Silvana Community Fair

Pioneer Highway runs west from Interstate 5 for two and a half miles to Silvana, an unincorporated town in the Stillaguamish River Valley. Viking Hall stands beside the road, a big white building of cinder block across the street from the old granary. The Silvana Community Fair is held in the field behind the hall on one day a year, the last Saturday of July. In mid-July 2026 the fair board described that ground as “wide open with grass that will soon be hay.” Grant money that year bought three shade tents, and volunteers put them up on the Sunday before the fair, with Stanwood Redi-Mix, Chris Laster and Kyle Glover leading the work. Lenz Enterprises donated and delivered mulch for the memorial garden.

Fair day behind Viking Hall

The 2026 fair, the 78th by the board’s count, fell on July 25. Parking and entrance are free. Open-class dog exhibiting began at 8 a.m. At 9 the fair opened with a flag raising, in which everyone is encouraged to take part, followed by a group photo and games for kids of all ages. Livestock judging began at 10 and ran through the day. The noon hour was a break, with live music by Stilly River Lockdown. At 12:15 came the greased pole contest for children 12 and under, sponsored by Stanwood Redi-Mix. Judging resumed at 1, and at 4:30 the Parade of Champions and the closing ceremony ended the program. The fair closed at 5.

The livestock departments take in beef and dairy cattle, rabbits and cavies, poultry and waterfowl, sheep, swine, and alpacas and llamas, as well as dairy, fiber and pygmy goats. The grounds also hold agricultural mechanics displays and tractors, a petting zoo, vendor booths and, in 2026, food trucks. The Snohomish Conservation District lists the fair on its calendar and invites anyone curious about livestock care, or about where local food comes from, to ask its staff and the other groups on hand.

Demonstrations and the judged indoor entries go inside Viking Hall: arts and crafts, horticulture, textiles and baked goods. In 2026 the board gave gift cards for inside exhibits in foods, floriculture, horticulture, photography, art, crafts, clothing and textiles, educational displays and posters. A belt buckle for the inside exhibits went to an exhibitor named Nia. Before the fair, the board asked on its page whether entrants had been collecting eggs “for the perfect half dozen.”

A rabbit named Bob

The Stanwood Camano News sent an intern reporter, Ben Olson, to the fair on Saturday, July 28, 2018. Handlers, teenagers and younger, led cows and pigs around the show arena while a judge graded them on handling and showmanship. Summer Whittlesey, 19, of Stanwood, had brought Bob, an eight-month-old Flemish Giant rabbit at his first fair. The rabbits stayed in their cages, and Whittlesey took hers out now and then to show curious spectators. “He does like some attention,” she said. The day was hot, and Bob was less chipper than usual. “He won’t pose because of the heat,” she said.

That year Viking Hall held quilts, drawings and food entries set out for judging, along with poster projects by local children. One poster asked “what kind of cow is the best?” and another outlined a rabbit first-aid kit. Hundreds of people came. Booths sold food and cold drinks, and a stage held live music. The greased pole drew one of the biggest crowds of the day as children lined up to climb a tall metal pole slathered in grease, with the crowd cheering them on.

Showmen, scholarships, and three women

The fair began in 1947 to give local youth a place to show animals before they advanced to larger fairs. The Stanwood-Camano Community Fair follows the week after; in 2026 it ran July 31 to August 2. On the morning after the 2026 fair, board members and volunteers finished the cleanup and wished the young showmen luck at the fairs still ahead. Some senior showmen, the board wrote, had made Silvana their last fair before leaving for college. The Silvana Community Fair Board holds an annual auction each March. In July 2026 it awarded $10,000 in scholarships to nine young people. In late August it added one more $2,000 scholarship, for Kayla Mullins, bound for the animal science program at BYU Idaho.

The 2026 fair was dedicated to three women. Elsie Pryor began volunteering in the dairy department in 1949. She kept at it while her daughters Cathy and Char showed cattle, and again while her grandchildren showed in the 1980s and early 1990s. She also served on the board and gave to the auction. Patricia Manning moved with her family to a farm in Silvana when she was 34. They milked Brown Swiss, and through her children’s 4-H work she began many years with the fair, sharing what she knew of dairy cattle with the youth. Patty Vroman came to the fair through Peace Lutheran in Silvana. She donated to the auction and worked in the inside exhibit hall, where, in the board’s words, “She answered all the questions and showed everyone where to go.”

A hotel, a dance hall, and cinder block

The lot under Viking Hall once held Silvana’s first hotel. According to local historians, Anna Swanson, a Norwegian immigrant, built and opened it around 1894. The hotel reportedly caught fire in 1901 but most of it was saved, and Swanson repaired it. The next year the building burned down. She then built a new hotel, larger than the last, and stayed there until about 1925. She sold it to the Sons of Norway, who turned part of the building into a dance hall, according to Loren Kraetz, a local historian who has lived in the Stillaguamish Valley for more than 80 years.

The hall was built of wood then. “When you get a large group of people doing the polka, that building didn’t seem to be substantial,” Kraetz said. “They were kind of fearful it could collapse, so they tore it down.” Robin Monson Sather, whose family has lived around Silvana for six generations, remembered watching plays there in which her mother performed. “I had plenty of time to play in that building,” she said. In the mid-1950s, when she was about 12, it was knocked down and rebuilt in cinder block.

The dances went on in the new building and drew people from all over, sometimes disturbing the neighbors. “Some of those kids who bought tickets weren’t always in the dance hall,” Kraetz said. “There were empty glass bottles to be picked up around the hall on Sunday morning.” Eventually the dances stopped. In 1996 the Sons of Norway donated the building to the Silvana Community Association. Inside are a kitchen and a big open room with a stage, rented out for memorials, weddings and birthday parties. Decades of floods had warped the wood floors, and the association replaced them with concrete. In 2019 the association’s five volunteer members said it took about $15,000 a year to keep the hall open. Rentals had brought in about half that the year before, and the repairs had drained most of their savings. “We want to keep it open for the next group coming through,” said member Mary Fuentes.