Columbia County Fair & Rodeo

The main entrance to the Columbia County Fairgrounds is framed by stone monuments built as a depression-era work project. They first stood at the gate of the old fairgrounds at Deer Island and were moved here, to the grounds east of St. Helens, for preservation. The fair opened on July 25, 1990, with their dedication. Inside the gate a visitor sees the entrance to the 4-H Building, a gift of Warren Grange in 2015. Beyond it are the barns: beef, dairy, poultry, sheep, goat, swine, and the horse barns beside the 4-H Arena, built with 88 box stalls and 6 tie stalls.

The 2026 fair ran four days, July 15 through 18. Until 2024 it had run five, Wednesday through Sunday. That year portions of the fair closed early on the final day, and community feathers were ruffled, the Columbia County Spotlight reported. The fair board cited money lost by staying open on Sundays and voted on Aug. 12 to hold the 2025 fair to four days. Each fair takes a theme suggested by residents and voted by the board. The 2024 theme was “Sew it, Grow it, Show it.”

The entertainment roster mixes country music, sideshow, and children’s acts. Jacquie Roar, an Oregon country rock singer known from NBC’s The Voice, headlines. The Sweetwater Band plays rock, old and new country, disco, funk, and blues. The Northwest Playboys are five honky-tonk players from dozens of Northwest bands who got together after COVID. Whiskey Deaf plays bluegrass, old-time, and early country, and Marty Davis & The Legends of the Pioneers run through silver-screen cowboy songs and western swing for the audience to sing along. The Decades cover rock ‘n’ roll from the 1950s through the 1980s.

Between sets, Circus Luminescence, a Portland troupe, works the grounds with partner juggling, electric unicycles, acrobatics, and LED lights. Wren the Juggler goes on stilts as a juggling cowboy or pirate. Matt Henry, an International Juggling Association champion and gold medalist at the Las Vegas Open yo-yo competition, makes giant bubbles. He took up bubbles in 2012 after seeing a recipe on Facebook. Matt Baker has broken five Guinness World Records, three of which he still holds, mostly in juggling stunts. The Perceptives stage a mind-reading show and a comedy hypnosis show. Washboard Willy plays rhythm and sound effects for children, and Antonio Sombrero twists balloon animals. The Little Rascals kids zone is free. The Museum of Curious Things, a mobile collection, sets out unusual taxidermy, crypto-zoological samples, and anatomical oddities.

The fair’s first day belongs to the county’s elders. On July 15, 2026, a senior lunch was served from 10:30 a.m. until it sold out. At 12:30 p.m. the My Fair Lady & Gentleman Pageant went on stage, held in partnership with the United Way of Northwest Oregon. The 2026 participants were Connie Welty of Rainier, Dana Woodbury of Scappoose, Merle Pence of St. Helens, Colleen Erickson of Clatskanie, and Karin Smith of Vernonia.

The pageant was founded to recognize senior women for service to their communities, and 2019 marked its 31st year. That May, the new court was crowned at a tea at the First Lutheran Church in St. Helens, catered by the Daughters of the British Empire as a fundraiser. Its members included Patti Younts of Clatskanie, who fills her yard with lights at Halloween and Christmas and turns them on when the school bus goes by. Donna Baker of Scappoose had opened the senior center there every day since 2017. Deloris Bellingham of Vernonia had served on the Columbia County Fair Board from 2004 to 2015. The crown has been worn since at least 1990, when Grace Heide of St. Helens won it. Bob Rau of the public television show The Collectors was master of ceremonies that year.

Barns, a museum, and the auction ring

The barns carry the names of the people who built them. In the Swine Barn, built in 1999 by 4-H and Friends of the Fair, the panels list the individuals and sponsors who gave time and money. The Pomona Grange Farm Museum went up in 1986, mostly with donated materials and labor. Once construction began, according to the fairgrounds’ history, people saw what the Grange was doing and donated items so quickly that the building was soon full. Everything in it is donated or on loan. An addition, also built with donated labor and materials, followed in 2003 and filled just as quickly.

Volunteers have tended the Master Garden since 1987. The St. Helens Garden Club laid a concrete floor in the Floral Building in 1991. Between 2011 and 2014, members of the Columbia Rotary Club painted the Agriculture Building, smoothed its dirt floor, and repaired its outside booths.

The fair closes on its auction. The 2026 Youth Livestock Auction began at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 18, in the Pole Barn between the Beef and Sheep barns. The animals are prize livestock raised by 4-H members: beef, pork, lamb, goat, rabbit, and poultry. Bidders work from a sales catalog listing each animal’s weight and owner. As each animal is led into the ring, the auctioneer calls for bids in dollars and cents per pound, and a bidder raises a hand. A buyer may have the animal cut, wrapped, and frozen, take it home alive, donate it to a charity, or resell it to a commercial packer at market price.

Rodeo and its royalty

The rodeo arena took shape in 1969. The Columbia County Rodeo Committee, a volunteer group, has raised funds over the years to update it and produces the fair’s yearly NPRA rodeo there. Junior Rodeo day runs in mid-July as well.

A court rides for the fair and rodeo. The 2026 queen is Haley Pierson of St. Helens, the 18-year-old daughter of Shaun and Jessica Pierson. She has competed in barrel racing, junior rodeo, OHSET, and 4-H. Queens are crowned in January at the fairgrounds by the queen before them. On Jan. 18, 2025, Madison Blackburn crowned Sydney Sevigny, a St. Helens High School senior. Princesses Avery Elliott and Annika Hedin were crowned at the same ceremony, and Hedin was described as a self-taught balloon artist working toward a commercial drone pilot license. Visiting royalty from Clackamas County, Canby, and Tillamook attended. The coronation is the court’s biggest fundraiser of the year and pays for its travel through Oregon and Southwest Washington.

