Beaverhead County Fair

At the south end of the Beaverhead County Fairgrounds in Dillon, the livestock barns hold the hogs, sheep, beef, and goats that young exhibitors have raised for the fair, with ribbons of various colors hung where the judges left them. “The livestock barns are always a great place to start,” Keeley Fitzgerald, the fair’s executive director, told the Dillon Tribune in 2025. “You can see all of the animals and it is educational to see what product is true farm to table and celebrate agriculture and see what the fair and Beaverhead County is all about.”

Carroll Van West’s 2016 survey of Dillon’s public buildings calls the fairgrounds the largest public landscape in Dillon. It is a sprawling complex of exhibition buildings, grandstand, and rodeo arena on the outskirts of town along the railroad line. The line came first. Dillon was created on September 13, 1880, when a group of businessmen bought a 480-acre ranch, and it served as the temporary terminus of the Utah & Northern Railway through the winter of 1880–1881. The town was incorporated in 1884 and named for the railroad’s president, Sidney Dillon. The main gate is on South Railroad Street. The back gate, on South Argenta Street, is where contestants enter and where traveling horsemen find stalls, water, and a payment drop box. The grounds stay open around the clock all year.

The fair opens on the Wednesday of Labor Day weekend and runs through Sunday. Montana’s Biggest Weekend, as the rodeo, concert, and parade are called together, carries it into Monday. The 2026 fair ran September 2 through 6, and the parade followed on September 7. One wristband, $5 for anyone 5 and older, covered the week. The fair’s own notice said all proceeds go to the fairgrounds.

Barns, show ring, and the open class halls

The market shows come on Thursday. In the 2025 program, swine were judged at 8 a.m., beef at 1 p.m., and sheep and goats at 5 p.m., each followed by a showmanship class. Breeding stock, poultry, and rabbits followed on Friday. The 4-H Round Robin Showmanship Contest is held Friday afternoon in the Lundberg Show Ring, and the FFA Livestock Judging Clinic follows at 4 p.m. On Saturday the FFA Livestock Sale Buyer’s Barbecue runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and the 4-H and FFA Market Livestock Sale starts right after. A 4-H silent auction is held in the 4-H Building, with bidding from Friday evening until 7 p.m. Saturday.

Only Beaverhead County clubs and the Melrose 4-H clubs show in the 4-H and FFA classes. The Open Division takes youth and adult entries from Beaverhead, Madison, Jefferson, and Silver Bow counties. Open class entries come in on Tuesday and are judged on Wednesday: baking and cooking, flowers, art, needlework, and the rest. In the late summer of 2026 the fair passed along a reminder from the Dillon Garden Club to get the flowers ready. According to the 2025 fair book, sponsors fund more than $20,000 in cash and prizes each year for contestants and for open class, 4-H, and FFA exhibitors.

Ropers, branders, and the midway stage

The 2025 program names the Harry Andrus Arena as the home of the arena events. They begin Wednesday evening with the Open 4D Barrel Race at 6:30. Thursday of the 2026 fair brought PRCA breakaway roping and barrel racing slack at 10 a.m., team breakaway roping at 2 p.m., and the Team Roping Classic at 6 p.m. Friday opens with Team Branding at 10 a.m. and closes with the annual Ranch Rodeo at 5 p.m., which the fair advertised in 2026 as “a fun, family event.” The Tribune allowed that, depending on one’s perspective, either the Friday ranch rodeo or the children’s arena events on Saturday morning are the high point of the local program. On the Saturday of the 2026 fair, the arena held youth rodeo all morning. The 2025 program listed a Youth SAE Rodeo, kids’ mutton bustin’, and steer riding for that slot.

The midway stage stands next to the 4-H Building near the grandstand. In 2026, Music on the Midway played Thursday, Friday, and Saturday afternoons, with karaoke from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday and Friday. In 2025 the singers were Katie Hall and Morgan Seymour, and Prickly Pear Productions ran the karaoke. The 2025 program also listed food vendors, beer gardens, and expos. In 2026 the fair quizzed families online to name two snow cone booths on the grounds and offered a gift card to Blissful Berry Bowls, a vendor at the fairgrounds, as a trivia prize.

