Western Rodeo Parade and Cattle Drive

At ten o’clock on a Friday morning in early September, Meridian Street in downtown Puyallup closes to cars between Stewart and 7th, and cattle are driven down the middle of the road. Cowboys and cowgirls follow them, then tractors and horse-drawn wagons. The City of Puyallup puts the crowd along Meridian at hundreds of people each year. The Western Rodeo Parade & Cattle Drive falls on the first or second Friday of the month and opens rodeo weekend at the Washington State Fair. In 2026 it ran on Friday, September 11.

That morning the city posted its usual notice: “Drivers will need to use alternate routes and watch for pedestrians...and cattle...while navigating downtown.” The street reopens once the parade has passed. The Fair’s own rodeo schedule lists the start as Main St & Meridian. Before the parade, from 8 to 10, a rodeo breakfast was served at the Pioneer Park Pavilion.

The rodeo on 9th Avenue

The parade comes in the middle of a four-day rodeo at the fairgrounds on 9th Avenue SW. The 2026 Puyallup Rodeo ran September 10 through 13 in five performances. The first was on Thursday evening, and the second was at 6:30 on the evening of the parade. Two more followed on Saturday, and the finals were on Sunday, September 13, at 1 p.m. The program covers eight events, from bronc riding to barrel racing.

The Fair calls the rodeo a Pacific Northwest tradition of 93 years. It now serves as the Wild Card round of the PRCA Cinch Playoff Series, which decides who advances to the Governor’s Cup and who earns a shot at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. After the riding, the Dancin’ in the Dirt concerts are held on the arena’s dirt floor. The 2026 bill was Chase Rice, Dylan Marlowe, and Gretchen Wilson.

Cattle cars and the Valley Fair

The cattle drive was introduced in 2000, the year the Puyallup Fair marked its centennial. That fair ran September 8 to 24 and drew 1,312,332 guests. The city now lists the drive as one of three parades it holds each year. The Daffodil Parade comes in early spring and is the largest, with more than 180 entries. The Lighted Santa Parade comes just before the holidays and is the only one held after dark.

The fair the drive recalls began in June 1900, when a group of local businessmen, farmers, and residents met to discuss holding a fair in the Puyallup Valley. The first “Valley Fair” ran October 4 to 6, 1900, on a vacant lot just west of where Pioneer Park is now. A 10-foot fence surrounded it, and an opening in that fence served as the main gate. Admission was $1 per family for all three days. Horses and cows were tethered to a nearby fence.

For the second fair, in 1901, a 10-acre lot was bought at the southwest corner of 9th Avenue S.W. and Meridian South. The fair was built around a race track that stayed in use until 1977. As the crowds grew, trains made special trips from Tacoma and Seattle directly to the Fair. The Valley Fair became the Western Washington Fair Association in 1913, and in 2013, after its fourth name change, it became the Washington State Fair.

The Fair’s history gives the old cattle drives a single sentence: in the early days, cowboys would unload cattle from the train cars and drive them to the Fair “in a similar manner.”