Sierra County Fair

The Sierra County Fair is held each year in early October at the Sierra County Fairgrounds, 2953 South Broadway, in Truth or Consequences. It comes the weekend after the Southern NM State Fair. The 2026 fair runs October 6 through 11 and is open to spectators October 8 through 11. Admission is free and visitors walk in. The Sierra County Extension Office runs it. The county’s tourism listing names what fills the grounds: arts, crafts, livestock, food vendors, community groups, “and fun!”

The indoor departments are received and judged on entry day. From Thursday afternoon through Sunday afternoon the judged exhibits stand open to the public, and the barns hold the animals that the young exhibitors have brought in to be weighed, shown, and sold.

Swine at eight, steers at five

The 2025 schedule, published with the warning that it was subject to change, shows how the week runs. On the first day, a Wednesday, the indoor exhibits came in from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and were judged at 3. The pigs were on the grounds by 9 and were weighed at 9:30, and the rest of the livestock were weighed at 10:30. The rabbit and cavy show was at 4 p.m., and the first part of the adult round robin was at 6.

Thursday opened with the swine show at 8 a.m., then the poultry show at 11, rabbit showmanship at 1, and the goat show at 3, followed by the second part of the adult round robin. Friday belonged to the larger animals: the lamb show at 9, the dairy heifer show at 2, and the steer show at 5.

Saturday is the long day. In 2025 round robin showmanship began at 8 a.m. and cow patty bingo was at 1 p.m. The buyers’ dinner was at 5, ahead of the sale. At 6 the Sierra County Fair court was crowned, and at 6:30 the junior livestock sale began. The Junior Livestock Dance falls on either the Friday or the Saturday night. On Sunday the exhibits stayed open from 9 until noon, when breakdown began.

A barn that “needs a little love”

The barn where much of this happens is old. “I know that the original building was built in the 50s or 60s. It’s very sturdy but it needs a little love,” County Manager Amber Vaughn told Steve Mull of the Sierra County Sentinel in February 2025. “To my understanding, it hasn’t been really updated for a very long time.” The grounds once hosted more events year-round. “They do a few events at the Albert J. Lyons Building, but we’re really hoping to bring in more to the property,” she said.

The construction firm Wilson and Company designed a master plan for the whole fairground property, and it was submitted to the County Commission in 2023. The fair board and the commission chose to remodel the existing fair barn first, with the kitchen and bathrooms to be brought up to code. By early 2025 the roof had been replaced and insulation added. “It was kind of drafty and you couldn’t [maintain] temperature in there,” Vaughn said. The county also bought a new livestock scale and a new transformer so the barn’s electricity could be redone.

The county received about $2 million in legislative funding and had spent about $540,000 by then. A new multi-purpose building, designed to house the pigs during fair season, was bid out together with the barn remodel, but the money did not cover both. “So we prioritized the fair barn,” Vaughn said. “But we already have the design for the multi-purpose, we just have to wait until there’s funding available.” She said the county had set the contractors “a very strict timeline” so that the work would be done by September of that year.

The county seat that changed its name

The fairgrounds belong to a county whose commissioners, in their first act in 1884, built a shelter over a hot spring at Las Palomas, south of the present town. The town grew up around the springs after the building of Elephant Butte Dam. It was incorporated as Hot Springs in 1916 and had 455 residents in the 1920 census. It became the Sierra County seat in 1937.

According to the town’s visitor site, health-seekers grew fewer after World War II. In March 1950, Ralph Edwards, host of the NBC Radio quiz show Truth or Consequences, announced that he would broadcast the show’s 10th-anniversary program from the first town that renamed itself after it. On March 31, 1950, the residents of Hot Springs voted 1,294 to 295 to take the name. The program was broadcast from the town the following evening.