Colorado’s first state fair opened in 1876 with displays of produce and a pigeon shooting match

Closeup of a United States quarter coin showing "Colorado 1876"

Colorado’s first-ever state fair opened in Denver on the afternoon of September 26, 1876, and “every means of transportation in the city was pressed into service” to ferry passengers to the 40-acre fairgrounds on its eastern outskirts, according to the Rocky Mountain News.

All week, wagons and railroad cars had transported goods from all across the state to be put on display at the fair — technically, the annual exposition of the Colorado Industrial Association, which had been held in Denver since the 1860s and would later move to Pueblo, where it was officially incorporated in 1886.

“Of course every person feels a certain pride in having the first fair since Colorado became a state especially successful,” reported the News. “And then there is the national pride engendered of the Centennial year which spurs men on in their liberality.”

Overhead view of a magnifying glass over the word "history." — © ogichobanov - iStock-1088402018

The central attraction inside the fair’s main exhibition hall, courtesy of Denver’s Bellevue Gardens, was “a circular stand covered with pots and vases of flowers, among which were many rare exotics, exhaling delicate odors and adding materially by their brilliancy of color to the attractiveness of the scene,” said the News.

Other booths showed off “every variety of fancy needlework”; oil paintings and engravings; tanned animal hides and furs; luxury furniture and “some excellent articles in the plumbing line”; and a cornucopia of agricultural products.

“The Clear Creek Valley Grange has on exhibition a large amount of all varieties of produce, among which are mammoth squashes, beets, potatoes and melons, besides some freshly cut grass measuring over six feet in height,” the News continued. “The El Paso County Cheese Company shows enough of that article to surfeit the whole state.”

At Ford’s Park, adjacent to the fairgrounds, 40 entrants contested a pigeon shooting match, with prizes ranging from $100 in cash to a sack of flour. But the fair’s biggest draw was five straight days of horse racing. The trotting and running races on September 26 were won by “Tempest” and “Bay Billy,” respectively, with each winning a $150 top prize.

At the request of 50 petitioners representing the “bankers and business men of the city,” Denver Mayor R.G. Buckingham declared Friday, September 29, an official holiday, “with a view to the encouragement of a project which, if properly furthered, will inure to the benefit of the entire community.”

“To a stranger within the gates, it seemed as if the whole state of Colorado had turned out and was upon the grounds,” the News reported the following day. “The grand stand was filled so that it was impossible to find sitting room and almost impossible to find standing space, before one o’clock in the afternoon, although the races were not announced to begin until two o’clock.”