Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds

A metal-cast Ol’ Nugget, the Siskiyou Golden Fair’s mascot, stands outside the front gates on Fairlane Road in Yreka. Skip Hanna drew him. Ol’ Nugget had served the fair for 45 years when Hanna died in March 2017, and Cliff Munson, then the fair’s CEO, had the casting made to greet fair-goers. Hanna’s son Greg saw it before the gates opened that August. “This is the first time I’ve seen it just now, and it’s phenomenal,” he said. He and his wife grew up at the fair. “My wife and I laugh that we kind of met as little kid, fair rats and eventually became man and wife.” The 2017 theme was Pioneer Days to Modern Ways. Hanna’s original drawing hung in that year’s exhibit, and the grounds also showed an original 1883 stagecoach that ran from Yreka to Klamath Falls, Oregon. “I don’t know exactly what you would determine to be historical, but after 45 years, we feel like Ol’ Nugget is historical,” Munson said. He expected about 50,000 people through the gates that year.

The grounds belong to the 10th District Agricultural Association, a state agency. Its motto is “Promoting excellence in agriculture awareness and education.” The fair now runs Wednesday through Sunday at the end of June. The 2026 fair ran June 24 through 28. The 2027 fair is set for June 23 to 27 under the theme “A Slice of Heaven in 2027,” submitted by Penny Fitzsimmons and chosen by the board on September 15, 2026. Each year a Paint the Fair contest selects an artist’s painting of the theme as the fair’s artwork.

Motorcycles Thursday, the derby Sunday

The grandstand arena holds the fair’s big shows. FMX Rampage Motorcross, a freestyle motocross show, opens the fair at 7 p.m. Thursday. The Rodeo Shootout starts at 6:30 p.m. Friday. The M&S Entertainment Jaripeo runs in the grandstand from 5 to 10 p.m. and needs no ticket beyond gate admission. The Destruction Derby closes the fair at 4 p.m. Sunday. Moondog Motorsports promotes it, and its main event pays $6,000 for first place. Grandstand seats come as box or general admission and are sold online only. The price goes up once the fair begins. In 2025, for the fairground’s hundredth year, the grandstand held its first concert in 14 years: Chancey Williams headlined on a Saturday evening, with Ben Haggard, a Shasta County native.

Each day of the fair lets a different group in free. On Thursday, Kids Day, children 12 and under enter free. On Friday, Seniors Day, the free age is 62 and older. Saturday is Armed Forces Day, free to active and retired military. Sunday is Family Day, when everyone gets in free. Children 6 and under are free every day. Out on the midway, a child must be at least three years old and 36 inches tall for a ride wristband, and no one wearing a cast may ride. Nobody enters or re-enters the grounds after 10 p.m.

Heifers by the head, wheelbarrows by the rule

The livestock barns hold the open and junior departments: beef, dairy cattle, goats, sheep, swine, poultry, turkeys, rabbits and cavies, plus showmanship classes. Still exhibits fill the buildings. There are baked and preserved foods, quilts, photography, clothing and textiles, floriculture, ag-hort, arts and crafts, table settings, birdhouses and wheelbarrows. Some classes are judged on the American system, which ranks entries against each other. Others use the Danish system, which judges each entry against a fixed standard. Fair-goers vote a People’s Choice award for their favorite still exhibit.

The junior livestock auction is open to anyone who wants to bid. A buyer picks up a number at the Mobile J&C Auction Trailer, across the walkway from the sale ring, or registers to bid online. Animals sell by the pound, except bred dairy heifers and bred beef replacement heifers, which sell by the head. Proceeds go to young people in Siskiyou County’s FFA, 4-H and Grange programs and to independent youth exhibitors.

Elsewhere on the grounds are the Beer Garden Pavilion, Winema Hall, the Floral Building, Lillard Arena, and the Collier Pavilion with its warm-up arena. The SisQ Bee Club keeps a pollinator garden, 40 by 60 feet, inside the fairgrounds. Club volunteers water and weed it through the growing season. Students in grades four through eight from Yreka Union Elementary come to plant seeds and native species and learn to identify the bees, butterflies, birds and beetles that feed and nest there.

Chainsaws in April, cattle on Mother’s Day

The grounds work outside fair week too. In April the State of Jefferson Expo brings vendors, food and competition. Its first edition ran April 11 and 12, 2026, alongside the NorCal Invitational Chainsaw Carving Championships, then in its 13th year in Yreka. A press release promised “world class carvers from across the United States.” The program also includes a Siskiyou Hot Saw Contest. The next carving championship is set for April 9 to 11, 2027.

