Ravalli County Fair

At ten on the Wednesday morning of the 2026 Ravalli County Fair, the parade stepped off down Main Street in Hamilton. Fans lined both sides of the street and spilled onto North 2nd Street. NBC Montana noted lots of horses among the entries and called the parade the traditional, unofficial introduction to fall in the Bitterroot. The parade always opens the fair. The 2026 fair family were Lee and Lorena Erickson, farmers from Corvallis, and on Saturday evening at six they were escorted into the Main Arena. “It’s a big deal. We are celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday,” fairgrounds director Melissa Saville told the station. “It’s the last hurrah for summer. It’s a chance for families to get together, friends to see each other, and for us to have a good time eating, and visiting the animal barns. It’s the end of the season.”

The fair itself takes place on the county fairgrounds on Old Corvallis Road. The 2026 edition ran September 2 through 5. Exhibit buildings and barns opened at ten each morning and closed at ten at night. NBC Montana listed homemade bread and preserves, artwork, quilts, produce and hay among the entries filling the historic barns. A spinning demonstration ran all day in the Natural Fiber Arts Department of the Event Center, and the Lions kept bingo going all day at their booth. The 2026 program also offered cake decorating by Liisa McDivitt of Expressions of Sugar and cookie decorating by Jessica Lee of Bitterroot Cookie Cutter. Hillary Sargent of Two Poppies Apothecary gave talks in the Floral Barn, one of them on foraging the Bitterroot.

Food Row, which the fairgrounds calls Historic Food Row, held barbecue from Grizzly Bear BBQ and Moose Creek BBQ & Grill, teriyaki from SKC Teriyaki, kettle corn from Pop’s, and fruit from Swanson’s Mountain View Orchard. Granges, service clubs and churches cooked alongside the commercial stands: the Corvallis Grange, Rocky Mountain Grange, Knights of Columbus, Bitterroot Valley Elks, Kiwanis, St. Mary’s Mission and Ravalli County 4-H. Anyone who came in for lunch between eleven and two through the South or North gates got the gate fee back.

The 2026 fair was wet. “Four days of rain? No problem,” the fairgrounds posted afterward. “Our community showed up anyway — raincoats, umbrellas, muddy boots and all!” On September 11 the arena was still too muddy for riding. Crowds have grown in recent years. In 2022 Saville expected as many as 30,000 visitors, and in 2026 NBC Montana reported that almost 40,000 people had come through the gates the year before.

Lambs, steers and the Saturday sale

The 4-H and FFA shows run through the week in barns and arenas with names of their own: Hornung, Applebury, Iman. In 2026 the market swine show opened Wednesday at eight in the morning. Market lambs followed at ten, then dairy cows. A Kiddie Goat class came before the market goats, and the market beef show started at 5:30. Thursday brought sheep showmanship, sheep breeding and a sheep costume contest, plus rabbit and poultry shows and a working scent detection dog demonstration in the 4-H Dog Arena. Friday held the round-robin showmanship contests for large and small animals, a herding dog demonstration and a Parade of Champions. That night the barns met in the Battle of the Barns.

The children have fed and groomed their animals for a full year before the fair. At the 2022 fair Addison Truc brought her market lamb, Wooly. “He’s sweet,” she told NBC Montana as she held his halter. Simon Buoy led his fat steer, Juicy, around and around. “He weighs 1,256 pounds,” Simon said. “My goal is to get a purple in showmanship and a blue in market.”

The 4-H/FFA Livestock Sale begins Saturday at eight in Hornung Arena, after a buyers’ breakfast at 6:30. The sale order is beef, dairy, sheep, swine and market goat, and the small animal auction follows in the afternoon. By Saturday night the rabbits, poultry and non-market goats and sheep are walked out of the barns. The cattle, goats and sheep leave Sunday morning.

Seven o’clock in the Main Arena

There is rodeo every night of the fair, free with gate admission. Each evening opens with the Bitterroot Mountettes, then the Grand Entry, a prayer and the national anthem. On Wednesday comes the ranch rodeo. Local ranchers, cowboys and cowgirls compete in teams at cattle sorting, branding, trailer loading and, in the fairgrounds’ words, “other activities that are done every day on a ranch.” Thursday is Bulls, Broncs and Barrels, part of a regional series with bull riding, saddle bronc, bareback and barrel racing.

