Northeast Washington Fair

The Northeast Washington Fair fills the county fairgrounds at 317 West Astor Avenue in Colville for four days at the end of summer. The 2026 fair ran August 27 through 30 under the theme “Stars, Stripes, and Fair Nights.” Stevens County states its purpose as promoting awareness and education in agriculture. The fair gives 4-H, FFA and other youth programs a place to show livestock, products, educational projects and demonstrations, along with adults in farming and in related arts, forestry and manufacturing. Most exhibitors come from the Tri-County Area of Stevens, Ferry and Pend Oreille counties and belong to 4-H, FFA or the Grange. Exhibitors from other Washington counties are taken as space allows.

The Pig Barn on a Friday night

Lori Matlock, the fair’s manager since 2007, described the rest of the program to The Spokesman-Review in 2018. Each year the fair invites people to bring in their largest vegetable, a different vegetable each year. One year it asked for the largest weed instead, and people brought giant thistles about to go to seed. “That was really dumb,” Matlock said. There is a section for arts and crafts by people in assisted living. There is also a talent show that she believed to be the only one at a fair in the state, with “everything from belly dancers to gymnastics to cloggers.” The Kelly Hughes Band, a country and western group out of Idaho, was then “always big on Saturday night,” and local bands got the spotlight as well. “If you want to learn to swing dance,” she said, “you go to the Pig Barn at 7 o’clock on Friday night.”

Some exhibits had thinned by then. There were fewer horses than there used to be, which she put down to the time the sport takes. The fair had worked to bring back the old tractors, which were starting to fade away. That year the grounds gained a fire lookout tower, rescued from a peak near Hunters about 40 miles south. Matlock repainted it herself, and a woman who had once worked as a fire lookout was on hand to explain its history.

For the 2026 fair, the Colville City Council met on August 11 and unanimously approved $4,700 from the city’s Vinson Fund, at the request of Tony Bolles, to help pay for performers and a magician. Travelers in an RV can stay on the grounds. Full hook-up sites are $25 a day, with showers for campers only, quiet time from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., and dogs on leash.

A crown, a sash, and a mile of parade

The 2026 royalty were Queen Bree Paxton and Princess Kya Paxton. Candidates must be at least 15 and must have exhibited at the fair. They are judged on:

• an essay
• an interview with the judges
• knowledge of the fair
• poise and appearance in a long formal
• a speech of no more than three minutes
• an impromptu question
• talent

The winners receive a crown and sash. Their reign begins the day after one fair and ends on the last day of the next, and an escort chaperones them at every appearance. If eligible, the queen receives a $300 scholarship check and the princess $200.

The royalty must ride in the fair parade, which falls on the Saturday of fair week. In 2026 it was August 29, beginning at 10 a.m. sharp. Entries check in from 8:30 at the Colville City Swimming Pool parking lot, at South Elm and Dominion streets, and the route runs about a mile. Nothing may be thrown from the entries; handouts are passed out along the side of the street. Any equestrian group with more than two horses must bring its own pooper scooper, with no exceptions.

The manager who replaced four

Matlock is fourth-generation Colville. Her great-grandfather was the town’s first barber, and her grandfather built most of its sidewalks. Her parents, Shirley and Tom Dodson, had a paint store on Main Street that still carries their name. Her first fair was in seventh grade, and her pets then included a quarter horse named Speedy Gonzales, but she did not grow up in the fair system. She built houses for 20 years under a general contractor’s license, and the painting and finish work always fell to her.

When she applied in 2007, four people were running the fairgrounds, and there was, she said, “a little bit of drama between them and the fair.” The county had taken over managing the fair because of economics and insurance. She was hired in June, two months before the fair, with no mentor. The barn superintendents carried her through, and she called them “kids” though they were in their 40s and 50s. By her count, attendance rose from 5,500 to 8,000 over the next decade, or 12,000 counting repeat visitors. Asked in 2018 how many employees she had, she answered, “It’s just me.” The county’s 2026 fair pages still list her address for the fair office.

She keeps the grounds in use year-round. She ended the Fourth of July fireworks because of fire danger and put on a New Year’s Eve party instead, with kids’ crafts and games, snowmen and a fireworks finale. She offered to run the Easter egg hunt when no one else wanted the work, and it grew from 2,000 stuffed eggs to 12,000. She took on the rodeo after the rodeo association quit sponsoring it over insurance. In September 2015, when wildfires displaced rural residents, 29 families moved onto the grounds and lived there for about a month.

Senator Jackson and 17,120 at the gate

The Stevens County Historical Society holds a photograph of the Stevens County Fairgrounds dated 1922. It measures 4.5 by 3.5 inches and is catalogued with fairs, horses and rodeo at Colville. Another of the society’s photographs shows County Fair show actors for the 1959 centennial theater productions.

The Statesman-Examiner’s “Out of the Past” column, looking back fifty years from 2026, recalled a fair held in September. It ran September 9 through 12. U.S. Senator Henry M. Jackson was grand marshal of the Saturday parade on September 11, according to John Egger, parade chairman for the sponsoring chamber of commerce. The featured attraction at the Saturday grandstand show was LeRoy Van Dyke, described by the paper as “a pace-setting phenomenon of country music.” The gates counted 17,120 admissions over the four days, about 2,000 more than the year before.

The same column, looking back twenty-five years, recorded the fourth annual Tri-County Veteran’s Stand Down at the fairgrounds, held September 14 through 16. That year’s fair marshals were Ken and Phyllis Ramble, both born locally. “We remember being here before Colville had a stoplight or a McDonald’s,” Phyllis Ramble said.