Wheeler County Fair & Rodeo

On the Wednesday the 2026 Wheeler County Fair and Rodeo opened in Fossil, the fairgrounds on Third Street stood without their grandstands. The old structure had been demolished, and Stephen Allen of The Times-Journal wrote that the grounds looked “a bit naked.” The fair ran four days anyway, August 5 through Saturday, August 8, under the theme “Chutes, Boots, and Country Roots.” Allen’s verdict on the missing seats: “Grandstand be damned.”

Arena, barns, and a parade on Saturday

The program runs on horses, livestock, and the 4-H kids who show them. The fair board’s listings for 2026 included the Jon Bowerman Memorial Horse Show, a Horse Play Night, an open rodeo, and a parade, which went through on the closing Saturday. A new vendor came over from Morrow County, Fork YEAH LLC. The fair board thanked the Fossil Ambulance crew by name during fair week. Afterward it posted a notice about a pair of ear buds turned up in the fair office.

Some of the grounds were new that summer. In early July volunteers poured a new wash rack. The board named Kyle Hand, Ross Ryno, Tyler Wright, John Conlan, Chase Schultz, Alan Canady, Randy Shaffer, and Brett Hudspeth among them. Shade cloths went up the same month to keep kids and animals cool while they waited their turn in the ring.

The summer was a smoky one. In mid-July the board opened the fairgrounds to anyone who needed to put some distance between themselves and the fires. On the eve of the fair it wrote that it looked forward “with hope to a less smokey Fair Week in 2027,” and that it would follow the advice of its show coordinator.

Visitors who stay over can use the county RV park on the fairgrounds. It has twelve full-hookup sites, a bathroom and shower house, and a large field for tents and dry camping.

A queen and two grand marshals

Raylee Shaffer was Queen of the 2026 fair and rodeo, and she reigned from the arena. She is the daughter of Steven Shaffer and the granddaughter of Ken and Debbie Shaffer. The family name runs through the fair. A Ranch Shaffer is vice chair of the fair board and a David Shaffer sits on it, under chairman Kaylee Griffith. In September Queen Raylee rode to the Pendleton Round-Up and stood for a photograph beside Miss Rodeo Oregon Destiny Wecks, Junior Miss Rodeo Oregon Kieran Kossler-Sutherlin, and Miss Rodeo America Olivia Favero.

The grand marshals were Ted and Fran Molinari, both born in New York City in 1938. Fran Cuebas was born in Manhattan to Puerto Rican immigrants. Ted came from Brooklyn, from a family of second-generation Italian immigrants. As a teenager Ted wrangled horses on a ranch in the Catskills. He was later a surgical technician at Fordham Hospital, where his second-shift supervisor was Head Nurse Frances Cuebas. They married in 1963 and came west the next year.

Ted worked as a deputy in Multnomah, Polk, and Yamhill counties and played cowboy polo with the Polk County Sheriff’s Posse. Fran nursed and managed programs for Caterpillar. For some 25 years they raised Red Angus and Christmas trees near Dallas, Oregon. In 1998 they bought land near Fossil from Lois and Alva Hunt and moved to Wheeler County for good. They have sponsored rodeo queen events and buckles at the fair. On many a rodeo night Ted has sung the national anthem, and lately he has coached younger singers to do the same.

The 2024 fair had a business for its grand marshal: Painted Hills Natural Beef, which started in the mid-1990s. That year’s theme was “Growing Generation to Generation.”

The county seat and its fair since 1914

The Times-Journal dates the fair to 1914 and calls it “a hallmark of North Central Oregon.” In its coverage of the 2024 fair, the same paper called Wheeler “Oregon’s smallest county.” The county’s own page holds the dates to the first full week of August. Jack Lorts, writing in the Oregon Encyclopedia, calls Fossil “the cultural and economic piston for a large geographical area.” He writes that the town comes alive each summer, with the Wheeler County Bluegrass Festival and a Cruz-In over the Fourth of July and the fair and rodeo the first week in August.

The town and county are older than the fair. Thomas Benton Hoover, a Missourian, settled with his family in 1870 about two miles north of the present town and began farming. In 1876 he opened a post office at his ranch and named it Fossil for fossils found nearby. In 1881 he and Thomas Watson built a store where Butte and Cottonwood Creeks meet and moved the post office there. Fossil held its first city council meeting on March 4, 1891.

Wheeler County followed on February 17, 1899, and was named for Henry H. Wheeler, who ran the first stage and mail line through the country. The sources disagree on where its land came from. The county’s own history says Grant, Gilliam, and Crook counties; Lorts says Gilliam, Wasco, and Grant. Fossil beat out Spray and Twickenham for the county seat. Its courthouse was built in 1902 and is still in use.

From 1927 to 1978 Fossil shared the county with Kinzua, a company logging town about seven miles east. Lorts writes that Fossil grew past eight hundred people in those years. When the Kinzua Company closed the mill and the town in 1978, enrollment at the Fossil high school fell by half within a few years. Today, by Lorts’s count, Fossil holds about 447 residents. The county puts the figure at 500, give or take.