Sublette County Fair

At 1:30 on the Saturday afternoon of the 2026 Sublette County Fair, the livestock sale opened in the Event Center, a two-acre building with a concrete floor at the county fairgrounds on US-189 in Marbleton. The livestock awards were set for fifteen minutes earlier. The Buyer’s Appreciation Luncheon had been called for 11:30 in the same building, and the Bred & Raised Beef Show for 9:00 that morning. Outside, the band Mountain Home was scheduled on the stage at the same hour as the sale, and a foam party on the grassy midway at 2:00.

Four days on the Marbleton grounds

The 2026 fair ran July 22 through 25, and the fair website gives July 28 to 31 for 2027. A fair-week guide from the real estate firm RE/MAX Elite says the fair board sets it for the last full week of July. The guide places it three weeks after Big Piney’s Chuckwagon Days and roughly a month before hay is off across most of the upper Green River Valley. That is the window, it says, when buyers are between hay cuttings and ranch families have finished branding season. The grounds cover 80 acres between Big Piney and Marbleton. The two towns are a mile apart, were incorporated in 1913 and 1914, and have defeated every effort to combine them. The fair office keeps a Big Piney post-office box, and the gate is in Marbleton.

During the 2026 fair the midway opened late each morning and ran into the evening. Patrick’s Putt-Putt Golf and a laser maze stood on the grassy area, and carnival games filled the Adventure Zone. From noon to 8:00 the Epic Camel Encounter gave camel rides on the West Grassy Area. Lanky the Clown strolled the grounds several times a day and held a daily contest under the Commercial Building awning. Circus shows, listed as the Touchdown Circus Show and the Hockey Circus Show, played the stage, and the Silver Starlets performed and taught workshops near the Commercial Building. Four acts traded the outdoor stage through the week: Parker William, Eric E., Duelly Noted, and Mountain Home.

The livestock program set the pace underneath all of that. Animals checked in Tuesday evening at the fairgrounds entrance. Wednesday morning brought weigh-in and ultrasound for swine, then for sheep, goats, and beef, with swine showmanship that afternoon. Thursday held the sheep and goat show, the market swine show, and the showmanship jackpots, and Friday the beef show. The Commercial Building held the 4-H and FFA exhibits and the open class static entries, all judged before the gates opened. The RE/MAX guide lists 4-H photography, baking, sewing, welding, and shop projects among them. It notes that static exhibits stay up until their release on Sunday morning, after most of the crowd has gone home.

Evenings went to the arenas. The Insanity Fest Motor Sports Show filled the outdoor arena Wednesday at 7:00. On Thursday at the same hour the Little Buckaroo Rodeo ran in the Ag Center, and the RE/MAX guide observes that children who ride it turn up a few years later in the junior brackets of the fair rodeo. Friday began with a GRVC Philly cheesesteak lunch in the Vendor Barn at 11:00. That evening the Parade of Champions and the horse pulls shared the Ag Center at 7:00, and a dance followed on the stage at 9:00. Saturday closed with a cornhole tournament and a concert by Racyne Parker and Kalyn Beasley.

The fair is run by manager Kailey Barlow and a board of Gary Hayward, Michael Henn, Cody Post, and McKenna Barney. Jay and Brianne Brower and Jayden Burbank keep the grounds, which stay open year-round. Some days after the 2026 fair, the fair posted a handful of lost-and-found items and asked owners to call Brianne for pickup.

Working cowboys in the Buss Fear Arena

The week before the gates open belongs to horses and cattle. On July 17, 2026, a ranch rodeo ran a long-go at 10:00 and a short-go at 6:00 in the Buss Fear Arena. The fair describes the ranch rodeo as a chance for working cowboys to compete with skills they may use at home every day. The events were rustler’s roping, load one head and tie one head, team branding, muley ranch team roping, sort and rope, and single-man calf roping. Team branding took the outdoor arena on the 18th, and team roping and a barrel race followed on the 19th. A junior horse show filled the Ag Center on the 20th and 21st, and the poultry show was held Tuesday the 21st.

The two towns have long put their own riders in the arena. Ann Chambers Noble writes on WyoHistory.org that local cowboys on local horses have always been featured at the Fourth of July rodeos of Chuckwagon Days. She adds that for much of the 20th century the crowds especially favored the chariot races.

A log hall with straw on the floor

Accounts of the fair’s beginning differ. An index to the Pinedale Roundup records a first county fair in 1928, sponsored by the ladies of the Community Club. It also records a County Fair Association organized on October 4 of that year, with J. L. Allen as president of the Sublette County Fair Association in 1929. The same index notes a county fair at Big Piney on July 26, 1951, a permanent fair site acquired on March 6, 1958, and a fair building begun on August 11, 1960.

The Sublette County Historic Preservation Board traces the present fair to a building instead. Big Piney’s Community Hall went up in 1934, paid for with WPA funds and built with volunteer labor. Its logs came down from Middle Piney by horse team and sled as far as the sand hill, then by truck the rest of the way. The chosen site, near the school, was a bog hole in spring, “unsafe for man or car,” and the men of the town drove pilings into bedrock to hold the weight. The hall had a stage, dressing rooms, two oversized pot-bellied stoves, and a string of lights. “Back in ‘36 everything we did ended up in a dance—be it a political rally, a school play, amateur hour or what have you,” Wilda Springman wrote in 1959. “I would venture to say that there was more dancing in Big Piney per capita from ‘36 to ‘40 than there was in New York City.”

In the late 1940s the Lions Club lined the walls and ceiling with sheetrock and put in a kitchen, bathrooms, and a furnace in place of the stoves. In the same period the club sponsored a sale of all the 4-H Club livestock. The first sale was held in the Mercantile shop. It ran short of room, and the next year the sale moved into the hall, where a large door was cut in one end and an alleyway added for the animals. With an auctioneer’s stand, bleachers, and some straw on the floor, the board writes, this was the forerunner of the annual Sublette County Fair.

Up the highway for $500

When Big Piney came to build a new elementary school, the best site was the ground under the hall. Some townspeople wanted to tear the hall down and sell the logs to pay for a new one, and others would hear nothing of it. Bus Fear suggested moving it to the fairgrounds, near where the rodeo arena had been built. In June of 1961 a mover from Idaho was contracted to haul the building up the highway for $500. Many predicted it would never survive the trip, and it arrived intact.

The hall has been renovated inside and out since then. The fairgrounds now calls it the Community Center and lists a hardwood floor, a full working kitchen, and an elevated stage. Around 2001 the preservation board described the hall at fair time filled with quilts, crafts, needlepoint, paintings, sewing projects, and culinary entries laid out for judging. By the board’s account the fair was then held the first week in August. During the 2026 fair the hall held the art show, with a paint-out on the grounds Friday afternoon and a reception inside that evening.