Eastern Montana Fair

At eight in the morning on Saturday, August 22, 2026, the last day of the hundredth Eastern Montana Fair, 4-H judging resumed on the Custer County fairgrounds in Miles City. The classes were breeding beef, yearling heifers, cow-and-calf pairs, breeding goats, breeding sheep, and a Large Animal Round Robin. The Event Center opened at eleven, along with the Adventure Zone, ten free slides of different sizes and heights for children. The Mighty Thomas Carnival started its rides at one. At three the Champion of Champions 4-H Market Beef Show brought champion steers from several regional counties into the Ag Pavilion, and the Stockman Bank Stick Horse Rodeo followed there at four.

The fair takes four days each August at 42 Garryowen Road. The grounds are used the rest of the year as well, for rodeos, horse racing, carnivals and demolition derbies. They are home to the Miles City Youth Hockey Association’s “Generals” and to the World Famous Bucking Horse Sale. Besides the grandstands and the rodeo arena, the fairgrounds hold the Home Show Building, the Lions Building, the Hartman Building, Agri-Sports, the Pavilion and a beer garden called the Beer Bunker. Dale Berg manages the facilities and their maintenance.

Rodeo, motorcycles, and Diamond Rio

Each evening of the 2026 fair had one main event. On Wednesday and Thursday, August 19 and 20, the PRCA rodeo began at seven: bareback riding, bull riding, bronc riding, tie-down and team roping, barrel racing and steer wrestling, for an $18,000 total purse. The program also included a Businessman’s Wild Cow Milking contest, a calf scramble for children aged 9 to 15, and a boot race for those 8 and under. Friday night the Octane Addictions Motorcycle Legends Freestyle Show took over the grounds, billed on the fair’s ticket page as “motorcycle legends doing crazy jumps!” Earlier that afternoon the 4-H and FFA Junior Livestock Sale had been held. On Friday and Saturday, magician Keith Raymond and his Balloon Factory gave free shows.

Saturday night belonged to Diamond Rio. The band’s biography on the county’s fair page says that in 1991, with “Meet in the Middle,” it became the first country group to reach No. 1 with a debut single. Two local musicians opened. Riley Rae, 17, had taken guitar lessons from Jake Elwood since she was 13 and had sung on 7th Street for BHS. Grady Johnson came to Miles City in 2009 to attend school and ride bulls at Miles Community College. There he bought a pawn shop guitar and learned his first chords “with the help of a buddy, YouTube, and Sundays at the Bison Bar.” He played with Billy Hoverson at the VFW. In 2018 he joined the Army, and he served four years as an Airborne Ranger in the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. Today he plays solo around southeastern Montana and is a regular member of Stolen Roan.

When the concert ended, Jessica Loobey played a free set at the Beer Bunker at ten. She is a Nashville recording artist raised on a cattle ranch outside Sturgis, South Dakota.

Sheaves, fleeces, and a hundred years in the Home Show Building

Open-class exhibits must be grown, raised or crafted in Custer County or in one of thirteen neighboring counties, among them Powder River, Garfield, Rosebud and Yellowstone. The 2026 fair book carried the line “Celebrating 100 Years of Blue Ribbon Moments.” It divided the work into thirteen departments, from horses and beef cattle through vegetables, floral, culinary arts, photography, needlework, arts and crafts.

The agriculture department shows what the surrounding country grows. Entries include gallon samples of winter wheat, durum, flax, safflower, millet and triticale. Sheaves of grain must measure at least six inches around at the base of the head and be tied in three places: under the head, at the middle, and at the butt. There are six-ear entries of multicolored Indian corn, and sections of first- and second-cutting alfalfa bales set in boxes. Fleeces in the wool department are tied with paper twine, flesh side out, so the judge can handle them without their falling apart.

Dirk Doeden, a member of the fair board, superintended the beef, swine, sheep and goat, and wool departments. The open-class horse show began at 9:30 a.m. at Horseman’s Park, where riders wore western boots and a hat or helmet and stallions were not allowed. A blue ribbon pays a premium of $4, a red $3, and a white $2.

For the centennial, the Home Show Building held a 100 Years of the Fair exhibit on Friday and Saturday. The Range Riders Museum lent pieces that included seldom-viewed artwork by local artists Gene Larson and Wally Badgett. WaterWorks Art Museum ran wheel-throwing pottery and stained-glass demonstrations and a free art activity for children. Local acoustic musicians played among the displays of fair history.

Zinnia Day, 1926

Custer County had held a fair almost every fall for years. In 1926 the fair officially became the Eastern Montana Fair, and the Miles City Daily Star promoted it heavily. This account comes from Amorette Allison, historian and columnist for the Miles City Star, who went back through the paper’s coverage in a column of September 9, 2026.

The first fair opened on September 1, 1926. The Star ran its main story on page three under the headline “Fair Draws Large Crowds On Opening Day Ideal Weather.” The story began: “A clear sky with a cool breeze, ideal weather for the fair today, sent hundreds of persons to the fair grounds for the first day of the biggest and greatest fair ever held in Eastern Montana.” The paper counted “a laughing, jostling crowd of approximately 2,000 people.” The day had been declared an unofficial holiday. Many downtown stores and businesses closed and sent their employees to the fair.

Harness racing was among the main entertainments, with drivers riding in sulkies behind horses held to a pace or a trot. A ram sale was held on the morning of the first day. Allison calls it the precursor of the Eastern Montana Ram Sale, now held in September after Labor Day. The Star mentioned it only in passing, as having “drew a large number of people who were highly interested in the number of sheep sold.”

The paper described the exhibits at length. Department M, fancy work and art, held an appliquéd quilt on a blue background covered in nursery-rhyme figures, from the Three Men in a Tub to Little Miss Muffet and her spider. It also held a carriage robe “spelling the name Betty June . . . crocheted in white and edged with pink,” and a lunch set of white linen with large crocheted corners in the design of a rose.

The Kiwanis Club ran the flower show. Opening day was Zinnia Day, and Friday was potted plant day. Draft horses shown by the U.S. experimental station “drew the admiration of hundreds of people.” The Industrial School exhibited woodworking, vegetables, and shoes made by hand and by machine by boys learning the trade. The schools sent so many exhibits that an extra booth had to be added on Wednesday night.

The evenings ended in fireworks. Before them came Vaudeville acts from the Western Vaudeville Association. “Harry Sykes and company brought howls of laughter from the audience with their antics on their bicycles and cycles,” the paper wrote, and tumblers kept the crowd “in merry suspense.” Then “Frankie Brabant, harmonic champion of Montana, played several pieces that were well-received on his mythical mouth harp.”

From 1960 to the hundredth

On August 27, 1960, William Edward Woodcock Jr. photographed Ted Kennedy, then 28 and later a United States senator, taking part in the Eastern Montana Fair rodeo. The Miles City Star published the picture. Woodcock’s family has since released it into the public domain.

In September 1991 the county commissioners created a five-member fair commission by resolution. Resolution 2014-26, passed April 15, 2014, enlarged it to seven members. The board meets monthly at the Event Center. In 2026 Levi Liles served as its president and Corey Jones as vice president.

Mike Lavin managed the 2026 fair, his first year in the job. The fair’s ticket site still names Gail Shaw as fair manager. On August 31, 2026, Shaw signed a note of thanks to the rodeo’s volunteers, sponsors, staff, contestants and fans: “So many people come out to enjoy the rodeo, and it truly takes a lot of people working together to make it happen.”

Allison closed her look back by saying the 2026 fair had fine exhibits and entertainment. “Even if the state harmonic champion wasn’t there.”