Fallon County Fair

The Fallon County Fairgrounds sit on the left side of Highway 7 as it runs south out of Baker toward Ekalaka. Baker is the seat of Fallon County, a few miles west of the North Dakota line on Highway 12, and the county fair is held at these grounds every August. The 2026 fair ran August 11 through 16 under the motto “Country, County & Community.” The fair has set August 19–21, 2027, for the next edition.

Six days of judging, rodeo, and wrecks

Livestock comes first. On the Tuesday of the 2026 fair, horses, llamas and alpacas went before the judges. Wednesday brought cats, dogs, rabbits and poultry, and in the evening 4-H held a community dance. Thursday morning opened with PRCA and WPRA slack in the arena while the indoor exhibits were judged and dairy cattle, goats, bum goats, lambs and sheep took their turns. Free-stage and strolling acts worked the grounds that day, and Midway West Amusements turned on the carnival lights. Pigs showed Friday morning and beef cattle Friday afternoon, and the 4-H/FFA market beef show closed the day. 4-H served a steak dinner fundraiser that night, and the 4-H/FFA livestock sale followed on Saturday. The vendor building and exhibit hall opened Friday and stayed open through Sunday.

Evenings belong to the grandstands. The outdoor arena measures 156 by 220 feet, with seats for more than 1,030 people, a crow’s nest above, and 100 horse stalls. Both arenas were renovated in the spring of 2015. The outdoor arena got a larger crow’s nest, a new rodeo office for secretaries and announcers, and new panels, bucking chutes, roping boxes and holding pens. The indoor arena, 75 by 250 feet and seating more than 700, got new ventilation, 20 new horse stalls, and new windows, doors and insulation.

The Thursday PRCA/WPRA rodeo began at 7 p.m. with Mutton Bustin’ for small children. The fair advertised “top tier talent that competes at the big show in Vegas.” On Friday night Aaron Watson, billed as “country’s ultimate underdog troubadour,” played the grandstands with Ned LeDoux, son of Chris LeDoux. DeAnna Herbst of the Fallon County Times reported that “the weather was good and the music was even better.” After the concert, and again on Saturday evening, the band The Big Empty played on the patio for dancing.

Saturday begins downtown with the parade. Herbst described streets lined before the start, children holding goodie bags ready for the candy, class reunion floats, demo derby cars, and fire trucks from Baker and Plevna. Afterward the crowd moves out to the fairgrounds for the Saturday rodeo. This is a Tough Enough to Wear Pink performance, with an opening ceremony at 12:45, the rodeo at 1 p.m., and Mutton Bustin’ and Junior Barrels on the card. For spectators who arrived without pink, the fair sold pink items at the ticket office under the grandstands.

At 8 that evening the LAL Insanity Fest Motorsports show took the arena with half-car drag racing, Pro Tough Trucks, the Turf Wars Mowdown of pro lawn mowers, Full Boogie Tilt Motorsports and Mega Trucks. Sunday opened with Cowboy Church and closed with the Baker Wrestling Club Demolition Derby at 2 p.m. By Herbst’s account, “The stands filled fast.”

During fair week the O’Fallon Historical Museum in town offers a fair exhibit as an indoor stop between events. Lost phones and water bottles end up at the Fairgrounds Office in the Exhibit Hall. Jennefer Wheeler manages the grounds. The Times closed its 2026 account by thanking the Fair Board and the county commissioners “for gifting the fair to our community.”

A lumber yard, a ball game, and a grounded airplane

The fair grew out of earlier gatherings. Baker began in 1908 with the coming of the railroad to Sandstone Flat. According to the booklet printed for Baker’s 1983 Diamond Jubilee, one-day fairs were held as early as 1909, when homesteaders began thinking about a way to show off their efforts. The fairgrounds’ own history calls these events Inter-Community Expositions and says they were popular across eastern Montana from 1909 into the 1920s. Farmers and townspeople used them to show their crops and produce. Many exhibitors carried their entries on to the Montana State Fair, where, the history says, Fallon County was known for award-winning exhibits every year.

In 1920 a few residents began discussing what it would take to give the county a fair of its own. In 1921 the Secretary of State approved the establishment of the Fallon County Fairgrounds. Low crop production, weather and thin local participation then held up the first fair for several years.

It came on September 11, 1924, at the former Morrow Lumber Yard in Baker. The day offered exhibits, a baseball game between Baker and Ollie, a horseshoe competition, a boxing card, and a sham battle staged by Company I at the Rifle Range, and it ended with a dance at Wildwood Park. An airplane exhibition planned for morning and evening was canceled because of mechanical problems.

The next year the board named it the “First Annual County Fair of Fallon County” and stretched it to two days, August 28 and 29. Car races, horse races, bicycle races and the Siebrand Brothers Carnival Show were added, and the board surprised spectators with the airplane exhibition owed from the year before. The Jubilee booklet records that early fairs also ran an Old Timer’s Horse Race, with entries under the names Bruce, Burns, Glidwell, Hamilton, Keener and Morrison.

The two sources name the founders differently. The Jubilee booklet lists the first fair board as President Larry Burns, L. F. Bruggeman Sr., L. Price Sr. and Albert Fost. The fairgrounds history gives the early officers as Bob Lowery, Albert Frost, Larry Busch, Homer French, George McHoes, L. Price and Larry Burns.

Grandstands, dust years, and a tent kitchen

By the late 1920s a racetrack and grandstands stood on the present site, and an exhibit hall followed in 1938. The run broke twice. According to the Jubilee booklet, no fair was held in 1933 or 1934, when the area became part of the Dust Bowl drought, and none during the Second World War. Margaret Carrington, the first fair secretary, held the post for more than 25 years and retired in 1957.

In January 1963 the Fallon County Times reported from the Rocky Mountain Association of Fairs meeting in Billings. There Fred Morrow of the fair board was elected vice president of the association. The dates for that summer’s Fallon County fair were set for August 16–18, and the state Centennial was named the theme for every Montana fair. Gene Hoff, the board secretary, sat on the resolution committee, and Clyde Burns and Earl Hoke of Plevna also attended. A speaker, J. Hugh King, told the delegates that clean restrooms and clean grounds, the midway included, counted as much as good relations with the newspapers. The Jubilee booklet also notes that the country singer Mel Tillis once entertained a full house at the fair.

Members of the American Lutheran congregation opened a food stand at the fair during the thirties. The first year it ran in a tent on kerosene and gasoline stoves. By the time the Jubilee booklet was printed, the stand had its own building with a walk-in cooler, and the entire congregation worked it.