Sugar Beet Days

On a weekend in September, the Logan County Courthouse Square at 315 Main Street in downtown Sterling fills with more than 200 craft, art, and commercial booths. Food trucks line the surrounding blocks, selling everything from wood-fired pizza to sweet treats. Somewhere among them is the crop the festival is named for: a real raw sugar beet, there to be looked at and tasted. The Explore Sterling guide calls the sugar beet “the ugly cousin of a turnip,” a plant whose root holds a high concentration of sucrose and is grown commercially for sugar.

Sugar Beet Days runs two days, and Explore Sterling places it in the third week of September. The 2026 festival was held September 19 and 20. The music is free. Children have water ball games and bounce houses, and the weekend also includes community competitions and reunions of families, friends, and neighbors. The festival’s own tagline for 2026 was “a Homegrown Celebration.”

Two days on the courthouse square

The 2026 program opened at 9 a.m. Saturday. The American Legion and the VFW posted the colors, and David Chrisp sang the national anthem. The entertainment stage then ran through the day:

• Kathy & Kaysi
• Dennis Fuller and Cassidy Wright
• Jordan Suter
• the Northeast Dance Academy
• Boots In Motion
• Mud County, playing from 4 to 6 p.m.

Sunday began with a worship service at 10 a.m. Jula Belle played at noon. At one o’clock the Logan County Rodeo Royalty held stick horse races, Jula Belle returned for half an hour, and Back Alley closed the weekend from 2 to 4.

The 2026 festival was also a stop on the Logan County Community Passport, part of the county’s America 250 and Colorado 150 observance. Holders had their passports stamped at the Sugar Beet Days information booth. It was the next-to-last stamp of the year, with the final one at the Parade of Lights on December 3.

A storm came through on the Saturday night of the 2026 festival. Late that evening the festival posted: “Thank you to those vendors that jumped in to check on fellow vendors after the storm tonight. That is known as community!”

Between performances, Main Street has places to eat and drink. Simkin’s Parlour, at 316 Main, is noted by Explore Sterling for a gigantic scoop of hard ice cream. Parts & Labor Brewing Company, at 402 Main, pours a brew made with locally grown wheat.

Chip Steger and Marla Foxhoven

The festival’s committee is two people: Chip Steger and Marla Foxhoven. Their names and telephone numbers appear at the foot of every page of the festival’s website. According to the Logan County Chamber of Commerce, Steger helped keep the downtown event going in 2012. The Chamber says that since then it has grown into a fall tradition that showcases local talent and supports the community through scholarships. On September 1, 2026, the Chamber named Sugar Beet Days its Member of the Week. The column in the Sterling Journal-Advocate ran with a photograph of the two organizers.

The Great Western factory in Sterling

The beet on the festival table stands for an industry that shaped the county for most of a century. According to the Chamber, sugar beet farming began in Logan County in 1890, and by 1902 the county was shipping its crop. Explore Sterling says it was that first shipment of harvested beets, in 1902, that led to a sugar factory being built in Sterling. The Great Western Sugar Company opened the factory in 1905, and nearly 9,000 acres of beets were harvested in its first year of operation.

The factory processed its record tonnage in 1930. That year, growers in the Sterling district produced 224,000 tons of sugar beets on 16,869 acres. The Chamber writes that the industry drove the region’s economic growth for 80 years, until changing markets and bankruptcy closed the factory in 1985.

The sources differ on when the festival began. The Chamber’s column says Sugar Beet Days was established in the early 1990s as a tribute to the region’s sugar beet farming. The festival’s own Facebook page, in May 2026, announced that applications for the 46th Annual Sugar Beet Days were going in the mail.