Friday and Saturday belong to the Northern Rodeo Association. Its cowboys travel across Montana and into North Dakota in sanctioned rodeos for a chance at the association’s finals in Butte. Red Eye Rodeo supplies the stock, billed by the fairgrounds as “the finest bucking stock in the region.” The fairgrounds also billed Danger Dave as the hometown rodeo clown and Ray Champ, “the man with the VELVET VOICE,” as announcer of “all the action, times and Shenanigans.” On Friday and Saturday afternoons a Kid’s Hour of mutton bustin’, Mini Buckerz and a boot scramble takes the same dirt. In 2026 the 406 Band played in the arena after Saturday’s rodeo.

Tired iron and the Community Stage

On the Antique Machinery Lawn, the Tired Iron Collector’s Club sets out antique tractors and horse-drawn farm implements. In 2026 they ran a threshing demonstration on Thursday afternoon, with youth and adult tractor pulls on Friday and Saturday. The BitterRodder’s Car Club brought hot rods from every era. The Rastelli Circus Spectacular put on stilt walkers, aerial and high-wire performers, contortionists and hula hoop acts. On the lawn by the tractors, a wild west fun park offered laser fast draw and balloon animals to children ten and under. Caricature artists drew for free each afternoon. On Thursday morning North Star Amusements ran certain carnival rides free, with no lights or music, for guests sensitive to light and noise.

The Community Stage was moved for 2026 to the paved lot in front of the Rabbit and Dairy/Poultry barns, near the West Gate. The fairgrounds said the move was made “with your favorite Grandparents in mind,” a short walk from the bingo corner and Food Row. Its 2026 bill was local. The Bitterroot Line Dancers and the rodeo royalty appeared on Friday morning, and singers from the Eric Monson Vocal Studio on Friday afternoon and evening. Thursday night was Hamilton Playhouse karaoke. Saturday brought the Bitterroot Community Band and the Dueling Dragons Tae Kwon-Do school. Wednesday ended with the reading and awards of the fair’s poetry contest. A bike giveaway closed each afternoon from Thursday on.

Marcus Daly’s land and the stock farm purchase

NBC Montana dates the county’s celebration of its agricultural heritage at the fairgrounds to 1893. The ground has two origins. The Prairie Star reported in 2021 that “Copper King” Marcus Daly originally donated the land in the late 1800s. The Ravalli County Fairgrounds Foundation gives a narrower account: Daly donated some of the land, and the county bought the current grounds in 1913 from the Bitter Root Stock Farm for $9,750.00. The fairgrounds are still county property, funded by tax dollars that the county commissioners budget.

For most of that time the work fell to neighbors. According to the foundation, community members and groups such as 4-H and FFA once helped staff with building, grounds and maintenance projects. Those projects have since grown too large for volunteers alone. The paid staff is two full-time office employees and one or more maintenance workers.

A tee-pee burner and four rock benches

The foundation, a nonprofit with a volunteer board, was formed to fill the gap with donations, grants and partnerships. Joy McClure is its president. Its work is plain to anyone who walks the grounds. In 2020 an accessible seating ramp and platform went into the grandstands. RAN Pigman helped design it, county funds and money from the Rockin’ RC Rodeo Cowboy Ball paid for it, and Sorum Construction built it. A $5,000 grant from the Montana AARP covered the chairs, skirting and signs. In 2021 the Prairie Star photographed Saville standing on the newly finished platform.

The year 2021 brought more. A shade shelter went up near the North Gate. Seating salvaged from a fast-food restaurant’s remodel was set out on Food Row. Four trees and beds of perennials were planted around the South Gate gazebo with a $200 gift certificate from Pink Grizzly in Missoula and memorial donations. The Victor FFA chapter and the foundation together won a $1,500 grant from the Montana FFA Foundation. With it, fourteen Victor FFA members, overseen by Travis Saville, built four rock benches. Automatic openers were installed in 2023 on the south and east doors of the Farmers State Bank Event Center. In 2024 seating from a restaurant remodel was placed between the 4-H Cafe and Food Row.

The foundation’s latest project reuses a piece of the grounds’ past. On the Southeast Lawn off Fairgrounds Road, a Community Pergola was raised on the foundation of the old tee-pee burner. Trapper Creek Job Corps, Harris Sand & Gravel, Logs to Livingroom, Sorum Construction and volunteers built it, and the Rapp Family Foundation paid to wire it for electricity. Completion had been scheduled for late fall 2025. The foundation’s page, under its 2026 heading, reads: “We’re almost done…just shad cloths to put up top!”

The grounds stay open after the fair. The county keeps an open-gate policy, with picnic tables and room, as the foundation puts it, for a child “to learn to ride that first bicycle and walk the dog.” In the weeks after the 2026 fair the Art Building held Funky Junk, and the Floral and Commercial barns held a fall market. The Bitter Root Humane Association scheduled The Howling! at the fairgrounds for Saturday, October 24, at five in the evening.