Yamhill County Fair & Rodeo

The fairgrounds sit at 2070 NE Lafayette Avenue in McMinnville, among barns with names like Evergreen, Harding, Lucas and Thompson, a Heritage Building, the Leslie Lewis Pavillion, and two arenas, Delashmutt and Drader. For most of the year the grounds hold horse shows, team penning, trade shows, banquets, weddings and quinceañeras. The fair opens on the Wednesday before the first Saturday of August and runs four full days. The 2026 fair ran July 29 through August 1, from ten in the morning until eleven at night on Wednesday and Thursday and until midnight on Friday and Saturday. The schedule page carried the line “Thrills, Squeals, Ferris Wheels.”

Corndogs, livestock and the Golden Circle

General admission opens the exhibit halls, the animal barns, the arena events and the evening concert. In the barns, 4-H and FFA members show their animals, and the Yamhill County Youth Livestock Auction sells them. Open Class exhibits hang in the halls. A Bounty of the County display shows what the county raises for everyday products, which Fair CEO Gary Wertz described in 2024 as “food to fork.” The Fair Ambassador program also runs during the fair. Dogs are barred from the grounds during the fair, apart from service dogs and the dogs entered in the 4-H Dog Show, which must leave once their show ends. Rainier Amusements runs the carnival. Elsewhere on the grounds come the Best of the Best BBQ Competition and the pie-eating and hot-dog-eating contests, and the 2024 program also listed mutton busting. Previewing the 2025 fair for the county commissioners, Wertz said: “Oregon’s oldest fair is ready for you. Just take in the smells of corndogs, cotton candy, popcorn and all the other smells that we have had the privilege of bringing to the citizens of the county for 171 years.”

Each night ends at the main stage. In front of it are fifteen rows of chairs called the Golden Circle, sold as reserved seats on a first-come basis. The News-Register described the 2026 lineup as a mix of country, rock and hip hop. Country singer Clay Walker opened on Wednesday; the paper credited him with more than 30 years of work, 11 studio albums and six No. 1 hits. Sara Evans followed on Thursday. On Friday came C C Music Factory, known for “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now).” Original member Freedom Williams now tours under the name, and the rappers Bubba Sparxx and Twista joined him. Hinder, a rock band formed in 2001, closed the fair on Saturday.

Bulls, barrels and a demolition derby

The arena events take place in Cascade Arena. The fair’s own pages speak of three nights of rodeo. In 2026, Wednesday was Wear Purple Day, with Bulls and Barrels and the Man-Up Crusade domestic violence awareness event. Thursday brought a rodeo and a K9 demonstration, and Friday was Rodeo Veterans Night. The Thursday and Friday rodeos are sanctioned by the NPRA. The annual demolition derby filled Saturday, starting at 6 p.m. Seating is limited and first come. The fair asks spectators to stay seated and posts the rule “NO STANDING ON THE FENCE.” A 2024 Newberg Graphic caption said the rodeo had been a mainstay at the fair for more than a century.

The fair’s sponsorship guide puts attendance at more than 40,000. In its 2025–26 budget the fair counted itself sixth in size among Oregon fairs, and Wertz wrote that visitors the year before had come from as far away as Maine. Since 2025 a second lot has stood at McDaniel Lane and Lafayette Avenue, with a shuttle to the gates, because the lot at the fairgrounds fills fast.

From Lafayette to Lafayette Avenue

The Yamhill County Agricultural Society formed in 1853. On October 7, 1854, it held the county’s first fair in the town of Lafayette. The fair’s history lists bed quilts, butter, cheese, vegetables, cattle, sheep, hogs, farm implements, horses and mules. The sponsorship guide adds canned jellies and jams, garden flowers, homemade breads, mechanical toys, aprons, machine-made dresses, handcrafted furniture, paintings and tatting. The Oregon Historical Quarterly, writing in 2017 on the county’s crop history, recorded that Lafayette held Oregon’s first county fair in 1854.

In 1937 the fair moved to the Armory in McMinnville, now the McMinnville Community Center. That year livestock were penned and tied in the street between the County Courthouse and the Armory. Farm organizations kept booths, and youth in 4-H clubs and FFA chapters exhibited the livestock and poultry. In 1947 the fair took up its present grounds, and it has stayed there since. Delashmutt Arena was built in 1963 and is still the main indoor riding arena. The fair board meets there on the third Thursday of the month.

Deficits, a part-time manager, and four concerts

A 2025 News-Register editorial traced the fair’s recent decades. The mid-1990s brought budget deficits and controversy at the fairgrounds. By the summer of 1994 rumors were spreading that the fair would be canceled, and board members and staff had to campaign against them. In some years the deficits reached $40,000. Maintenance was put off, and commissioners often voted to bail the fair out. At one point the board looked at selling the fairgrounds.

In 2005 the county hired Al Westhoff as a part-time fair manager. With help from board chairman Gary Wertz, he smoothed over the resignation of three board members, and the fair moved into the black. Fair supporters credited Westhoff with growing a small event with one concert into a draw with four big-name concerts. They said he brought in Bulls & Barrels, improved the carnival and the derby, and expanded the food. Leslie Lewis, a county commissioner during his tenure, said he oversaw more than $800,000 in facility improvements. As president of the Oregon Fairs Association, Westhoff helped persuade the Legislature to give all 36 county fairs ongoing lottery funding. The grants began at about $50,000 a year per county and now come to nearly $80,000.

The editorial recorded that in 2013 the fairgrounds books were found “in disarray,” and the fair parted ways with its long-time office manager. When Westhoff retired in 2017, Wertz became manager, and the commissioners made the job full-time. Covid canceled the 2020 fair. Wertz repurposed the fairgrounds’ operations and reopened the fair in 2021. Selling the grounds has come up again, this time for the opposite reason. “The facility is out of room for the amount of people we are attracting,” Wertz said. The theme of the 2025 fair was “Ewe Ain’t Seen Nuthin’ Yet.”

Westhoff died on September 17, 2026, at 88, and his service was held on October 2 at St. Mary’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland. “He was a true leader in the fair industry,” Lewis said.