fair.

In 2020 the county Board of Supervisors approved the Labor Day Rodeo by a vote of two to one. It then unanimously denied a modified fair proposed for September 19. The plan called for one day, all outdoors, with a farmers market, a corn hole tournament, sack races, a pet parade, rubber duck fishing, egg and spoon races, and an outdoor movie at sunset. Supervisor Bruce Bracker of District 3 said the board followed the recommendation of county health director Jeff Terrell. “It was a unanimous decision to deny the fair because no Arizona counties approved their fairs,” Bracker said. The Patagonia Regional Times noted that Graham County had scheduled a modified two-day fair for October.

The Junior Livestock Show and Sale went ahead on a modified schedule, with an online auction in place of the live one. “We’re disappointed that we are not able to have the fair, but we are thankful that the kids will still be able to have their livestock show and sell their animals online,” said Lacy Beyer, the fairgrounds manager.