Northwest Montana Fair

Five days on North Meridian Road

The Northwest Montana Fair and Rodeo takes over the Flathead County Fairgrounds at 265 North Meridian Road in Kalispell for five days each August. The 2026 fair ran from Wednesday, Aug. 12, through Sunday, Aug. 16, and opened with a concert at the Grandstand: gates at 7 p.m., and the Grammy-nominated country singer Walker Hayes, of “Fancy Like,” on stage at 8:30.

The carnival midway opens at 3 p.m. on that first Wednesday, at 1 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and at noon on the weekend. Elsewhere on the grounds the pig races run, and local acts John Dunnigan and the Groove Riders each take a turn on the Huckleberry Stage. Two performers work the crowd on foot all week. Mimealot does roving mime and human-statue acts, among them one called “Real or Robot?”, in which he dresses as a wax-works figure and moves in a robotic fashion without blinking. Comedian Bill Robison also strolls the grounds.

From Thursday through Saturday evening, Rodeo Montana brings PRCA rodeo to the Grandstand at 7:30 each night: bareback, saddle bronc, steer wrestling, tie-down roping, team roping, barrel racing and bull riding. Sunday closes with the Malicious Monster Truck Show, two 90-minute performances at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., with jumps and crushed obstacles and no intermission. Thursday of fair week is Senior Day, when anyone 65 or older enters the grounds free. Friday is “Salute to Our Military and Veterans.” Between 2 and 6 p.m., active and retired service members who show a military ID at the gate get in free and receive a $5 fair-food voucher and a general admission ticket to that night’s rodeo.

Quilts, rabbits, and the Saturday sale

The exhibit halls and barns hold more than 6,000 entries from residents of the region, ranging from quilts to mini-horses and flowers to rabbits, with blue ribbons hung throughout the fairgrounds. More than 100 commercial exhibitors also sell on the grounds. In bygone days a posted sign told fairgoers not to touch the prized produce.

The Livestock Show and Sale is the center of the barns. Wes McAlpin, the fair board member who oversees the fair’s livestock operation, has been coming to the fair since the 1960s and showed steers on these grounds as a youth. At the Market Livestock Sale on the Saturday of the 2022 fair, gross sales reached a record $967,778.75, which was $170,542.25 more than in 2021. All proceeds go directly to the local 4-H and FFA members who took part.

Races in the rain, 1902

The newly organized Flathead Fair Association planned the first fair in 1902. Its first directors were W.C. Whipps, M.D. Baldwin, J.C. O’Neill and W.A. Conrad, whom the Daily Inter Lake later called a who’s who of early-day leaders in Kalispell. The association began with horse racing and scheduled a round of races for July, months ahead of the fair itself in October. Heavy rain forced the races to be rescheduled, and continued bad weather then cancelled them. Local and visiting jockeys held their own unofficial races anyway.

The races were moved to the October fair, and a call went out for exhibits of stock, grain, vegetables, poultry, farm products and “fruits of every description raised here.” It rained at that first fair too, though apparently not for long. Crowds grew over the weekend, and gate and other receipts came to more than $2,000, enough to pay all the bills. The Inter Lake’s headline read: “It Was A Success.”

The 1903 premium book carried a Great Northern Railway advertisement placing the fairgrounds opposite the railway’s roundhouse and offering special fares from Troy, Havre and Great Falls. Baldwin, now president of the association, announced “a fine pavilion, additional stock sheds, good quarters for poultry and pet stock, the best race track in the state and the best of water piped into the grounds from the city water works.” That year’s divisions included sewing, cooking and livestock, as well as home manufacture and mechanics, with awards for the best display of wagons and buggies, the best set of double harness and the best book printing. One day was set aside for baseball and athletic sports. The fair book listed five full days of “speed programs and sports.” A free-for-all in mile heats paid $250 to the winner, and a half-mile dash paid $50.

Before that second fair, the Inter Lake ran an editorial: “We have been too much a collection of people; it is time for us to be cemented into a community. A common pride in the county’s present, and a common faith in its future, will help toward that end.”

A combine and a cruise ship

By 1951 the fair was held in September. Fair manager Harry Kilpatrick called it the most financially successful fair to date, and attendance on the Thursday reached 12,000. “Just about every club, organization and farm group took part in the event at one time or another,” the Inter Lake reported. “Business houses in Kalispell closed their doors one afternoon to allow employees to visit the fairgrounds.”

The fair sponsored a Lady of the Valley contest. Its 1965 winner was Mrs. Earl S. Smith of Route 4, Kalispell, who had been a 4-H leader for 18 years and had held every office in the Montford-Egan Home Demonstration Club and the Egan Community Club. By 1966 the fair had moved to the third week in August; the Inter Lake account does not give the year of the change. The Harmonicats played the 1966 night show, and the Friday morning parade went out in wind and rain. “Opening day was not all bliss,” the paper reported. Two boys started a combine on display at the grounds and drove it into the farm machinery around it, causing about $2,500 in damage. No one was hurt.

Attendance in 1995 was 48,685, and 11,265 people watched three days of rodeo. The betting handle on three days of horse racing that year was $157,322. Arlene Knutson of Kalispell exhibited a needlepoint cruise ship six feet long, sized for Barbie and Ken. Over the years the fair added mutton bustin’ and pig wrestling. Horse racing, part of the program since the first year, has since been dropped despite local efforts to keep it. In 2012 the five-day count was 78,508; 10,404 people watched three nights of rodeo, and the demolition derby drew 2,322, down from 4,135 in 2009.

A grandstand rated fair

Attendance set a record of 79,492 in 2017. In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the carnival was cancelled while health officials urged people not to gather, and the fair drew just over 32,000. In 2021 fairgrounds manager Mark Campbell gave the fair the theme “Montana’s Best Traditions.” Attendance that year came to 77,828.

The 2022 fair drew a record 82,424. Seats for the Lee Brice concert sold out nearly a week before the show. “The rodeo had record numbers in attendance all three nights, selling out Friday and Saturday nights,” said fairgrounds manager Sam Nunnally. “Cervi Championship Rodeo Company brought some great stock, and we had some amazing cowboys and cowgirls compete in every event.” On the closing Sunday, a thunder and lightning storm hit just before the Big Air Bash stunt show, and the show still went on.

The rodeo and concerts are held in a covered grandstand that is about a century old. Over the preceding decade the fair board had been saving to replace the 60-year-old north bleachers beside it. That work started in the winter of 2023–24, and it revealed problems in the grandstand itself. In May 2024 county officials closed both the grandstand and the north bleachers after a preliminary inspection found significant deterioration in the wooden framing and beams. Nunnally said he could find no record of any earlier structural inspection of either.

Engineers from Martin Consulting Engineers inspected the grandstand on June 13, 2024. They rated its observable portions in “fair condition” and found no immediate life-safety concern. They did find a north wall leaning outward, split bridging in the canopy, an office storage room that had “failed structurally,” and deteriorated vomitorium stairs that needed full replacement. Repair crews started on July 8, and the fair and summer concerts went ahead in the grandstand. The north bleachers were to be torn down after that August’s fair and replaced with an aluminum and steel set.

“The fair started in 1902, so for 122 years this is where people have come together as a community,” Nunnally said. “I would hate to have our historic grandstand no longer part of Kalispell and this community. If we can keep them and preserve, that’s what my goal is. But at the same time, I have to respect that if we can’t do that safely, we can’t do it at all.”