Yakima Valley Fair and Rodeo

The fairgrounds sit on Wallace Way in Grandview’s Country Park, a left turn off Stover from Exit 73 of I-82. For four days in the second week of August the gates open at 8 a.m. They close at 11 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday and at midnight on Friday and Saturday. Entry and parking are free, and only the rodeo takes a ticket. The 2026 fair ran August 5 through 8. The fair’s own site gives August 4–7 for 2027.

Most of the daylight belongs to the barns. Children from 4-H and FFA clubs show animals they have raised over the year, from rabbits and chickens to cows and pigs, and the week builds toward a youth livestock sale. An open class barn takes exhibits from anyone of any age. Vendors along the paved paths sell fair food and Western goods. The 2019 schedule, as printed in the Yakima Herald-Republic, shows how the days fill:

• Opening day: swine, beef, and rabbit classification at 8 in the morning, a championship drive for all species at 6, a Little Wrangler Rodeo, and a movie at dusk in the amphitheater.
• Thursday: ranch sorting in the rodeo arena and a 4-H and FFA round robin.
• Friday: a diaper derby in the evening.
• Saturday: a tractor driving contest, pee wee sheep and swine showmanship, and, after the rodeo, a mud football and volleyball tournament for youth exhibitors.

A volunteer board runs the fair, with Stephanie Ingvalson as president and superintendents for goats, beef, sheep, dairy, swine, small animals, and the flower show. Craig Wentz, now listed as rodeo director, was vice president in 2023 when he told Apple Valley News Now, “The best part of the fair and rodeo in my opinion is the community and the fellowship between neighbors.”

Two nights in the arena

On Friday and Saturday evenings the arena holds a rodeo sanctioned by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. Local and national contestants ride stock supplied by All In Pro Rodeo. The 2026 rodeo ran August 7 and 8. Visit Yakima lists the ticket office opening at 4 p.m., the beer garden at 5, and the rodeo at 7:30. Scott Allen calls the play-by-play, Dean Holyan runs the sound, and Kyle Bode works as rodeo clown. The events include the Merchant Wild Cow Milking.

On those same two days the Cowboy Marketplace sets out Western brands, handmade goods, and rodeo gear. Drinks come from The Barpoke, a bar built into a horse trailer that used to go by The Pour Cowgirl. After the last ride, Holyan DJs Dean’s Honky Tonk Hangout, co-hosted by Bode, with dance-offs and games. Visit Yakima gives its hours as 9 to midnight. It is open to all ages, and children get an outdoor party space of their own.

A parade on 2nd Street, 2026

On Thursday of fair week Grandview holds its community parade downtown. In 2026 it stepped off at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 6, though for days it was in doubt. Wildfires across the region had fouled the air, and the chamber board said it would wait until 9 a.m. that Thursday to decide. “The chamber board takes very seriously the well-being of our community and is very concerned with the air quality at the time of the parade,” its announcement read.

The parade went on, as the Grandview Herald’s Sofia Sanchez reported. Residents lined 2nd Street for a long procession:

• the Grandview High School Cheer Squad and Scout Troop 3207
• the Lower Valley Honor Guard
• the Yakima Valley Fair Foundation and the J.M. Smucker Co.
• the Broken Spur Rodeo Queen
• royalty from Sunnyside, Wapato, Granger, Prosser, and Selah

Before the start, Zillah’s royalty float caught fire. Its riders found a replacement and set it up in time, and judging ran late. Zillah took the Sweepstakes award. Sunnyside won Mayor’s Choice, Prosser placed second, and Wapato third.

Sand and horses on Division Street

The parade is older than the fairgrounds. Grandview’s first Harvest Festival ran September 7 and 8, 1927. Don Fortune, in his History of Festival-Fair, sets the year by its figures: Calvin Coolidge was president, Roland Hartley governor, and C.A. (Charley) Miller mayor, and Henry Ford brought out the Model A.

Fortune quotes “The History of Grandview” on that first festival. It had needlework, advertising booths, and local midway attractions. Miss Esther Bohlke was chosen queen. The best exhibits went on to the Yakima State Fair and won premiums there.

Until 1948, canvas-covered booths stood solid down Division Street between Main and Second Streets. Vacant buildings were pressed into service for exhibits. Because the festival was held as late as the “Ides of September,” it had more fruit and farm produce to show.