The fairgrounds’ own records show the first Columbia County Fair & Rodeo Court in 1961. The same history notes that a court under another name, with the same duties, existed before then. Jean McPherson, a former court coordinator, also dates the first rodeo court to 1961. In 2015 she was gathering photographs of every court since that year for a scrapbook. “This is my first real scrapbook and I’m excited about it,” she said. She enjoyed the changes in fashion, the polyester suits and flat cowboy hats. She still lacked photographs of the 1965, 1967, 1969, 1970, and 1971 courts. The Clatskanie Chief recorded one of the courts between those gaps: Queen Vicky Buck and princesses Betty Anderson and Cathy Click, who reigned in 1968 in the arena at Deer Island.

From Yankton Grange to Deer Island

The fairgrounds’ history credits the Columbia County Pomona Grange, organized in 1902 to take on the problems of farmers, with starting the fair. The first fairs were held by a single grange. By 1909 the little Yankton Grange hall had held three successful fairs, and its members were planning a larger one. In 1912 a delegation from the Yankton Fair Association asked the County Court for money. The court set apart $200, and a county fair was held at the Yankton Grange hall, with premiums for the best livestock, poultry, fruit, and farm products. A 2015 history in the county paper calls this the first documented idea of a county fair.

In 1913 the association began calling itself the Columbia County Fair Association, though the name was not official, and moved the fair to Washington Square in St. Helens. That site later held St. Helens High School, then Condon Junior High, and now Lewis & Clark School. The association planned horse races, fireworks, and band concerts. It began a 34-by-30-foot pavilion that June, aiming to “Make it the Biggest Event of its kind ever held in the County and also to make it an annual event.” The sources differ on when the County Court officially acknowledged the fair. The fairgrounds’ history says 1915, and the 2015 newspaper history says it followed the 1914 fair.

The Pomona Grange wanted better ground. In 1923 the Appleton property at Deer Island was offered at $100 an acre, when similar land sold for $200 to $500. A committee of Grangers took the idea to the County Court several times without encouragement and was finally told only a vote of the people could make the purchase. The committee gathered enough signatures to put the measure on the May 1924 ballot, and in spite of opposition it carried by “a nice majority,” in the fairgrounds’ words. A one-mill tax paid for the land and helped build four of its five buildings. The site lay on the Columbia River Highway, with a grove of fir, maple, alder, dogwood, and cedar, green hills to the west, and the Columbia River along its eastern edge.

The last fair on the old St. Helens grounds ran Sept. 10–12, 1924. Clatskanie, which had not taken part before, sent “a carload of people.” Farm teams competed in horse driving for a $30 premium. Carnival night brought fair-goers out in masks and costumes for prizes, and Friday held the horseshoe contest.

In September 1925 the fair opened at Deer Island, with a half-mile racetrack and a cattle barn for 125 head. “About 100 acres have been fenced for use (by) this year’s fair, but an aviation field and rifle range are planned,” the Clatskanie Chief reported on Aug. 28. The Manville Wild West Show performed trick roping and bareback races. A county auto distributor matched a stock touring car against any horse or man over 50 or 100 yards from a standing start, and the Chief guessed the man would win. Admission was 50 cents.

By August 1935 the Depression had hold of the county. Admission was free, but parking inside the grounds cost 25 cents. A new grandstand seating 2,000 overlooked a new racetrack, and a new dance hall stood nearby. The fair grew to four days, “with a big rodeo Sunday evening.” The top draw was wrestling, which brought wrestlers of national reputation. Fair Board President Heinie Heumann called that year’s showing “The finest exhibits and best entertainment the Columbia County Fair has ever had.”

Leaving Deer Island

The sources give two dates for the sale of the Deer Island grounds. The fairgrounds’ history says the county sold them in 1966 to Shell Chemical Company and bought the present site on Bachelor Flat Road. The newspaper history places the sale in 1967, to Shell Oil Company for a chemical plant, for $220,000 as reported by The Chronicle, and names the new site on Gable Road. That year tractor driving replaced the horse-team contest, a Battle of the Bands stood in for the old dance bands, and the dates moved up to Aug. 2–5. Attendance was 13,423. “The fair board was happy with the turnout,” said Fair Board Chairman Paul DeShazer.

Work on the new Pavilion, Agriculture Building, 4-H Building, and the beef, dairy, and poultry barns began in 1968. That April, seeing the buildings would not be finished in time, the board stayed one more summer at Deer Island. The old dance hall held a last dance, to Heck Harper and his band, with the proceeds going to the new grounds. At 11 a.m. on July 23, 1969, dignitaries and supporters dedicated the new fairgrounds and opened the fair. The Chief’s front page promised “Livestock, wrestling, rodeos, magic and rides.”

The barns kept coming in the following decades. Sheep and goat barns and a maintenance building went up after 1980. When budget cuts in 1996 ended the premiums paid to Open Class and 4-H exhibitors, Friends of Fair formed as a nonprofit to raise the money. The 90th fair, in 2005, took the theme Going Extreme, with skateboard and BMX demonstrations and a mock meth house raid.

The granges stayed. In January 2013 the Oregon State Grange’s executive committee took up a request from Eva Frost and Evelyn Hudson for Warren Grange trust funds to improve the fairgrounds’ 4-H kitchen. State Master Susan Noah recommended a 50-year lease for the grange, and the committee asked Warren Grange to pursue a longer lease before deciding. On March 30, 2013, the committee released $95,000, contingent on amending the agreement to include its attorney’s recommendations. The stainless steel kitchen was installed in the 4-H Building in 2014. On Saturday, September 12, 2026, Warren Grange served pancakes and biscuits and gravy there from 7:30 to 10:30 in the morning.