Tucumcari Rawhide Days

The center of Tucumcari Rawhide Days is the Tucumcari Historical Museum at 416 South Adams Street. The museum fills three floors of a 1903 schoolhouse, with five indoor and outdoor exhibits and rooms arranged by theme. The festival’s own website is kept in the museum’s name. For three days each June the grounds hold a western celebration built around a television show, and the town’s motels, restaurants, and other businesses fill with visitors from across the country, by the organizers’ account.

Cowboy Church and a chuckwagon breakfast

The 2026 festival ran June 19 through 21. On Friday, Cowboy Church met at the museum at 10 a.m., and the opening ceremony brought out the QC Choir and Mariachi Diferencia. Saturday was the long day at the museum, with events from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. It opened with a chuckwagon breakfast. The Rawhide Parade went through town, and a car show and a raffle drawing filled out the program. Live music came from Vanessa, Amanda Gonzalez, Jonathan Castillo, and Mariachi Diferencia. KFDA, the Amarillo station that covered the 2026 opening, reported vendors and food trucks on hand.

Across town, Mesalands Community College opened its Dinosaur Museum free to all that Saturday, June 20, as a festival partner. Its exhibit hall holds original and replicated fossils, from tiny footprint casts to the 40-foot skeleton of Torvosaurus, a Jurassic carnivore related to Tyrannosaurus rex. The college’s announcement invited visitors to “come get a glimpse at prehistoric life as the wild west meets the wild Mesozoic Era.”

Barrel racing off Old Route 66

The livestock end of the festival runs separately from the museum day. Barrel racing and the junior livestock show take all three days at the Quay County Fairgrounds, off Old Route 66. In 2026 the organizers’ schedule promised more information on the barrel racing “to come.”

The festival has not always kept to June. A New Mexico Tourism Department listing, written for a fifth annual Rawhide Days and giving no year, places it on the last weekend of April. That listing describes a two-day event with an old-fashioned musical jamboree, special guests and autograph signings, a petting zoo, chuck wagon meals, Western wares, and carriage rides. It also invites visitors to mix with the locals “amongst many of the same locations as the cast and crew.” The Tucumcari/Quay County Chamber of Commerce now lists Rawhide Days as a June event, every year.

Wishbone came from Tucumcari

Organizers say the idea for the festival came from “Rawhide.” According to Mesalands Community College, the series first aired in 1959 and starred a young Clint Eastwood in his first major acting role. It ran for more than six years and eight seasons, and several episodes were filmed in and around Tucumcari. KFDA reported that the cast and crew stayed in Tucumcari motels while the show was filming.

The festival’s tribute page recalls the show’s trail crew. Gil Favor was the trail boss. Rowdy Yates was played by Eastwood, and Pete Nolan was the scout. Wishbone, the chuckwagon cook, was played by Paul Brinegar, a Tucumcari native. The organizers write that they are “especially proud of the fact that much of our scenery made it into the saga, and brought Tucumcari, NM into contact with a piece of Hollywood legend.”

The festival’s Facebook page carries the line “The Train Does Stop in Tucumcari for An Old West Celebration.” The tribute on its website closes: “Keep rollin’ Rawhide. You’ll always ride tall in our memories!”