Umatilla County Fair

Four days on East Airport Road

The Umatilla County Fair runs four days in August at the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center, 1705 East Airport Road, in Hermiston. The fair’s own site set the 2026 fair for Wednesday through Saturday, August 12 to 15. The Oregon Fairs Association’s statewide calendar listed it for August 6 to 9. The gates open at 10 in the morning and close at midnight, and on Saturday at 1 a.m. The fair’s vendor page counts 65,000 visitors over the four days.

The week begins before the gates open. On the Saturday before the fair, a Kick-Off Parade runs through downtown Hermiston, and the city’s page calls it an evening parade. An East Oregonian photograph from August 5, 2023, shows children scavenging for candy along the route. On the grounds, the Indoor Exhibit Hall holds the 4-H, FFA and open-class exhibits, and outdoor vendors are spread across the fairgrounds. The program also includes a barbecue contest, a talent show for local performers, a kids camp, scheduled appearances by the fair court, and a public youth livestock auction whose bids go to the young exhibitors. The carnival opens at 2 in the afternoon Wednesday through Friday and at noon on Saturday, with its own wristbands and ride tickets. The rodeo is also ticketed separately. Children 10 and under are admitted free, and in 2026 a sponsor’s name stood behind each day of it: the City of Hermiston on Wednesday, Good Shepherd on Thursday, Lamb Weston on the day the fair billed as “FRYday,” and Toyota on Saturday.

In 2026 the main stage opened Wednesday with The Brass Fire Band and Tylor & The Train Robbers. Chingy played Thursday, August 13, and Eli Young Band played Friday, August 14. A fair ticket includes a place in the limited bleachers for every main-stage show except the last. That show is Latino Night, the Saturday finale. The fair’s home page lists it for 7 p.m., while the vendor page has the bands starting at 8 and playing until 1 a.m. The vendor page also tells outdoor food booths they may stay open as late as the music.

Dan Dorran, a Umatilla County commissioner and former fair board member, started coming to the fair at age 7, and his connection to it goes back more than 54 years. He brought his children to compete in 4-H, and his granddaughter now enters pictures and projects. “The ability to have one place, one time of the year with common interests for the community to gather is kind of the goal,” he told the East Oregonian in 2025. Hermiston Mayor Doug Primmer is also a reserve deputy with the sheriff’s office and has worked the fair for most of his adult life, mainly in the rodeo section. “You have the little kids running up and giving cops hugs and wanting to get little stickers … I love seeing that,” he said. The fair board is appointed by the county and is separate from Hermiston’s city government.

A tent held down with sandbags

The sources disagree on when the fair began. The city, the fair’s vendor page, and the 2025 East Oregonian article all give 1912. Ron Ingle, a Hermiston author who compiled the fair’s history for the East Oregonian in 2013, gives a different account. In 1912, he writes, Morrow and Umatilla counties held the last of several combined fairs in Pendleton. In 1913 Pendleton held a separate Umatilla County Fair, apparently the first event with that name, and then dropped it after one year. The Round-Up, begun in 1910, was becoming famous, and Pendleton had lost interest in a county fair. Hermiston’s new Dairy Show filled the gap.

That first stock show was planned for October 18, 1913. It was postponed to November 8 because of the unexpected death of the dairy commissioner, Lazelle. It was held on a vacant lot apparently across Main Street from the Skinner building, which until recently housed RoeMarks Mens Wear. Mayor W.H. Skinner opened the day with a speech, and more speeches followed. The program included a parade of schoolchildren, floats about the dairy industry, judging of cattle and hogs, and races. The main event was a milking contest, won by Frank Waugaman for $17.50. The show’s main building was a stock tent 50 by 75 feet, perhaps with smaller tents around it, and it was anchored with bags of sand. It was said that promoters held the ropes while visitors looked at the products. The show was considered a success. Its promoters soon planned a permanent dairy show association, expanded the event to two days, and invited the whole county to attend and exhibit.

In 1914 the Maxwell Land and Irrigation Company donated land for a permanent site. No buildings were ready, so the November 13–14 show was held at the Tum-a-Lum lumberyard, where Chen’s Restaurant stood when Ingle wrote. The board had to move the lumber first. Livestock were housed in the lumber shed, and the big tent held the other displays. The 1914 show included a baby contest, scored by local and Pendleton physicians using eugenic charts. Of 81 entries, 73 were scored, and Samuel Rees of Hermiston won. Hog raising was becoming more important, and the event came to be called the Dairy and Hog Show. Dr. Virgil Knowles of Oregon Agricultural College lectured in the Skinner building on hog diseases and demonstrated hog vaccination. The Baptist Church served a noon meal in the same building, Methodist churchwomen served supper in a vacant building on Main Street, and the Episcopal Guild held its Christmas sale in an old bakery.

