Tillamook County Fair

The Tillamook County Fair fills the county fairgrounds at 4603 East 3rd Street, east of the city of Tillamook, for several days each August, with the gates open from ten in the morning to ten at night. In the barns, 4-H and FFA members show the animals they have raised. In the exhibit halls, county residents set out art, photography, flowers, culinary entries, land products, crafts and hobbies, and textile pieces. The 2026 fair ran August 5 through 9. The fair’s own page sets the 2027 fair for August 11 through 14.

Elephant ears and the Courtyard Stage

The carnival opens at noon each day with rides and games. An OPB account of the fair names the tilt-a-whirl and the yo-yo among the rides, and lists cotton candy, Pronto Pup corn dogs, and ice cream from Tillamook Creamery among the food. The fair’s page says locals swear by the elephant ears and the Pronto Pups. No outside food or drink is allowed, and pets are kept off the grounds for the safety of the animals and people there.

Music runs all day on the outdoor Courtyard Stage. The fair’s listing names free nightly concerts with admission: Niko Moon on Wednesday, Oregon’s 234th Army National Guard Band on Thursday, and Collective Soul on Friday. Pari-mutuel horse racing is held daily in the grandstand arena.

The crowd is large for the county. “Tillamook County Fair is a really small county fair,” said Mike Bentley, a fair board member and the announcer for the Pig-N-Ford races. “We have approximately 25,000 people in our county and in four days there’s over 70,000 people that come to the Tillamook County Fair.”

Pigs and Model T’s in the Grandstand Arena

The Pig-N-Ford races are run each night in the Grandstand Arena. Before the cars go out, numbers written on ping-pong balls are drawn from a coffee can to set the starting order. About a half dozen racers line up. At the gun they sprint across the dirt track to a set of plywood pens, scoop up a piglet under one arm, and run to their Model T’s. With the pig held in one arm, each driver crank-starts the car with the other. The cars are stripped down to chassis, engine, and bench seat. They lurch off the line and throw up mud and manure.

“You’re getting the dirt in the face and in your teeth,” said Ben Salo, a third-generation Pig-N-Ford champion. “You’re holding on because you’re not getting held in by seat belts, and you got a squirming pig, and you’re trying to adjust your spark and read the track and read the other drivers, and so it’s a really raw feeling.”

After one lap the drivers slide to a stop at the starting line and cut their engines. They run back to the pens, set the first piglet down, take a second, and crank-start again. Sometimes they jump over other cars to get there. At the 2024 fair, OPB reported two heat races on each of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, with the winners meeting in a championship race Saturday evening. “And whoever wins that, that’s a big day in Tillamook County,” Bentley said. Salo described the drivers this way: “You ask any racer out there on championship day, ‘Are you here to put on a show?’ ‘No, I’m here to win!’”

Nothing is at stake except pride. The winners’ names go on a brass plate on the side of the trophy, and a handful of family names repeat there across generations. Salo started racing when he got his license at 16 and won his first championship at 18. His father and grandfather raced before him. After his 2023 win he took the fair’s Dairy Princess on a victory lap.

The races were first run in 1925. Their origin is handed down as local folklore, and racer Chris Hurliman told it this way: “Way back in the day, there was a couple of dudes chasing a pig down the road, grabbed it, shoved it in their Model T and decided it was a good idea, ‘We should do this at the county fair!’” OPB traces the idea to working Model T’s from local farms, stripped down and raced on the fairground’s dirt track. A photograph from about the 1960s shows driver Francis Hurliman skidding to a stop to trade his pig.

In the early years anyone could enter. “It used to be just for show years ago, and so anything went and it was pretty hilarious,” said Parry Hurliman, who has been involved with the race for more than 50 years. “Somebody would jump on somebody else’s car or crank start or shut their car off.” The Model T Pig-N-Ford Association formed in the early 1950s. It set up ten franchises to race each year and wrote rules: the cars must be stock, and the pigs have a size limit, which made them smaller and easier to handle. The association places its own safety officials along the track, and a driver can be disqualified on the spot for mishandling a pig.

“We watched our husbands and now we’re watching our sons, but there’s a generation right behind them, biting at the bit, wanting to get on these T’s,” said Kimber Wassmer, many of whose relatives have raced. Salo’s view: “It’s built into us, into this family. It keeps us who we are.”

From the railroad tracks to the domed building

The Tillamook County Fair Association formed on July 25, 1890, and the first county fair was held on September 1, 2, and 3, 1891. From 1896 through 1924 the fair used grounds between the railroad tracks, Evergreen Drive, and Third Street in Tillamook. Plans for new fair buildings on Third Street were approved in 1914.

The sources disagree on when voters paid for the present grounds. The fair’s timeline gives 1920 for the tax measure to buy the property and buildings. The fair’s history page gives 1921 for a county-wide levy of $1 million. Fair board member R.C. Magarelle donated 83.75 acres east of the city, and the Williams family donated another 7.7. The 1925 fair, the same year as the first Pig-N-Ford race, was held in the new domed exhibit building. The grandstand, barns, and dance hall followed in 1926 and 1927. In 1929 an airport was approved on the fairgrounds, described then as “2 miles East of town.” About 63 acres of the grounds remain.

The fair was cancelled in 1942 because of World War II. From 1942 to 1944 the property was used to bivouac Army troops and equipment. In July 1950 the Pioneer Association built the Pioneer Building on the grounds. Restaurant Row went up in 1963. A new barn followed in 1976 and a new animals building in 1981. The skating rink reopened in 1983, Averill Arena was added at the grandstand in 1986, and a convention center opened in 1987. The fair marked its hundredth year in 1991.

In 2021 the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum opened an exhibit called “A Time to Shine: 130 Years of the Tillamook County Fair.” It included the original minutes of the first fair board meeting and a 1915 premium list. The fair office lent dozens of historic premium books for it. Peyton Tracy, who curated the exhibit with Executive Director Jaykob Wood, said, “I think we did the best we possibly could—especially considering how little has been catalogued about the origins of the fair.”

A condemned grandstand and a fair by time slot

The 2007 fair set daily attendance records and continued 17 years of growth. When it closed, the 80-year-old grandstands were virtually condemned. Replacing them cost $2.3 million. Governor Ted Kulongoski directed a $100,000 state grant from the Special Public Works fund to start the community campaign, and TLC Federal Credit Union helped arrange interest-free financing. Local suppliers donated work, including all the electrical labor, valued at $90,000, and the landscaping installation. The new grandstands were dedicated on the Saturday of the 2008 fair. “Because of the new grandstand, the Fair Board has the Royal Lipizzaner Stallions coming to Tillamook the week after the fair and a circus is coming in September,” said fair manager Jerry Underwood. “The new grandstand will definitely get used.” The grandstands also hold the Tillamook County Rodeo and horse racing through the year.

In 2013 the county commissioners rebuilt the volunteer fair board, which had been working without a manager. They expanded it to seven members drawn from across the county.

The 2020 fair, under the theme “Let the Good Times Grow,” was held under the governor’s public-health guidelines. The 4-H, FFA, and junior livestock auction events were limited to members and their families. Open class exhibits filled the Main Building and the skating rink on August 7 and 8. The public came in groups of fifty, in forty-five-minute time slots, with no charge for entry or parking. Pig-N-Ford cars, old tractors, and Longhorn cattle were on display. “The 2020 fair is our gift to the community,” said fair board manager Camy VonSeggern.