The Great Chicken Race Scandal of 1981

SJ His­tor­i­cal Muse­um with their His­to­ry Col­umn for August…

San Juan County Fair Inaugural Chicken Race 1981 - Steve Wilhelm photo

It was pret­ty easy to choose a top­ic for this month’s his­to­ry col­umn. Last month’s col­umn sug­gest­ed a theme when we came upon the fun pho­to from the 1981 Fourth of July Parade and decid­ed to use it, since we didn’t have a parade this year. Decid­ing to stick with 1981, a sim­pler time, we were delight­ed to find a good image and a few sto­ries from that year’s San Juan Coun­ty Fair, held August 19–22. Its theme was “The Old and the New,” fea­tur­ing the fair’s first ever Chick­en Race.

May we present to you a flash­back to the inau­gur­al Chick­en Race – which turned out to be a bit of a scan­dal, with feath­ers fly­ing in more ways than one! Here’s how it unfolded. 

A crowd gath­ered at the are­na on Fri­day, the high­ly antic­i­pat­ed race day, to cheer on twen­ty feath­ered entries, man­aged by their 4‑H han­dlers. Appar­ent­ly, the excite­ment of the moment hyped-up some of the han­dlers, who were observed to be chas­ing their birds at the start of the race, thus giv­ing them a head start. In addi­tion, the race was won by “Man-of-War,” but the crowd cried foul since the win­ner hap­pened to be owned by Leonard Knowles…who was in charge of the race. Want­i­ng to move past the con­tro­ver­sy and ruf­fled feath­ers, it was decid­ed to scratch the results and run the race again on Sat­ur­day, with­out the Knowles chick­en. There were few­er entries this time, but “Macho” the chick­en, owned by Edward Leche, fair­ly won the blue rib­bon after leav­ing ten chick­ens and two ducks behind in the dust.

We are grate­ful that Steve Wil­helm cap­tured the above image for the Jour­nal to doc­u­ment the Chick­en Race’s first year. Do you rec­og­nize any­one in the pho­to? Did you have an entry in the 1981 chick­en race? Please let us know at the San Juan His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety and Muse­um.

One more thing. We hope you enjoy the San Juan Coun­ty Vir­tu­al Fair, August 12–15. This year’s theme is “2020: A Fair Odyssey.” It’s mak­ing history.

You can support the San Juan Update by doing business with our loyal advertisers, and by making a one-time contribution or a recurring donation.