The 1915 exhibits were again housed at the lumberyard, and eight high school teams judged the stock. Pendleton won. Starting in 1916, the Bland building west of the tracks held the exhibits. That year the fair had an official song, written by Otto Sapper to the tune of “Are You from Dixie?” Honey was an important local crop, and at the 1917 fair Mr. Shafer of the Davis and Shafer apiary supply juggled bees while lecturing on bee culture. In 1918 the national influenza epidemic reached Hermiston, and the fair was cancelled. The next year, with heavy support from farmers, lumber was bought for a new building on the Maxwell land, and some 70 people worked to finish it in time. That ground later served as the Hermiston High School football field and eventually became the site of Armand Larive Middle School.

Over the following years the fair added band music, dancing, boxing and football, and poultry, sheep, rabbits and honey joined the exhibits. In 1925 the fair had its first queen and court, though not yet every year. The queen was chosen by popular vote at a penny a vote, from contestants from Hermiston, Umatilla, Stanfield, Echo, Irrigon and Boardman. Lois Jackson of Hermiston won. The same year brought the fair’s first merry-go-round.

Barns, a rodeo, and a new name

The event was renamed the Umatilla Project Fair in 1928, and by then it offered more than $1,000 in prizes. In 1929 it held the first caged bird show in the state. Airplanes also appeared that year, and for several seasons there was stunt flying and short rides for the public. One rider in 1931 was 86-year-old Richard Beasley, who as a child had crossed the plains in an ox-cart with his parents. That April a strong wind demolished the fair’s barns, and hard times forced cuts in premiums. Even so, the 1931 fair made money for the first time in several years, and the American Legion sold hot dogs and hamburgers. The Hermiston Herald of October 13, 1932, reported that Baxter Hutchison had entered 13 exhibits under entry number 13 and won 13 prizes worth $13.

The 1933 fair was the first held in September and the first with a rodeo. Its queen was Irene Attebury of Butter Creek, chosen by popular vote with one vote per paid admission. The program included a greased pig race, and the winner kept the pig. In 1935 the fair moved to the new community park. A public hall and an exhibition building went up the next year, while a golf course and swimming pool were under construction. The Silver Jubilee fair of September 2–4, 1937, was the earliest date yet and the first three-day show.

The name Umatilla County Fair came in 1939. That year E.P. Dodd was hired as manager, and the fair was held in August for the first time. It featured a Model T derby with 16 cars on a half-mile track and a new grandstand seating about 1,000. During the war the fair shrank. In 1942 it was a two-day 4-H and FFA fair in September, and Hermiston beat Kennewick 20–6 at football. The next two years it ran one day each. In 1943 a USO pageant and a war bond contest were held, and Mrs. Minnie Lott of Pendleton won the American Legion’s $1,000 bond. The fair of August 22–24, 1946, was said to be the largest yet. It had horse races on a new track, a new hog and sheep pavilion, and a local girl, Lucy Holloman, as Hermiston’s first county fair queen. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas visited in 1947, Senator Wayne Morse in 1948, Portland Mayor Dorothy McCullough Lee in 1949, and Governor Douglas McKay in 1950. In 1952 paid admissions reached 10,000.

From Orchard Avenue to the event center

The 1964 fair was considered the fair’s 50th anniversary. The parade of August 12, 1972, had fewer entries than in past years. Parade chairman Tim Gilleese said there would be more large floats, from the Umatilla Army Depot, the Tri-Cities Water Follies, Pacific Power and Light, and the Milton-Freewater and Hermiston chambers of commerce. Color guards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled Veterans marched, and A.H. Norton, president of Inland Empire Bank, was grand marshal. At 10 a.m. the 90 entries left the fairgrounds heading west from Orchard Avenue at Northwest Sixth Street, turned at Northeast Seventh Street, and looped back to the formation area.

From 1976, Kathryn McCluskey brought an Old Time Photo booth to the fair. She stocked it with off-the-shoulder satin dresses and marching-band jackets trimmed in gold braid, some found in out-of-the-way shops and some sewn by her students’ parents. The proceeds paid rent for her Three R’s Schools in Pendleton and College Place. “It’s so expensive to run a school,” she told the Herald in 1997.

In 2014 Ingle wrote a letter to the East Oregonian. Morrow County had celebrated its fair’s centennial in 2013 with wide publicity, he noted, while neither the city nor the fair board had promoted or even mentioned the centennial of the Umatilla County Fair.

The 2015 fair was held at the Orchard Avenue grounds, with plans to move the 2016 fair, the 101st, to the new event center. Don Miller, who sat on both the fair board and the event center board, said the old site lacked “the power, water and infrastructure” to keep putting on the fair. In 2015 every outdoor booth was filled, three concert nights sold out, and the parade drew the most entries in its history. All three county commissioners served as ringmen at the Saturday livestock sale, which was expected to break records. Fair manager Peggy Anderson had already announced she would leave that fall. She admitted to tears and a “tough time” on the last night. “If we didn’t have a record-breaking fair, it will be the second largest fair we’ve ever had,” she said. “It’s a great way to go out.”