Mother’s Day weekend belongs to the Siskiyou Golden Jackpot, a youth cattle show that draws junior exhibitors from across the West. Sources disagree on when it began. A Siskiyou News story says it started in 2009 “around the Nicoletti’s kitchen table.” The fair’s 2019 press release says 2010. In 2013 the show was renamed for Tony Nicoletti, who was instrumental in bringing it to Yreka and who, the release says, believed livestock kids need events where they can compete and build lifelong relationships in the industry. The show has a tradition of hiring judges who were once on the Texas Tech livestock judging team, starting with Dr. Ryan Rathmann. In 2019 the judge was Dr. Jon DeClerk of Lubbock. That year Seth Cox of Eagle Point, Oregon, took grand champion heifer with an Angus female. Reserve went to Jade Lassaga’s heifer, bought from the Mercier family in Montague. The local show on Mother’s Day included a Mother’s Day class, won by Jennifer Harrison.

On the Saturday before Thanksgiving, the outdoor Holiday Gift Fair brings more than 50 vendors selling everything from children’s furniture to coffee beans, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with no admission charge. The 2026 Holiday Gift Fair is set for November 21.

From Miner Street to Fairlane Road

Siskiyou County’s first fair, an agricultural show, was held October 5 and 6, 1859, at Fort Jones. Its sponsor was the Siskiyou County Agricultural Association, with I.E. Harris as president. The fair stayed at Fort Jones until 1867. That year Judge E. Steele, who had been president of the Siskiyou County Agricultural Society in 1866, brought it to Yreka. The town had no fairgrounds and no exhibit buildings. Exhibits went into tents in Yreka City Park and into empty storefronts along Miner Street, lent for the few days of the fair, and livestock stayed in the livery stables. William Irwin, who later became governor of California, presided over the Agricultural Society for that first Yreka fair.

In 1880 the county gave up its local fair for a while in favor of six-county shows backed by the farming and mining interests of Siskiyou, Shasta, Modoc, Klamath, Lassen and Trinity counties. The county fair came back as an annual event in 1919 under the Pomona Grange. William L. Kleaver was appointed President-Manager, and the fair again used Yreka City Park and Harmon’s Livery Stable.

In 1925 a group of local ranchers and business owners raised money to buy the present grounds, and public subscription brought in $12,000. The property was deeded to Siskiyou County on condition that the county levy funds for a grandstand and exhibit buildings. The Board of Supervisors voted $20,000 by direct levy, spread over two years. In December 1926, under the State Agricultural Association Act, the county became the 10th District Agricultural Association and began reorganizing the Siskiyou County Fair Association so the district could share in state money from horse-racing license fees. The new governor-appointed board first met on May 23, 1927, and the first fair on the present ground opened that September. The fair’s centennial release says that first fair ran under the direction of the Siskiyou County Fair Association. The board rejected the 1927 bids for a grandstand and accepted one a year later. The new grandstand was finished for the three-day fair that opened September 18, 1928.

In 1952 the county gained a second fair, the Tulelake Butte Valley Fair, and the Yreka fair took the name Siskiyou County Fair and Paul Bunyan Festival. The centennial release spells it “Bunyon.” The board chose the name Siskiyou Golden Fair in 1972.

Racing money, a fire, and a move to June

For 85 years, from 1926 to 2010, California’s fairs ran on pari-mutuel horse-racing fees. In 2010 the state moved fair funding into its general fund. In 2011, in a budget crisis, it eliminated fair funding altogether. Since then the grounds have depended on community support, the annual fair, rentals and their year-round events. The office sign says that with state budget cuts and a small staff it sometimes closes for a while. On those days a slot in the front door takes whatever is dropped off.

Kleaver managed the grounds from 1919 to 1946, through a short suspension. His successors were Steward Waite, Ed Mathews, Jim Jones and William Whitaker. Ron Lillard served from April 1974 to December 1999, Rebecca Weathers Desmond from 2000 to 2010, and Cliff Munson from June 2010 to July 2026.

Wildfire changed the calendar. In 2022 the McKinney Fire forced the junior livestock auction out of the county to the Jackson County Expo in Oregon. With help from the Expo’s board, staff and volunteers, the auction sold 269 lots and raised more than $1,200,452.93 for Siskiyou County youth. On October 15, 2024, the district board met in the Beer Garden Pavilion with the fair dates on its agenda. A crowd of about 60 people strongly favored moving the fair to the end of June, starting in 2026. KOBI-TV reported that avoiding peak wildfire season was the main reason.

Julie Mercier took over as CEO on July 7, 2026, days after the first June fair. She runs Mercier Cattle with her family and supplies livestock to local 4-H and FFA youth. She has pointed to the free jaripeo as the kind of new event she wants more of, and with the fair’s old autumn dates now open, she is weighing a fall festival. “With the fair being moved to June, we’ve talked about exploring a different event to happen in the fall to kind of keep within the community, create more revenue streams, things like that,” she said. Her stated aim is to “continue to preserve the heritage of the fair, while adding in new ideas.”