Wayne County Fair

On the Saturday of fair week in Loa, the Wayne High School boys’ baseball team serves a pancake breakfast at seven. Floats line up at nine, and at ten the parade goes down Loa’s Main Street. The printed schedule warns that it “will PASS ONE TIME.” The Wayne County Fair, which bills itself as the Wayne County World’s Fair, spreads across the town for six days in August: the fairgrounds at 350 North 300 West, the town park and its pavilion, the civic center, the elementary school, and the high school fields. The 2026 fair ran August 10 through 15 under the theme “Honoring the Past, Celebrating the Future,” with a nod to America’s 250th birthday.

The ground under it is old. Miriam B. Murphy’s 1999 county history describes how glacial meltwater tumbled volcanic stone down from the western highlands over one or two million years. The result was the broad gravel deposits on which Loa, Lyman, and Bicknell sit, along with black boulders strewn “like abandoned bowling balls” between Lyman and Bicknell and east toward Capitol Reef.

Six days in Loa

Much of the week costs nothing, and much of what costs something raises money for a local cause. In 2026 there were free community lunches on Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday’s, at Loa Elementary, was billed as a back-to-school celebration marking the last year at that school. Royal’s Food Town and Cache Valley Bank sponsored Thursday’s. Wayne County hosted a free community dinner in Loa Park on Friday. Around the meals, the high school’s teams and clubs worked the crowd:

• the senior class ran a car wash
• the volleyball team sold root beer floats
• the wrestlers sponsored a mullet contest
• the FCCLA ran concessions at the free movie in the park
• the track team put on a glow run behind the civic center
• the FFA held Cow Pie Bingo on Saturday afternoon
• other clubs sold dirty soda and strawberries in Loa Park

There was a free Hi-Fit class in the park on two mornings, a pickleball tournament, a blood drive at the Loa LDS church, a fairy garden class at Brian Farm, community bingo in the pavilion, and an open house and tour at the Loa Daughters of Utah Pioneers.

The 4-H and home arts show fills the civic center. Vegetables, flowers, and baked goods come in on Thursday morning, and the displays are open to the public on Friday and Saturday. In 2022 the Insider’s columnist Adus Dorsey called the displays at the Loa Community Center “a favorite event.”

Wednesday evening in 2026 was the opening and an America 250 celebration. The band The Little Rascals played, and the program included a mini cheer performance, a pie-eating contest, trivia, a showing of the community’s America 250 video, the mullet contest at 7:45, and a cornhole tournament. On Friday night the Instep dancers performed, and Eric Dodge played a free concert with dancing from eight to ten.

The county had also spent the previous year on an America 250 challenge: read 250 minutes, walk, hike, bike, or run 250 miles, or do one community service project. Entry tickets went into a large box shaped like fireworks outside the clerk’s office, and prizes were drawn at the free Commissioners Dinner on Friday, August 14.

It rained. The fair’s posts that week told people to bring umbrellas, and its wrap-up thanked the community for “free food, rodeos, parade, music, laughs, and a little bit of rain.” The rodeo page had already warned: “Pack yer umbrellas and winter woollies — Wayne County weather can get a little western in a hurry!”

The fair is run by the Wayne County Fair Board. In 2026 it listed Commissioner Roger Brian and members Jakelle Pace, Jeri Albrecht, April Torgerson, Montan Cartmell, Autumn Cartmell, Nadia Harris, Cathy Zesiger, and Amber Perkins.

Stick horses and steers

Horses run through the whole week. The 4-H Horse Show opens fair week at the fairgrounds on Monday evening. Goat Roping Finals follow on Tuesday, and on Friday morning there is an open gymkhana at $10 an event.

Thursday evening belongs to the World’s Fair Junior Rodeo, for children from two to fourteen, with Cameron Hallows listed at the microphone in 2026. The program includes a Ducky Derby, a stick horse race, an animal chase, a ribbon pull, a boot scramble, a three-legged race, and dummy roping. Before the show, dummy ropers qualify on the north side of the arena, and the top five earn a place in the main event. Parents are reminded to bring the stick horse.

Mutton bustin’ is open to children three to ten who weigh under sixty pounds and can ride without a parent’s help. Steer riding is for ages ten to fourteen. First place in each earns a buckle, and in 2026 every sheep and steer spot was taken well before the night. The boys’ basketball team ran the concession stand: burgers, pickles, corn on the cob.

The World’s Fair Hometown Rodeo closes the week on Saturday. The grounds open at five for tickets and seating, and every grandstand seat is reserved and sold by the seat. The show “starts promptly at 7 PM,” according to the fair, with a lineup of hometown and traditional events running “from the Hide Race to Bull Riding.” Food trucks and local fundraisers sell supper. Fireworks follow at dusk, presented by the Wayne County Fire District and, as the schedule puts it, “contingent on fire conditions.”

A name that stuck

Rodeo at Loa goes back at least to 1–2 September 1937. That year Loa held a two-day Wayne Wonderland Homecoming, and Lawrence Lee of Torrey directed two days of rodeo events at the new Wayne County Fairgrounds. Murphy’s history notes that 1937 was also the year Capitol Reef was first set aside, “after decades of effort by residents.” Wayne County itself dates from 1892, when the legislature separated it from Piute County.

How the county fair became a world’s fair, Adus Dorsey wrote in a 2022 column: “someone coined the phrase World’s Fair early in Wayne County’s history, and it stuck.” In the same piece he recalled that horse races “were an all time favorite and dominated the hearts and minds for months prior to the fair; competition was fierce, and the horses knew it.”

Dorsey’s columns for the Insider are the best running record of the week. His account of 2019 begins with a Rodeo Queen Contest and a Pet Show in the fairgrounds’ multi-purpose building, where children showed “every conceivable kind of pet there is known to man.” Thursday night brought the Small Fry Rodeo, with adults chasing children around the arena on stick ponies.

On Friday, country singer Ned Ledoux played a sold-out show at the fairgrounds. It was booked by promoter Tacey Wood, who, Dorsey wrote, was on the phone to Nashville so often “that the folks at AT&T were seriously considering re-evaluating her data plan.” Chairs filled the arena “in as many rows as would fit.” Witnesses reported that Commissioner Stan Wood danced, which they took to mean his recent hip replacement had succeeded.

Dennis and Sherry Ekker of Hanksville were grand marshals of the 2019 parade. At the community center, Mary Sorenson of USU Extension set out watermelon salsa and freeze-dried banana slices. Saturday afternoon, gunfire was reported at the Wayne County International Airport. It was the high school trap club’s fundraiser shoot. When the week was over, Dorsey counted what was left: “a ton of good memories, forty pounds of smashed candy and four lost lawn chairs left on Main Street in Loa Town.”

The 2020 fair took “Boots and Roots” as its theme and closed on Saturday night, the 15th of August. In 2021 the Wayne County Cruisers hosted a bingo game and the opening ceremony dinner and threw water balloons at the parade. The 2022 fair was recognized, Dorsey reported, as having had the largest attendance in recent years.

In Wayne County, school starts the week after the fair. Dorsey called it county custom in 2021. On September 1, 2026, he wrote that school had been in session “since the Wayne County World’s Fair passed out its last blue ribbon,” and that on August 17 a fleet of yellow buses was out “rolling around the county snatching kids off the side of the road.”