Daniels County Fair

The 2026 Daniels County Fair ended on Saturday night, July 25, with a demolition derby and the Big Coulee band. The Fair Association posted the derby results afterward. In the Herbie class Cashton Davis took first, Carter Davis second and Kannon Ferestad third. Heath Lindblom won Class 1. Skylar Powell won Class 2, where Dace Fisher placed second and also took the MadDog award. “It was a great night to wrap up the fair!” the association wrote. Not long after it added: “That’s a wrap on the 2026 Daniels County Fair.”

Four nights north of the tracks

The fairgrounds are at 200 Fairgrounds Road, just north of the railroad tracks on Main Street in Scobey and just west of the ball fields. Scobey lies 50 miles north of the junction of Highway 2 and Highway 13, and Highway 13 runs north through town. Daniels County fills the northeast corner of Montana against the Saskatchewan line. MSU Extension gives its population as about 1,700 in 2020 and classes more than 84 percent of its land as farmland, mostly durum and spring wheat, lentils, hay and peas.

Fair week opens with 4-H. In 2026 the 4-H program began on Tuesday, July 21, with a dog show and moved to the horse show on Wednesday. The Daniels County Leader announced the 73rd annual fair for July 23–25 “with three days of livestock shows” and exhibits. The county’s page gives the same dates. The Rocky Mountain Association of Fairs listed it as July 23–26. The county’s tourism listings name a 4-H show with judging, a beef, pork and lamb auction sale, open class and commercial exhibits, food vendors, a carnival, a petting zoo and a parade.

The evenings go to the arena. Thursday, July 23, brought the ranch rodeo and mutton busting, then a beer garden and a band. Steppler Ranch won the ranch rodeo, and Stensland Land and Livestock tied with Last Drink Ranch for second and third. The mutton busters went by the sign-up sheet, with one rider behind the chutes or in the arena at a time and one parent or adult per child. The association called its new one-ride-per-child rule “something a little different.” Friday night the Big Coulee band played, and so did Pam Tillis. “A beautiful night,” the association wrote. Saturday opened with a round robin in the morning, under the association’s forecast of “Going to be a hot one.” A silent auction held a children’s drawing at 3:30 and closed at 4:30, and the derby came last.

An undated tourism listing for the fairgrounds describes four nights of entertainment: the ranch rodeo, an NRA rodeo, a night show and the demolition derby. Its writer adds, “Our town is very small but Daniels County has the best family fair in northeastern Montana.” In 2026 the Thursday and Saturday wristbands were sold in town before the fair, at the Daniels Sheridan Federal Credit Union, Independence Bank, The Hardware Store and the Drug Store, and also at the ticket window on the grounds.

Two bodies share the work. The Fair Association puts the fair together each year and books the rodeos, the night show, the derby, the commercial vendors and the entertainment acts. The county’s Fair Board keeps up the grounds. In 2026 its members were Terry Rask, Terry Farver, Kaare Gaustad and Paul Kanning, with Jill Farver as secretary and one seat open. Outside fair week, the grounds take campers.

The Saddle Club’s racetrack

The grandstand side of the grounds goes back to the Scobey Saddle Club. The club began in 1937 as an informal social group of twelve people who met at Stoney Point, a sandstone outcropping above the East Fork of the Poplar River north of town. The men often rode out on horseback, and the women came later by car with picnic lunches. December 1941 put the plans aside. Meetings to organize the club formally were held in the fall of 1944, and its first officers were elected in January 1945.

One of the club’s first projects was to repair and rebuild the Daniels County Fairgrounds, which, according to the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame’s 2018 account of the club, “had fallen into shambles during the depression and wartime.” Club members built a graded racetrack, bleachers and a barn, and that account says all three were still in use. The club also persuaded the County Commissioners to appoint a Fair Board.

In 1946 the Saddle Club began running horse races on the new track. Local members rode against competitors from around Montana and southern Saskatchewan. Chuckwagon and chariot races made up much of the card, and the racing lasted until 1962.

A one-mill levy and six-foot rubber balls

The fair itself was slower to arrive. On July 26, 1951, the Daniels County Leader reported Mayor Chet Solberg’s plan for the Scobey ball park: chiefly leveling and a backstop that season. The paper noted that some observers hoped the ball park would not take as long as the county fair seemed to, for which “a fund... has been building up by an annual one-mill levy for many years.” The tourism listing for the fair dates its activities from 1951.

In 1953 the Fair Board asked the Saddle Club to sponsor a new fair event called Auto Polo. It was played in the arena much like soccer, with automobiles fitted with roll cages, six-foot rubber balls, and a competitive driver in each car. It drew crowds but lasted only two years, because the balls cost nearly $75 apiece.

A decade later, in 1963, the Homesteaders Golden Jubilee Association published a county history at Scobey under the editorial supervision of Dorothy Rustebakke. Its cover reads “Homesteaders Golden Jubilee and Daniels County Fair.”

Primer and paint on the barns

In May 2023, Daniels County 4-H began painting and repairing the livestock and horse barns on the fairgrounds, with help from the Fair Board. Members, leaders and parents scraped and power-washed the barns inside and out, then primed and painted them, and dealt with critical structural problems along the way. After three workdays, the surrounding wood fence, the metal panels and one of the three barns were counted “complete.” The club planned to come back the next spring for another of the weathered barns, which have held 4-H project animals for several decades.