One founding feature was the Team Pull, which Howard Jackson directed through 1986. He described the first one to Fortune: “We obtained 4,000 pounds of sand for that first pull, and we had to pinch-hit by adding a number of 150 pound men when the teams continued past the two tons of sand. The contest was finally won by Frank Lyall at 5,500 to 6,000 pounds.” Jackson called the scores through a Rudy Vallee-type megaphone. Later pulls went to whatever vacant lot the business district offered. Otto Ragsdale won the second year, when Miss Audry Blechschmidt was queen.

The fourth fair, in 1931, featured a baby clinic. A timeline kept with the Grandview Museum’s documents says men there competed at changing diapers, alongside pie baking. On polio the sources disagree. The fair’s own history says the 1931 fair was canceled for a polio epidemic. Fortune puts the lost year at 1934, “due to a severe polio epidemic in the valley.”

Governor Clarence Martin came in 1939, and Governor Arthur Langlie addressed the crowd in 1941. The Bagpiper’s Band from Vancouver, B.C., marched in the festival parade in what Fortune calls “mini-kilts.” The war stopped the festival in 1943 and 1944. In 1945 Byron Vance and Col. Evan Jenkins managed and auctioned the first combined 4-H and FFA Fat Stock Sale. Thirty-three steers, hogs, and lambs sold for $2,640. The grand champion steer brought 30 cents a pound and the top hog 31 cents, both bought by Grandview Packing Company.

Bob Hamilton ran the last festival on Division Street in 1947 and was rained out. Fortune learned from him how seriously the managers took the work. “I set my water on every other row of corn at home and couldn’t get loose to change it for a week,” Hamilton said. “People told me that it would be ruined, but the ears got so big that the picker couldn’t handle them.”

From the city park to Wallace Way

In 1948 stock sheds went up and a concrete display floor was poured in Grandview’s city-owned park. The fair’s history places that ground on Second Street, where Yakima Valley College’s Grandview campus now stands. A “golden” Packard was given away that year.

In 1950 a truck rodeo had drivers jockeying semis around a fixed course, “sort of like pole bending – only with a six legged horse,” in Fortune’s words. In 1951, as more 4-H and FFA youth took part, the Harvest Festival became the Yakima Valley Junior Fair. In 1955 a 125-head cattle building went up for $5,000 in materials, with the labor donated. Peggy Jones started a horse show in the mid-1950s.

Barbara Mandrell sang at the fair, though the sources disagree on when. The museum timeline gives two sold-out nights in 1960, courtesy of fair board president Dr. Jim Long. The fair’s site and the Herald place her in the 1970s.

The college later needed the park, and the city made room for the fair at Country Park. Ray Vining was president from 1987 to 1990. He leased the entire future site so the option to build would not be delayed. Irrigation went in and grass was planted.

Vining and Cliff Vining pulled the corrals from the old Grandview Packing Company to build the new riding arena. According to Mayor Carl Stevens, those 3-by-12 cedar planks had once been used to build the original Yellowstone road through Grandview. The two men also took the cyclone fence down from the old grounds and put it up again on the new. The 1955 cattle building, by then the Dybdahl Building, was moved across town.

Keith Jones paid for the first exhibit building, named for his wife, Peggy, and came out to help raise it. Many of the Lower Valley volunteers who did the building have their names on display inside.

The sources date the move differently. The fair’s site and the Herald say 1988. Vining writes that the assets came over after the 1988 fair, and that when the gates opened in 1989 there stood a livestock office, scales, and new dairy, beef, and sheep barns. “It was built with the most powerful of all things, love!” Vining said of the work.

A rodeo and a show barn

In 2001 the Pro West Rodeo joined the fair, and the name became Yakima Valley Fair and Rodeo. Ben and Sharon Fisher led the effort. The wild cow milking was added that year in memory of Vernon Bos. By the fair’s account, the rodeo spent its first three years on the ProWest circuit and then joined the PRCA.

A foundation formed in 2007. It bought American flags for the buildings and later replaced the arena bleachers section by section. Fireworks after the Saturday rodeo began in 2016, the year the fair counted 543 exhibitors. That same year Eagle Scout Mathew Humphries built a display honoring Howard Jackson. The fair marked 90 years in 2017. It was canceled in 2020 for the COVID pandemic.

That same year a few 4-H members asked for a second show arena so they would not stand waiting their turn in the heat, and they gave their livestock returns toward it. The board decided on a building to house and show large animals. “With 12 year old kids showing 1200 pound steers there was too much room for error and accidents moving animals to show and sales arena,” the museum history says. A $200,000 Department of Commerce grant and more than $50,000 raised locally put up the first building, 84 by 110 feet.