The Jaycees’ rodeo, concert, and parade

The Dillon Jaycees run the professional end of the weekend. Their PRCA rodeo has bull riding, bronc riding, steer wrestling, barrel racing, breakaway roping, and team roping. In 2026 it ran Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m., with team roping, calf roping, and steer wrestling slack at 7 a.m. Sunday. In 2026 the Jaycees also named a Miss Dillon Jaycee Rodeo.

The 2019 rodeo was the 63rd annual. That year the Jaycees put up $28,000 in prize money across seven events and opened the weekend Friday night with a wild horse race Calcutta at the Dillon Golf Course. Rodeo chair JM Peck, who also sits on the fair board, said the Jaycees give all rodeo and concert proceeds to community projects and youth programs. “I just think the Jaycee’s really value the community, that’s why we all come out and volunteer the long hours to make this happen and the rodeo is fun and we love rodeo and we love the concert,” he said. Kody Lahaye, head coach of the Montana Western rodeo team, had athletes entered that year. “It’s a great feeling to see kids be able to take the next step into this rodeo, this is a pretty big rodeo this weekend,” he said.

The concert takes over the arena on Sunday night. The 2026 show was billed as the 39th Annual Labor Day Concert, with Kameron Marlowe headlining, Redferrin as special guest, and Michael Armstrong opening. Clint Black played in 2025, with Tanner Laws, and Dustin Lynch played in 2019. On Monday at 10 a.m. the Jaycees’ Labor Day Parade sets out from the Bitterroot Trading Post on East Glendale Street and winds through town to the Carquest on North Montana Street. The 2026 theme was “America 250,” and one cash prize went to the best use of it.

A lamb named Sandy

The 2026 fair had no carnival. The Tribune reported that the fair board could not persuade any of the dwindling number of carnival companies to leave its Labor Day commitments. The Montana company it had hired has served the Hamilton fair on that weekend for decades, and Hamilton draws a larger crowd. Bouncy houses filled in, along with a paintball event aimed at teens and adults. The year before, Jell Blasters, a game like paintball, and Sky Jump, a trampoline on bungee cords, had joined the bounce houses. The Tribune also reported in 2026 that Cory Birkenbuel had joined the staff as the new fair manager.

The carnival had been a question for some time. A Voice of America reporter at the fair in 2009 found cowboys from nearby ranches walking the promenade between the carnival and the agricultural pavilions. Families ate hot dogs and cotton candy, and Pippi the Clown painted children into butterflies, tigers, and Spider-Men. The fair manager then, Chris Renfree, said: “I think it’s got the rural type fair and the country type fair to it. A bigger carnival kind of takes a little bit [away] from that. But people like to be entertained.”

That same Saturday, an auctioneer in a livestock shed was selling the last of the 4-H animals. Weston Helle, 10, had just sold his lamb, Sandy. “Yesterday I showed it, and got a blue ribbon. But my lamb ate it,” he said. “We trained her to follow our motorcycles.” Asked how he felt, he said, “Pretty sad. This is my first year. I needed the money in a college account, so I sold her.” His mother, Karen Helle, who raises wool sheep, said, “They have to feed their lambs morning and night and do their jobs and measure their feet and clean their pens and they have to exercise them every day. It’s good for them!” Fourteen-year-old Ann Hutton had named her two hogs Ralph and Lauren. The pair across the pen, she said, were Victoria and Secret.

Keeley Fitzgerald spent ten years in 4-H. “I always took an animal from our ranch and held that animal from the time it was born until the time it went to the butcher,” she told the Tribune in 2025. “It was just a great learning experience and something that has always stuck with me.”

In the exhibition shed in 2009, Kay Conover watched over the pies and the needlework. “We’ve lost a lot of the little old ladies that used to do the embroidery and the crochet and stuff like that,” she said. “It seems like there is less time to do this kind of stuff anymore. It’s all rush-rush-rush!” The fair book carries two awards for open class exhibitors who place in three or more departments. The youth award honors Joe Womack. The adult award honors Murlin Conover, 1912–2004, who exhibited at the fair for many years and was known for her knitting, sewing, needlework, flowers, and Swedish tea-rings. Neither award was given in 2020, because of Covid-19. Jeannette Redfield has won the Conover award seven times. In 2024 it went to Kim Conover.