Hunters Community & 4-H Fair

On the third Saturday in August the fairgrounds on Hunters County Shop Road fill for one day. Horses are shown on the baseball field of the Columbia School next door, and a dog agility course runs across the school grounds. The school also supplies the fair’s only water and its only restrooms. Fair president Rhonda Elliott and secretary Linda Somerlott told the Huckleberry Press in 2021 that the fair would not have room without it. On neighboring land lent by Randy Gier, an outdoor craft exhibit sets up much like a flea market. In the barns and exhibit space, 4-H members show their livestock and other entries. Adults enter their gardening, canning, sewing, and quilting. By its officers’ account the fair draws from Hunters, Cedonia, Fruitland, Enterprise, and Gifford.

The fair calls itself the oldest one-day fair in Washington State. Its 2026 edition fell on August 15 under the banner “Celebrating 116 Years.” The week before, the board posted warnings of poor air quality, heat advisories, and fire danger, and banned smoking anywhere on the grounds or on property the fair leased for the day. Rain fell two nights before the fair, and the board reported the air much better for it. On the approaches, the Addy–Gifford and Hunters–Springdale roads were open. The Addy–Cedonia road was only partly open, cut to one lane in places, an active construction site with rocks newly fallen in the rain. The board also answered talk around the valley: “Despite many false rumors we are still having our parade!”

The new fair barn had a fresh asphalt floor that August, with straw for animal bedding, a small animal arena, and no electric power. On the Friday before the fair the grounds opened at 8:00 in the morning, with iced, hot, and blended coffee for sale.

A parade at half past eleven

In 2026 the parade lined up at 11 and stepped off at 11:30. It often carries the fair royalty and a Grand Marshall, and children ride in it in costume on decorated bicycles. The contests are open to whole families: crosscut saw, nail-driving, and horseshoes. Children run gunny sack races. In the few years before 2021 the fair added birdhouse building, in which children build the houses from scratch under close supervision, starting by cutting the wood themselves.

Chicken poop bingo is played on a grid. A chicken is turned loose on it, and the square it soils is the winning number. Prizes have included gift cards of up to $100 and homemade quilts. After the 2026 fair the board listed what the day had held: showing livestock, building birdhouses, the parade, the community lunch, and the crowning of the 2026–2027 royalty.

Four hundred pounds of meat

The meal is served at the school, and for years it was a barbecue of 400 pounds of meat. Elliott and Somerlott described the original method to the Huckleberry Press: the beef was wrapped in tin foil and burlap bags and buried in a sand pit to cook for 24 hours. About ten years before 2021, the high cost of beef moved the fair to pork. Around then Elliott and four other residents spent two years in the WSU Horizon Project, a community training program, learning skills such as grant writing and computer technology. At the end, participants could choose an item to benefit their community. They chose a grill large enough to cook all 400 pounds of pork. In 2021, with the fair still recovering its losses, the organizers considered a Homestyle Country Picnic Lunch of sausages and brats instead. The 2026 fair served a community lunch.

The fair also raises money with a dessert auction, which the 2021 article said had begun five years before. That year the Fruitland Winery lent its building for it, and no dessert sold for less than $20.

Queens, princesses, and a last king

The Chewelah Independent wrote in 2025 that the fair’s royalty had been a tradition for over 75 years. The fair’s own roll of past royalty begins in 1957 with Marlene Beck, Thelma Dashiell, and Sharron Wood, and it has gaps. In most years the court is a queen and princesses. In 1992 the roll lists Vic and Georgia Smith, and in 1993 Fred and Marion Guenther. A photograph held by the Hunters Museum shows the Guenthers, captioned as “the last Senior King and Queen to appear at the annual Hunters Fair.” The couple also co-chaired the Greenwood Park Grange committee that compiled Pioneers of the Columbia.

The court applies with a written packet and questionnaire, then sits for an interview with a panel of judges. Through the year it travels to other events, including the Arden Old Timers Rodeo, the Stevens County Cattlemen’s Banquet, and neighboring fairs. In late August 2026, Queen Hailey Leaden and Princesses Miki Hellie and Tommie Guatney showed steers at the NE Washington Fair. For the Beef Barn Costume Contest, Queen Hailey designed and made costumes for herself and the calf she was with. Princess Miki was named Grand Champion Senior Showman in Fitting & Showing and Top Girl in the Beef Barn. Because the new court had been crowned earlier than in past years, the fair used the early fall as a transition. A new princess, Ella, made her first official appearance at the Ferry County Fair in September, alongside the court then finishing its season. The royalty raised money that fall by raffling two cords of firewood donated by Austin Minaker, with the winner to be drawn October 30.

The 2026 Grand Marshals were Lee and Becky Dale. Lee grew up in Spokane. His father, Don, and a partner, Clive Price, bought property along Hunters Creek in the 1950s, and Lee spent summers stacking hay in the barn there. Becky grew up in Riverton, Wyoming. They met by mail, while Lee was an army translator in Germany and his sister Bette asked Becky to write him. “Well okay,” Becky said, “but he has to write first.” He did, and they married in her country church. In 1976 Becky took a midyear vacancy in the music department at Columbia. That summer both took teaching positions there and made Hunters their home. Their daughters, Lisa and Hannah, were fair royalty in 1996 and 1997. Lee still runs the horseshoe competition, and Becky oversaw the children’s games for years. The marshals before them were Dan and Linda Somerlott in 2023, Wayne and Marlene Sampson in 2024, and Neil and Donna Jo Smith in 2025.

Horse races and the Foster building

The town takes its name from James Hunter, who reached the Columbia River country on August 22, 1880, and camped by the creek that still bears his name. By 1910, the Stevens County Times reports, Hunters was among the fastest-growing communities in the county, with about 22 stores, a hotel, and numerous creameries.

The accounts of the fair’s beginning differ. The Stevens County Times gives 1910 as its start. Elliott and Somerlott told the Huckleberry Press that the first Hunters Fair was held in 1911, in a building donated by the Foster brothers of Foster Grocery Store fame. A photograph from the Hunters Museum, now in the Crossroads Archive, is captioned as the first fair day and dated September 21, 22 & 23, 1911. Both newspapers name horse races as the early draw, and the Huckleberry Press compares them to the Omak Stampede, “only on flat ground.”

Fire destroyed most of the Hunters business district in 1912, and almost all of it again in 1936. In 1940 the fair board bought the Foster brothers building, and the Joe Schwartz family donated land to house the fair. In 1959 the board started the Fair Book, a record of all things Hunters Fair. Linda Somerlott, the secretary, keeps it now. She has been involved with the fair her whole life. As a girl she took 4-H cooking, sewing, beef, and outdoor cooking, and in 1967 she went to the national convention in Chicago as a state representative. Rhonda Elliott is a former Fair Queen and represented the Grange on the fair board. Her husband keeps the grounds, and her children pick up garbage on fair day; she says they were “born into the fair.”

In 2020 the fair was cancelled for the first time in its history, under COVID-19 restrictions. Organizers learned late that it could return, and it came back on August 21, 2021. Somerlott remembers when, at the end of the show, everything used to stage the exhibits was cleared out so a dance could be held. In the 2024–2025 season, Queen Audrey Esvelt and Princesses Alyna MacLaren and Sloane Dunn organized a community dance for the grand opening of the newly built barn.