Marion County Fair

On the Wednesday before the 2026 fair opened, the Salem Reporter wrote that hundreds of goats, sheep, chickens, rabbits and pigs would be herded into the barns at the Oregon State Fair & Expo Center in Salem to settle into their pens ahead of opening day. On July 6 a Reporter photographer found Myles Williams preparing the corral where he would show his llama for auction. He had a rabbit entered as well.

The Marion County Fair runs four days each July on these state-owned grounds, which hold the Oregon State Fair later in the summer. In 2026 the county fair ran July 9 through 12. The state fair ran August 21 through 31.

Four named days at the Expo Center

Each day carries a name. Thursday is Honor Day. Active duty military, veterans, first responders and their families come in free, and the 2026 program included an Honor Day Presentation.

Friday the fair billed as Friday Night Live. Radio Ready returned to the Main Stage after playing opening night, and DJ Avelanche also played. The same night The Woods opened, a bar with live music set beneath the trees. It runs Friday and Saturday from 4 p.m., and its band starts when the last Main Stage act finishes and plays until 10:45.

Saturday is Ag Day. In 2026 the Main Stage opened at 6 p.m. with Justin Lawrence, followed by Casey Donahew, whom the fair called a “Texas Red Dirt star.” Main Stage shows are included with admission, and the fair tells visitors to come early for seats.

Sunday is Family Day, when children 12 and under get in free. On the 2026 Family Day the fair offered:

• princesses posing for photos
• members of the Cloud City Garrison in Star Wars costume
• pony rides and the Freckle Farm Petting Zoo
• hands-on projects at an AC Gilbert House Pop Up
• LEGO Live Build and Speed Build contests on the demonstration stage in the exhibit hall, with prizes from Bricks and Beyond for the fastest child and the fastest adult
• the Marion Dairy Women Cheesecake Contest, judged at 1 p.m.

On the last afternoon the fair pointed departing visitors to the Oregon Dairy Women Red Barn for an ice cream cone or a milkshake.

Through all four days, the Funtastic Shows carnival opens at noon. Its tickets are sold only at the carnival, and each ride or game takes six to eight of them. The fairgrounds chair lift does not run during the county fair.

Performers work the paths: Circus Imagination, Puzzlemania, Peppy’s Water Palooza, Jeff Martin Magic, Rebecca Fireplug, Scramble James the Juggler and Ventriloquist Vikki. On the Community Stage, local musicians and dance groups perform. The Lotus Studio dancers performed there in 2026, and Miss Oregon, Luna, stopped by to say hello.

In the Pavilion, more than 200 players compete over three days in the Cornhole Cup, which benefits the Angelman Syndrome Foundation. Elsewhere the Flyball Dogs race over jumps. At a 3 p.m. demonstration in 2026, children got to race the dogs themselves.

The barns, the Horse Stadium, and Columbia Hall

The fair calls its 4-H and FFA barns “the heart of the fair.” The exhibitors are local young people, and their cattle, sheep, goats, rabbits and poultry represent a year of raising. In the Horse Stadium, 4-H and FFA riders take their horses over jumps. On Ag Day the young exhibitors sell their animals at the Junior Livestock Auction.

In late July 2026 the fair shared a KGW-TV story on its FFA members. It wrote that the fair gives 4-H and FFA members a place “to showcase the animals they’ve raised, the skills they’ve developed, and the hard work they’ve put in throughout the year.”

Columbia Hall holds the public competitions: photography, artwork, baking, preserves, LEGO creations, hobbies, flowers and textiles. On a hot afternoon in 2026 the fair invited visitors inside to cool off among the entries. Every entrant gets a free admission ticket.

The Marionberry Pie entries are displayed in the hall. In 2026 Alice Cocker won the youth division, Toni Whitler took first in the adult division, and Sarah Mahan Lee took second. Families can also pick up a STEAM entry form at the Information Booth and hunt for science facts posted around the grounds. Professor STEAM roams the fair handing out clues. Marion County Farm Bureau and Ag West Farm Credit sponsor the hunt.

The fair is run by a seven-member board, chaired by Shannon Gubbels, under bylaws and a management agreement with Marion County. Its stated mission is “to promote the diverse agricultural and cultural heritage of Marion County through active participation of its citizens.” The county’s Community & Economic Development Office manages the fair.

