Draper Days is Draper's July: nine days that open with a professional rodeo and close with a parade up Fort Street, free concerts and fireworks over Draper Park. The city runs it, and the concerts, the parade and the fireworks are free. From Utah Valley it is the nearest of Salt Lake County's big city celebrations, since Draper City Park is about half an hour from downtown Provo.
The shape of the week
The festival is built like a bookend. The rodeo takes the first Friday and Saturday, the parade and the big evening shows take the last, and the days between hold the smaller, more local events. The 2026 schedule, as Draper City and the South Valley Chamber listed it, ran like this:
- July 10 and 11: the rodeo, and a pickleball tournament
- July 11: the 5K
- July 13: the horse pull
- July 14: the historic walking tour
- July 15: Draper Idol, a movie night at the amphitheater and the Heritage Banquet
- July 16: the car show and the children's bike parade
- July 17 and 18: park activities, concerts, and the drone show and fireworks
- July 18: the firefighters' pancake breakfast, the parade and a 3-on-3 basketball tournament
A Strider bike race for small children ran as part of the sports lineup on July 5, the weekend before.
The rodeo
The Draper Days Rodeo is sanctioned by the Rocky Mountain Professional Rodeo Association, so the riders are working professionals and the program is the classic one: bull riding, bareback riding, saddle bronc riding, steer wrestling and calf roping. It runs two nights at the Andy Ballard Arena and Equestrian Center, 1600 East Highland Drive, with gates at 6:30 p.m. and the first event at 7:30.
It is the one part of Draper Days that needs a ticket, and it is the part that sells out: the city's rodeo page reported the 2026 rodeo sold out. If a July rodeo night is the reason you are driving north, buy tickets when sales open rather than planning to decide that week.
The parade
The parade steps off at 9 a.m. sharp on the festival's final Saturday and runs about a mile and a half north on Fort Street, from Stokes Avenue to Pioneer Road. The city caps it at 90 entries. In 2026 entries were encouraged to match an America 250 theme.
Draper is strict about saving spots, and the rules are worth knowing before you arrive with chairs:
- No reserving a spot on public property along the route before 6 p.m. on the Wednesday before the parade.
- Reserving a spot on private property without the owner's permission is never allowed.
- Vehicles and trailers may park along the route only after 8 a.m. on the Friday before.
The concerts and the night show
The last Friday and Saturday evenings belong to Draper Park, where the free concerts start at 7 p.m. and the night show at 10. The city books headliners it describes as nationally known, with local support; in 2026 the Friday bill was the Groove Merchants with Redwood Revival and the winners of Draper Idol.
The 2026 festival added a drone show, first scheduled for Friday night with fireworks on Saturday. Technical trouble moved the drone show to Saturday, straight after the fireworks, which turned the final night into a double show. Whether both return is the city's call each year, so check the concert page before you plan around one or the other.
The rest of the week
The middle of the week is where Draper Days feels most like a small town's festival rather than a big city's event. The horse pull puts draft teams to work. The Heritage Banquet and the historic walking tour lean on the city's past; Draper's historic preservation commission has run tours of the town's old homes as part of the festival. Draper Idol is a local singing contest, with its winners earning a spot on the Friday concert bill.
The park activities on the final two days are the part children remember. The 2026 lineup included bingo, a bungee trampoline, a butterfly encounter, a climbing wall, a stunt-dog show, a lumberjack show and face painting, with yoga in the park for the adults.
Where Draper came from
Draper Days celebrates a town older than most of the valley's suburbs. In the fall of 1849 Ebenezer Brown brought cattle to graze along the creek then called South Willow Creek, raising them to sell to emigrants bound for the California gold fields, and his wife Phebe and their family followed the next spring. Her brother, William Draper Jr., joined them, and by the end of 1852 twenty families lived along the creek. When the settlement got a post office in 1854 it was named Draperville, for him; the name was later shortened to Draper.
During the winters of 1855 and 1856 the settlers lived in a fort on land Ebenezer Brown donated. That site is now Draper Historic Park, at 12625 South 900 East, and it is where the photograph at the top of this page was taken, after a Draper Days children's parade.
Getting there from Utah County
OpenStreetMap routing puts Draper City Park, at 12501 South 1300 East, about 27 miles and 34 minutes from downtown Provo, and the Andy Ballard Arena about 37 minutes, both without traffic. The drive is a straight run up I-15 past the Point of the Mountain, and summer evening traffic around it can add time, so leave early for a 7:30 rodeo.
Draper has a FrontRunner station, but it is about 2.6 miles from the park as the crow flies, so the train is not a practical way to reach the festival. For the rest of what Draper offers on a summer trip, see Things to Do in Draper, Utah.
Practical notes
- Rodeo tickets first. They are the only thing that sells out.
- Mind the parade rules. Don't set out chairs before 6 p.m. on the Wednesday before the parade.
- Plan for the heat. The parade starts at 9 a.m. and the concerts and shows run into the night; the middle of a July afternoon is the hardest time to be outdoors.
- Check the year's schedule. Headliners, the drone show and the smaller events change year to year, and the city's Draper Days page is the one that updates.
Related Guides
- Things to Do in Draper, Utah
- Salt Lake County From Utah Valley
- The Lehi Round-Up
- Small-City Celebrations in Utah County
- The Freedom Festival in Provo
- Bountiful Handcart Days
- West Jordan's Western Stampede
- SoJo Summerfest
- Fort Herriman Towne Days
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