Phillips County Fair

The Phillips County Fairgrounds lie on the north side of the railroad tracks at Dodson, off U.S. Highway 2, 18 miles west of the county seat at Malta. The tall block of the grandstands faces the rails. In historian Carroll Van West’s 2013 account, the grounds around it hold wood-frame buildings painted white, the historic rodeo chutes, well-kept livestock barns, and, at the center, an octagonal exhibit building for the county historical society. The fair calls itself “Montana’s Longest, Continuous Running Fair,” and it comes to these grounds the first weekend in August.

The 2026 fair, the 111th, ran from Thursday, July 30, through Sunday, August 2. That year the board completed a new fair office on the grounds and dedicated it to the memory of Cathy Bear, grounds manager from 2005 through 2018. The board is led by chairman Sue Olsen, with Shane Anderson as vice chairman, Carly Bishop as secretary, Eric Wilke as treasurer, and Jason Ulrich.

Relays, broncs and the chain derby

The grandstand card fills three days. On Friday, July 31, 2026, the doors opened at 5 p.m. for Jeremy McComb’s Honky-Tonk Circus tour, with the Plowed Under Band opening. Saturday’s program began at 11 a.m. with Indian relay races and chariot races. The same $20 ticket covered the ranch bronc riding at 7 p.m. That evening the fair posted a note on “ranch bronc riding, a little arena dust and one beautiful Phillips County sunset.” On Sunday, AMX hot laps began at 11 a.m., and the AMX races and chain derby took the track at noon for a $15 admission. Children 10 and under sit free for grandstand events. Credit cards are not taken at the fair. Tickets bought ahead are picked up at the fair office, and concert tickets and grand passes were also sold at the banks in Malta.

Away from the track, the midway runs inflatables, bounce houses, slides, obstacle courses and laser tag on a $20 all-day wristband, alongside a carnival and the food and commercial vendors. Campers can buy a weekend spot on the grounds, $30 without electricity and $50 with, in person at the county Extension Office in the basement of the Malta library. Camping on the fairgrounds is not allowed outside fair week.

Barns, breakfast and Open Class

The 4-H Food Booth serves breakfast at 6 a.m. In 2026, Saturday began with the horse show and small animal awards at 8:30, after the beef and swine shows, and the 4-H and FFA livestock sale opened at 9. At 2 p.m. came the Round Robin, the last judging for the young livestock exhibitors. The afternoon ran warm, and a swamp cooler donated by Columbia Grain kept the barns cooler. The fair urged visitors to walk the barns at sundown, the last chance before the animals went home.

The Open Class building is open to anyone of any age, whether or not they belong to 4-H or FFA. Entries run to flowers, foods, fruits, vegetables, sewing, quilting, pencil drawings, paintings and photography, and a separate category for children 6 and under offers about 150 projects. A blue ribbon pays $5, a red $4 and a white $3. The 2026 Flowers, Vegetables and Grains Booth was arranged by the Malta Dirt Daubers, and the fair thanked Sue Hungerford for her many years with it. On Sunday the exhibits stayed up until 2 p.m., and then their makers carried them home.

A harvest show for the Great Northern

According to a 2011 research paper by high school students Jade Olson, Sam Petersen and Abija Rhodes, cited by Van West, the fair grew out of an agricultural fair backed by the Great Northern Railroad and dating to 1891. Each year it displayed the harvest, as proof that the demanding land of the Hi-Line could produce valuable crops. Dodson itself was named for a merchant who kept a trading post and saloon there before the railroad came through, and it got a post office in 1891. Van West gives a reason for the fairgrounds’ location. In the era of the Milk River irrigation project, Dodson mattered: the ditch divided the town into two halves, and a major diversion dam stood just west of it. In those years the crowds came by horse, buggy, wagon and rail.

The county was named for Benjamin D. Phillips, a rancher and state senator from 1899 to 1901. When Phillips County was created, its new commissioners agreed in 1915 to take over the agricultural fair. The student paper places the inaugural Phillips County Fair in October 1916. The fair counts its years from 1915. In its early years it was held in the fall.

Edgar Lee’s thirty years

Edgar Lee was the first fair president and held the post until 1949. Van West describes it as a 30-year reign in which Lee worked with the community to build a fair that entertained as well as showed crops and livestock. The rodeo came to dominate, but there were also concerts, daredevil pilots doing aerial stunts, Native American battle re-enactments, and carnival rides. Trade magazines of the 1940s and 1950s counted it among the biggest small-town festivals in the West. A 1946 account in Billboard Magazine described a 40-acre site with exhibit buildings worth $10,000, a half-mile race track, and a grandstand seating 2,000, with plans to enlarge it. The enlargement came in the 1950s. Touring country acts took the stage from that decade on. Toby Keith once played the fair, and Gwen Sebastian performed in 2013.

That grandstand did not last. A KRTV report, which gives no year, says a windstorm on April 5 took out the old grandstands building, tore off the roof and left a concrete slab. The board borrowed temporary seats for that summer’s fair. “We got them from the drag strip in Malta,” Shane Anderson said. “They’re not ideal, but they’ll work and I’m sure we’ll fill them out.” He added: “I’ve been coming to this fair basically since I was born. This is everyone’s one vacation a year basically, coming to the fair.” Carly Bishop remembered it from childhood as “the event of the year.”

A dollar saved at a hundred

The fair marked its 100th continuous year in 2015. At the centennial, the Northern Ag Network talked with Everall Holman, a Phillips County rancher who had gone to the fair every year since 1915 and would turn 100 in a few weeks. Asked about the rides of earlier days, he said, “Oh well they had a merry go round and ferris wheel.” His family’s Holman Hereford ranch sold bulls to many producers. Auctioneer Cliff Rustad recalled that the Holman brothers made it a tradition to place the first bids at the 4-H livestock sale. Holman recalled cattle prices that once ran 80 or 90 cents: “today they start the steers at 2 bucks.” Then he thanked the gate: “I turn 100 here shortly, but they let me in for free today. So I saved a whole dollar.”