Prisoner of War Camp, Rodeos and Ballfields: The Unknown History of the Cache County Fairgrounds

LOGAN - The land where the Cache County Fairgrounds now sit was deeded to Logan City on Jan. 7, 1910, by David and Mary Andrew, and Logan City deeded it to Cache County on Oct. 19, 1929, according to the April 2001 Logan/Cache County Fairgrounds Master Plan (link).

The same plan says the first recorded appropriation for a Cache County Fair was made on Dec. 2, 1878. The Logan Library local-history timeline (link) says Logan's first agricultural fair was held Sept. 7, 1861, and that the first Cache County Fair at what is now Willow Park was held Sept. 26-28, 1911. The county's page for the Aug. 5-8, 2026, Cache County Fair and Rodeo says the event is celebrating 147 years (link). The library timeline also says that on Jan. 4, 1889, after a petition to the Logan City Council, petitioners received a deed of sale for the land that became Willow Park, which borders the grounds on the south.

A rodeo, ballfields and a prisoner camp

The 2001 plan says the Cache County Fair Association, founded by George Thatcher, managed the grounds from 1911 until Jan. 11, 1933, when stockholders dissolved it and transferred its lease and assets to the county. It says the Cache County Chamber of Commerce sponsored a rodeo in the fall of 1922, exhibition dog races were held in the 1930s, and baseball was played on four lighted diamonds. The same April 2001 Logan/Cache County Fairgrounds Master Plan (link) also records a 1953 turkey shoot, a Lennon Sisters performance on May 15, 1962, and the Carson and Barns Circus's first visit to Logan in April 1965.

The northwest grounds became a prisoner-of-war camp in 1945, when several new buildings were added, and the camp lasted until the fall of 1946. The 2023 Fairgrounds Visioning Plan (link), a Utah State University graduate study posted on the county's website, and the Logan Library timeline say German prisoners were housed there from June 6 to Nov. 30, 1945, with as many as 550 reported at one point.

A branch camp of the Ogden Army depot

The Logan camp was a branch of the Ogden Army Service Forces Depot, according to a compilation of National Archives weekly POW lists (link). It is not listed there as a branch of Camp Kearns or of Bushnell General Hospital. Utah Humanities (link), drawing on a 1971 Utah Historical Quarterly article, says prisoners in the state's camps typically worked five to six days a week, eight to 10 hours, for 80 cents a day.

Accounts of the camp's dates and size differ. A 2013 Herald Journal review of 1945 local coverage (link) says about 400 German prisoners arrived June 9, 1945, after the War Department guaranteed prisoner labor for the area's 1945 sugar-beet crop; that they thinned beets under guard in crews of 20, paid in canteen coupons; that the camp was about 80 board-sided tents with two spotlighted guard towers; and that a mess hall and bathroom built south of the main building were meant to become fair exhibit halls. An Aug. 9, 1945, notice, the Journal said, put 50 guards at the camp and asked residents for reading material.

No record opened for this research identified an escape or a death at the fairgrounds. A July 1945 shooting that killed nine German prisoners was at the Salina branch camp, also under the Ogden depot, Allan Kent Powell said in discussing his book Splinters of a Nation (link).

Buildings, a 2007 ownership change and the Event Center

Citing a 1920 Logan City Engineering map, the 2001 plan says the 4-H Building, Community Building, Home Arts Building, racetrack and grandstands were built between 1911 and 1920. It also dates later barns, stalls, concessions and 1947 bleachers. The 2023 plan says the indoor arena was built in the early 1990s. Both plans put the site at about 48 acres. The 2001 plan called the grounds a joint city-county enterprise; the 2023 plan says that lasted until 2007 and that the county now owns and operates the site alone. The 2007 legal instrument was not located for this draft.

The 2017 Cache County audit (link) says the county issued $3.2 million in Series 2017 sales-tax revenue bonds, maturing Dec. 15, 2032, at 2.51 percent interest, to help fund a new event center then under construction. The 2018 audit (link) says completion of the event center accounted for about $5.8 million in capital assets. Fairgrounds Advisory Board minutes from May 8, 2018 (link) include a draft resolution describing the 32,000-square-foot Cache Event Center the county would open that year, and they record that sod had been laid where older buildings had stood.

Why this matters

The 2001 master plan was written to guide the fairgrounds' development for 20 years, and the 2023 plan proposes more changes, including a new indoor arena. The records show the county-owned site has been rebuilt and repurposed many times since 1910, from a wartime prisoner camp to the Event Center, context for residents weighing what comes next.

Source: April 2001 Logan/Cache County Fairgrounds Master Plan (link); 2023 Cache County Fairgrounds Visioning Plan (link); Logan Library local-history timeline (link); Herald Journal, Nov. 23, 2013 (link); Utah Humanities Beehive Archive (link); GenTracer Utah POW camp roster (link); Deseret News, Oct. 3, 2005 (link).