Sanders County Fair & Rodeo

On the Thursday of Labor Day weekend the carnival rides on River Road start turning at 4 in the afternoon, and at 7 the first of three nights of PRCA rodeo opens in the arena. The 2026 Sanders County Fair and Plains PRCA Rodeo ran September 3 through 6 under the banner “Cowboy Boots & Back to Our Roots.” It offered a live concert, carnival rides, a demolition derby, and what the fair calls “a wide variety of food vendors.” Thursday costs least: adult general admission was $10 that night and $25 on Friday and Saturday. Children 10 and under with an adult go free. Dogs are barred from the grounds during the fair.

Three nights at the bucking chutes

Rodeo stock came from Powder River Rodeo. Bob Tallman, billed as “The Voice of Professional Rodeo,” announced. Jill Franzen Loden, listed as 2024 PRCA Music Director of the Year, ran the sound. The highest-priced reserved seats sit at the bucking chutes. In 2026 the northwest grandstands had just been painted, and Top of the Hill Handyman Services of Thompson Falls had rebuilt the south bleachers that summer.

Each rodeo night, children ride sheep. Mutton busters had to weigh under 40 pounds in 2026, and in July the fair went looking for a dozen sheep to carry them. Before one performance the fair’s page told riders to be “back behind the main arena gate next to the bucking chutes by 7 pm so we can get geared up to ride.” In March 2025 the Fair Commission added a Golden Rodeo program to that year’s rodeo. Sandy Evenson and Leslie Baldwin of Tough Stock Heritage Productions brought the proposal, which raises awareness and money for young children fighting cancer.

Sunday night belongs to the demolition derby, billed in 2026 as “Carnage on the Clark Fork.” According to commission chair Randy Woods, the derby draws the largest crowd of any fair event and the most spending on the grounds. “Sunday is the biggest day on the grounds,” he told the commission after the 2026 fair. He objected that some vendors, nonprofits among them, had pulled out Sunday morning.

Exhibit barns, a parade, and a pig

Arts, crafts, photography, sewing and needlecraft are entered on the Monday before the fair. Culinary arts, flowers, garden produce, livestock, poultry and rabbits come in on Wednesday. Open-class livestock judging follows the 4-H judging on Thursday and Friday, and open-class beef is judged Saturday at 11:30. In September 2026, Extension agent Wendy Carr reported that rabbit and poultry entries grow every year and have outrun their space. The commission talked of moving them into the cattle barn or building a new hall.

Saturday at 11 a.m. the Sanders County Fair Parade goes down the main street of Plains. Sunday opens with 4-H awards at 9, church services at 10, and the 4-H livestock sale. At the 2026 sale, local leaders stood for a “Kiss the Pig” fundraiser in which donations counted as votes. Commission member Brian Crain won and kissed the grand champion hog.

The 2026 fair drew fewer people than the year before. Fair manager Kristy Sheehan reported ticket and carnival sales down, though carnival presales rose. Crain asked whether a fatal carnival accident in Butte that summer had kept people away. “I think it was the weather,” Sheehan said, “but I did hear a lot from parents after that accident.” Six tow trucks worked the grounds that weekend, hauling off illegally parked cars.

A horse race and a plea for exhibits

According to a Valley Press/Mineral Independent directory listing, the fair began in 1911 with a community horse race. Ladies and gentlemen of Plains raced against ladies and gentlemen from the reservation. “In that day, settler ladies rode side saddle while their Native American counterparts rode astride!” Horse racing and horsemanship stayed at the center for a number of years. Rodeos, carnivals and dances came later. The parade became a favorite, mixing “new-fangled automobiles and old, reliable steer-driven wagons.”

The first Sanders County Fair was announced for October 5, 1911, to run three days. In September, C.C. Willis, president of the Sanders County Fair Association, printed a plea asking every citizen to bring or send an exhibit, “if it is only a small quantity of any grain, grass, vegetable or fruit.” He noted that the railroad had agreed to give rates. “Come and make the first fair such a success that we will be encouraged to make greater efforts in the future,” he wrote.

By 1936 the fair ran Thursday through Saturday and included a rodeo exhibition. Needlework and paintings hung in the display rooms, and some of Fred Maas’s paintings drew comment. The fruit racks were thin because so many county orchards had been injured or killed the winter before. The Black Aces played evenings at the Alpine. On Saturday about 350 dance tickets sold, and cars parked around the hall for half a mile. Bowker’s Carnival, which had worked Thompson Falls, brought its games of chance.

That Friday, Thompson and Paradise pulled a tug-of-war for a keg of beer. The Paradise boys were heavier, but Thompson got a head start and held the rope. The Ledger remembered Del Alvord, the Stanton boys, Arthur Preston and young Garrison among those who “did valiant service.”

In 1951 people asked manager Phil Bender why the fair fell on Labor Day and the Tuesday after. Bender said the dates avoided conflicts with other fairs and spared cowboys long trips and layovers between them. The fair’s associations set dates at a winter convention, and no two member fairs could share dates within 250 miles. That summer a crew spent several months remodeling the dance hall, and new grandstand awnings shaded every seat. Local horses raced at intervals during the Jake Johnson Rodeo.

Eight trees and a fire marshal

Horse racing at the fair had ended about 15 years before Mike Hashisaki became manager in 1992. He had come to the area in 1990 after 24 years in the Air Force. The job opened after the previous manager brought in a name musical act, Dan Seals, and put the fair in debt. “They never asked me if I knew anything about fairs,” Hashisaki told the Missoulian in 2015. The board chairman called him that night: “Mike, I’ve got bad news.” Hashisaki answered that he knew nothing about fairs. “No, no,” the man said. “The bad news is you got the job.” On the first day of his first fair, every septic system on the grounds failed.

Most of the buildings then dated from the 1930s. “The livestock barn was listing at a 30-degree angle,” he said. In his first year a state fire marshal from Kalispell walked the grounds and listed deficiencies. Afterward he bought Hashisaki a hamburger at a concession stand with a sawdust floor. The next year, grease from the exhaust hood dripped on the marshal’s head, and he ordered it fixed by the next fair or shut down. In the third year he found the repair: “They went up on the asphalt shingles, stapled disposable diapers around the exhaust vent, and had hung a plastic pail to catch the grease.” The marshal condemned the stands, and two weeks later they were plowed down.

Hashisaki also removed the race track that circled much of the 25-acre grounds. “I took out that race track, and 250 people showed up at the next fair board meeting who wanted me gone,” he said. The grounds had eight trees when he started. He and caretaker Kim McNeil planted 246 more, and 15 acres of grass came to cover the midways. Ethan Stafford, a Plains High School senior, built four porch-like swings around a fire pit. Judging the pie contest was among Hashisaki’s favorite duties.

Attendance rose from 5,000 or 6,000 in his first year to 35,000 to 40,000 over the four days, in a county of 11,413 people. Of that first year he said, “I think 4,000 of them were here for the demolition derby.” Near the end, a woman told him she had been one of the 250. “But you had the vision,” she said. “There was no vision,” he answered. “The facility demanded it.”

He retired as manager on September 25, 2015, his 70th birthday. On the morning before his last fair opened, he walked the grandstands with his dog, Patches. “This is a fair you’d see in a Norman Rockwell painting,” he said. Once the fair opened, Patches was not allowed on the grounds.