A 2018 county bulletin explained how the fair pays for its grounds. County Public Works trains new employees by repaving sections of the state fairgrounds, and in return the Marion County Fair gets free use of them. A separate Marion County Fair Foundation, based in Gervais and led by president Joel Conder, says it has supported the 4-H and FFA community since 2010. Among its stated aims is to “champion a permanent facility for the Marion County Fair.”

Yamhill on the 7th, Marion on the 11th

Sharing the state’s grounds has cost the county fair its record. In 2022 Craig Smith of the Willamette Valley Genealogical Society wrote a history of the fair for the Salem Reporter. He found no historical photographs and very little narrative in Marion County newspapers, only photos from the 1990s in the Statesman Journal. “The Oregon State Fair continues to drown out the Marion County Fair story,” he wrote, adding that the county fair actually predates the state fair.

For its start, Smith turned to H. H. Bancroft’s History of Oregon. Bancroft drew on the 1871 Salem City Directory:

“The first county fair held was in Yamhill on the 7th of October, 1854, followed by Marion on the 11th and Polk on the 12th. The exhibit of horses, cattle and fruit was fairly good, of sheep, grain, and domestic manufactures almost nothing; but it was a beginning from which steadily grew a stronger competitive interest in farm affairs, until in 1861 a state agricultural society was formed.”

Bancroft’s history names some of the first people at these fairs. Mrs. R. C. Geer entered two skeins of yarn, the first exhibited and probably the first made in Oregon. In 1855 the Marion county society awarded R. A. Gessner a premium for the “best jeans.” That year L. F. Grover claimed to have delivered the first Marion county address. The history says he was mistaken and had followed the first speaker; Mr. Woodsides gave the address to the Marion county society meeting at Salem.

Smith writes that the county and state fairs were both privately organized. By his account, the Marion fair was formed by the private Oregon State Agricultural Society, the passage above dates a state society to 1861, and historian Harry Stein says the state government took over the state fair in 1885. Both fairs struggled for money. Early newspaper stories mention horse racing as a way to draw crowds, and Smith remembered racing at the state fair in the mid-1980s. Both the racing and the money troubles of that era have since passed from the program.

Over the years the county fair added a petting zoo, barn tours, flower shows, pretty baby contests, kids’ workshops and military uniform displays. In Smith’s telling, the revenue that saved the fair came from big-name acts in the fairgrounds’ small outdoor stadium. In 2018, the year the county marked its 175th birthday, those acts were former Journey singer Steve Augeri on Friday night and country singer Easton Corbin on Saturday. Smith also wrote that early in the 21st century, county commissioners provided subsidies that carried the fair from a deficit year to a small surplus. “The Fair is still there!” he wrote.

Ribbons for a fair that did not happen

In early May 2020 the Marion County Fair and the Oregon State Fair announced their cancellations. On May 27, outside Jefferson, Madilyn McKenzie fed Bubbles and Crush, the 4-H goats she raised with her sister, Hailey, at a family friend’s farm where they kept their animals. That July the 4-H team put on its first virtual fair, the Marion County Youth Fair. The OSU Extension newsletter reported that one young member said missing the fair was worse than prom and graduation being canceled.

The decision had been reached on Zoom on the evening of May 6, 2020. The board was already short of help. At the April 15 meeting, the photography superintendents, Glen and Irene, had said they would not take part because of the coronavirus.

On May 6, the 4-H representative Melanie McCabe reported that only 140 youth had registered, half the usual number by that date. Of 207 livestock participants surveyed, 54.6 percent wanted some sort of 4-H or FFA event. Holding an alternative show on other grounds would require 225 swine pens and twice that many for sheep and goats.

The board then turned to wording. Joel Conder suggested calling the fair “postponed.” Brandi Crandall questioned the word, wondering how graduating students who would not be around the next year might feel. Jill Ingalls of Ingalls & Associates offered “rescheduled” or “carried over.”

Mark Banick moved to postpone the regular fair and help 4-H and FFA hold a show of some kind, and the motion passed. Tamra Goettsch would carry the recommendation to the county commissioners the next morning. Ingalls asked everyone to keep quiet until she had told vendors and suppliers, before rumors reached them.

The last business concerned ribbons. The order had come in over budget, and with no fair that summer the board could have cancelled it. Instead it raised the line for public competition ribbons and trophies from $350 to $462.21 and bought them, along with the entry tags, for the 2021 fair. The meeting adjourned at 7:08 p.m.