Park County Fair

The Park County Ag Fair fills the county fairgrounds at 46 View Vista Drive in Livingston each July with the animals of local 4-H and FFA members. The 2026 fair ran July 18 through 25. Its show week opened on Monday, July 20, with the horse show, the end of a season of 4-H horse clinics that had begun in January. Jonathan Gilbert served as horse superintendent. The next day brought the ranch horse class at 9 a.m., a cat show at 5 p.m., and the first evening of the dog show at 6.

Barn days, Wednesday to Friday

On Wednesday afternoon the livestock barns opened for viewing. Exhibitors had decorated their stalls, and Tina’s home cooking was on hand. That evening the fair held its kickoff. A $5 barbecue dinner came first at 5 o’clock, sponsored by the Park County Ag Fair Alumni and Elevate Craft BBQ. The FFA Sundown Showdown followed at 6, then the Park County 4-H Youth Rodeo, with local 4-H and FFA youth in the arena and admission free. The fair’s notices gave the rodeo’s start as 7:00 in one place and 7:30 in another.

Thursday carried the most shows. Dairy cattle came into the ring at 8, dairy goats at 8:30, market sheep at 9 and breeding sheep at 9:30. Poultry showmanship at 11:30 brought a costume contest with it. Beef breeding followed at 1, beef showmanship at 4, and the market steers at 6.

Friday began with hogs at 8. Market goats came at noon and rabbit hopping and agility at 12:30, “always a crowd favorite,” in the fair’s words. The pee wee goat show was at 1:15. At 3 the champion showmen of each small-animal division met in a round robin. At 7 that night a ranch rodeo ran in the arena.

Saturday: the round robin and the sale

On the morning of Saturday, July 25, the champion showmen of every breed and division faced one another in the round robin showmanship.

• Senior: Annie Keyes, grand champion; Wyatt Keyes, reserve.
• Junior: Allissa Keyes, grand champion; Greyson Sarrazin, reserve.
• Beginner: Acesa Robinson, grand champion; Michelle Dunkel, reserve.

The buyers’ luncheon followed at 1:30, and the Made in 4-H & Livestock auction began at 3:30.

That night the fair thanked its buyers with live music from Cindy Hicks & Hwy 89 on the main stage, a mechanical bull, and food from BAD BURGER. By the fair’s count, nearly 100 businesses and individuals support its 4-H and FFA members each year.

Two days later the Park County Ag Fair Alumni Committee posted its thanks. It named the buyers, extension agents Veronica and Jackie, the superintendents, and the volunteers. It assured anyone who had bought a market animal that “it will be delicious!” It also congratulated Violet Browning, Badger Hoppe and Wyatt Keyes, who represented 4-H and FFA at the state level. “Once you are a part of this program,” the committee wrote, “you really never leave!”

The grounds on View Vista Drive

The fairgrounds are in use most of the year. In the weeks before the 2026 fair, the arena held:

• the Livingston Roundup Rodeo, July 1 through 4, which advertises “More Than 101 Years of Rodeo”
• a Buck Brannaman horsemanship clinic
• the Livingston Classic PBR Rodeo
• the 6th annual Buckin’ Rodeo

Covered Wagon Cowboy Church met in the historic round barn. The grounds also include a solar barn, a sales barn, an exhibit building, a dining room, and a swine shack where Ag Fair participants keep their pigs.

In May 2018 the Park County Commission formed a stakeholder committee to guide a master plan for the grounds. Joe Hanser was chair and Tim Sundling vice chair. The committee met more than twenty times with more than a dozen stakeholder groups and hundreds of individuals. It showed its preliminary plan at a booth at the Livingston Roundup Rodeo on July 1 through 3, 2019, and at the Park County Ag Fair on July 24 through 28. The plan was completed in December 2019.

From racing association to volunteer committee

The fair is older than the grounds’ current plan. A Park County Fair ran at Livingston on September 4 through 9, 1905, under the Park County Fair and Racing Association. The railroad agent sold excursion tickets at one and one-third fare. They were on sale September 4 through 7 and good until September 10. In 1953 the state farm paper’s Montana-Wyoming fair schedule listed the Park County Fair at Livingston, with Howard E. Crane as secretary.

The present arrangement dates from 2019. In Peg Sundling’s account, the county encouraged an Agricultural Fair Management Committee that year as part of a funding agreement. “They said, ‘We will fund this, you guys manage it,’” she recalled. The 13-member committee, with Sundling as president, ran the community events portion of the fair: the open class displays and contests in quilting, flowers and pie-making. The 4-H side, with its stock shows and showmanship contests, was managed by the Montana State University Extension office and funded separately.

Thirty-five hundred dollars

The county gave the fair $57,600 in 2023 and again in 2024. In early April 2025, Sundling brought the commission an amended contract asking for $32,500. Among other savings, it dropped the annual community barbecue.

Commissioner Jennifer Vermillion proposed $15,000, enough to cover portable toilets, tent rental and facility cleaning. Commissioner Bryan Wells moved instead for $3,500, the maximum the Montana Code Annotated sets for county fair funding, and the commission approved it. “We are broke, we are beyond broke,” Wells said. “This is a tough decision,” said chair Mike Story. “Everyone loves the fair.”

Organizers called it a 94 percent cut. “We knew they were going to start tapering us, but absolutely did not expect a 94% cut,” Sundling said. She noted that insurance alone ran $3,000. She asked the county Fairgrounds and Parks Board to take over the open class, which otherwise “may die from a lack of funding.”

At a meet-and-greet in Wilsall on April 4, Vermillion heard from constituents. Among them were women aged 50 and older who had entered the open class quilt contests. “What most of them were most frustrated about is they wish they’d been told earlier,” she reported. Story told the public, “The concerns are we are losing 4-H and FFA. We are not. Montana State University is running that.”

The committee answered with a statement. It called the annual 4-H and FFA sale “the greatest scholarship program in Park County” and asked that donations go to the Bank of the Rockies. “As a committee of volunteers,” it said, “we will battle the unknown and forge ahead for the future of the kids we know and love.” In July 2026 the fair thanked its sponsors one by one, and the list included Bank of the Rockies and Peg Sundling.