Union County Fair

On the Thursday of the 2026 Union County Fair, the Soroptimist ladies were working the grill, the Blue Mountaineers were strumming, and the fair’s own account reported the best air quality of the week. Smoke had hung over the county in the days before. The board posted photographs of conditions at the grounds and noted that the opening of the canyon nearby kept the air moving, often leaving it clearer than elsewhere in Union County. The day began with a free senior breakfast. That evening word went out that the fairgrounds bathrooms were open at last: “No more wondering. No more hoping.”

The grounds lie on North Second Street in La Grande and are managed by the Union County Fair Association, which rents them out through the year and puts on the fair. Its own description is short: a small county fair in Eastern Oregon, trying to bring the community together “through music, food, vendors, animals and fun.”

Four days at the end of July

The 2026 fair opened on Wednesday, July 29, with the gates, the exhibit halls and the food vendors, and closed the night with a 7 p.m. set by Hannah Marie Kelley. The parade had gone through town the Sunday before, and the animals had come in the day ahead of the gates. The Oregon Fairs Association listed the fair as running July 29 to August 2. The fair’s own post on Saturday, August 1, called that day the last.

Friday brought LEGO competitions and the 4-H and FFA round robin showmanship, in which young exhibitors show species other than their own. Ayden Lucas of Imbler High School ran free roping lessons as his senior project, open to anyone but aimed at ages 7 to 18, with prizes for the first five to master the throw. In the Fanny Exhibitor Hall, Aguilera Amazing Aromas let visitors mix their own 8-ounce scents from noon to 7. At 5:30 Tylor & the Train Robbers and Fortunate Son took the main stage.

The last day ran on the livestock calendar. The Junior Market Auction dinner began at 3:30, and the auction of 4-H and FFA projects followed at 5:15. Sum People and Shot Glass played the Small Stage through the afternoon, and Ripple Effect and The Red Roses closed out the Large Stage. Open-class entries filled the halls: photographs, flowers, cooking, vegetables, artwork, metalwork, quilts, woodwork. The flower containers set around the grounds had been planted by the Lions Club with flowers donated by the Imbler FFA.

The work behind the week is named in the board’s thank-yous. The Eastern Oregon University men’s football team hauled trash, emptied recycling and moved equipment, and their coach and volunteer leader, Blaine, logged more than 112,000 steps. Terry Mendenhall served his first fair as caretaker. Kathy Gover Shaw, the manager, runs the fair the year round. The 2027 fair is set for August 4–7 under the theme “Barn to be Wild.”

A midway without rides

There was no carnival in 2026, and there has not been one in recent years. In an August 22 statement the board wrote, “The Fair Board did not decide to stop having a carnival, and we have not stopped looking for one.” Traveling carnivals, it explained, pick fairs where ride sales will cover the cost of moving rides and crews. The first weekend in August is one of the busiest stretches for fairs in Oregon, Idaho and Washington, and small rural fairs compete with much larger ones for a few companies.

In the meantime the board has brought in Bouncin Bins, Triple Play and the National Guard. The Small Play Area came free with admission: laser tag, arcade games, bounce houses, a ball toss, toddler bumper cars and mini golf, with a fishing game at small extra cost. General admission is $5, children 6 and under get in free, and a family pays no more than $25, a cap the board keeps on purpose so families have money left for food and games. It has asked whether local clubs might run ring tosses and milk-jug games as fundraisers to bring back some of the midway sounds. “We want the lights. We want music. We want laughter,” the board wrote. “We want kids asking mom and dad to stay a little longer.”

Thirty years to a working sewer

Those first-day bathrooms closed a long chapter. For more than 30 years, by the board’s account, one Fair Board after another tried to replace a sewer system that had been failing for more than 20. Until 2026 the only working restrooms on the grounds were in the small Mt. Emily Building. During the 2025 legislative session, House Bill 5006 and Senate Bill 5531 provided $2,539,405 in lottery bond funding, to be fully allocated in 2027, to connect the fairgrounds to the City of La Grande’s system. Ground was broken November 14, 2025. On July 1 the bricks were going down on the new bathroom.

The restrooms were moved and enlarged within the Mt. Emily Building, and sewer service returned to the cabins, the caretaker’s residence and the RV sites. Showers were to be finished after the fair. On the last morning the board posted, “After more than 30 years, the toilets are flushing!”

The new RV park filled in August with guests such as Blake Molle, who was out on the rodeo circuit, and some who had not paid while the website was down. The board noted that it records license plates: “So help us keep the Sheriff out of the camping business—if you stay, please pay.” On August 23, with the freeway closed and Highway 204 limited to fire personnel, the grounds let animals in transit out of their trailers to stretch their legs. The fairgrounds are designated an evacuation site for displaced people and for livestock and other animals.

From C Avenue to Gekeler Lane

The fair is older than the grounds. On September 22, 1872, a meeting in Cove established the first Fair Board, which chose officers and committees to put on the first County Fair. It was held on the streets of Old La Grande on C Avenue, now the top of 4th Street. The county itself was then eight years old, carved from Baker County on October 14, 1864, and named for the town of Union. The county seat moved back and forth between Union and La Grande until it settled in La Grande in 1905.

In 1873 the first fairgrounds went up on 80 acres near Gekeler Lane and Buchanan Lane. Gekeler Lane was then the main road by which valley people came into La Grande. In August 1925 the La Grande Evening Observer listed the Union County Fair among coming events for September.

The oldest building on the present grounds is the Courtright building of 1926. The Exhibit Building followed in 1947–1948. The 1948 Cattle Barn was taken apart on Gekeler Lane and rebuilt here. The Food Court came in 1949, the Hog Barn in the 1950s, a lean-to of sheep pens on the barn in 1958, and the Mount Emily Building in 1964–1965.

Joe Lloyd’s thirty-fifth log

Near the entrance stands a log cabin built in 1969 by the Union County Historical Society, a group organized in 1933 that wanted a regular meeting place. A committee formed in March 1969, with Bennie Hicks as society president and Horace J. Nelson as chairman. The society asked the Fair Association for a long-term lease, and the fair board granted it and voted financial help as well. Other groups could rent the cabin at a minimum rent to cover utilities, with the board keeping “jurisdiction and control.” The plans called for restrooms and a small kitchenette.

The forestry department under Chuck Timberman donated the trees. Lewis Carper, Harry Harris and Bill Hixon felled and bucked them. Boise Cascade Lumber Co., contractor Homer Collins and others arranged the hauling. Tom Gilmore swung the logs off the trucks and laid them crosswise on other logs to keep them off the ground for peeling. The hauling fell in hunting season, and Hicks thanked the men who gave up their first day of deer hunting to help.

Dorothy Swart Fleshman recalled the rest in a 2010 La Grande Observer column. In late September 1969 she went out to the grounds for a surprise birthday party for Joe Lloyd, who would turn 83 on November 6. She found him stripping bark with an adz, an axlike tool with a curved blade. It was his 35th log, he said. With Clement Thatcher and Frank Stewart he had prepared 78 of the cabin’s 127. Then Joe sat down on the log with his birthday cake on his lap beside Eva Martin, his old classmate from the White School, while she took their picture.