Skamania County Fair & Timber Carnival

Parking for the Skamania County Fair & Timber Carnival is at the Grange, five dollars, and from there a footbridge crosses Rock Creek to the fairgrounds on the west bank. There is no gate fee. The 2026 fair ran Wednesday through Saturday, August 12 to 15, from noon to ten each day, under the slogan “Keep the Good Times Rollin’.” The parking money goes to a different local cause each day. On the Thursday of the 2026 fair it went to Skamania County Youth Basketball, and on Friday it went to the Stevenson High School cheerleaders. Visitors may carry in their own food and drink. Decorated shopping carts set around the grounds collect cans for the food drive. The only animals admitted are registered fair livestock and service animals.

Barns, the Exhibit Hall, and the main stage

Livestock exhibitors, many of them Skamania County 4-H members, show every day in market, breed, and showmanship classes, with cattle, sheep, swine, goats, poultry, and rabbits. Riders and their horses compete in classes from showmanship to trail. The beef barn was mint green in the 1990s. In the 2000s the barns and the Exhibit Hall were all painted a matching red. The 2026 Master Showman competitions were held Friday in the Livestock Arena. The youth market sale opened at three on Saturday, when buyers bid on animals the young exhibitors had raised, and the fair says the money funds the exhibitors’ next projects. Inside the Exhibit Hall are quilts, photographs, baked goods, and garden produce from around the county. From nine to eleven on the Friday morning, the annual Sunflower Hour opened the grounds for a sensory-friendly, quiet visit. It was sponsored by the Two Rivers 4-H club and the Klickitat-Skamania Developmental Disability Advisory Board.

Local food and craft vendors work the grounds, the carnival runs its rides and midway games, and a KidZone holds games for the youngest visitors. The main stage carries music every afternoon and evening. The 2026 bill opened Wednesday night with the Moonwriters, a four-piece band in the spirit of the 1970s. The Stevenson High School pep band played Thursday afternoon, followed by family comedians brought by Bo Jones of the Hood River Show. That evening came a Dad Joke Contest and then the bluegrass, old-time, and early country of Whiskey Deaf. Portland Wrestling set up in the grandstand and horse arena that night. Sim Snuka, son of “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka, was on the card, and “Diehard” Danika Della Rouge put her PNW Women’s title on the line against “America’s Sweetheart” Mia Sweets. On Friday J Schlick & the New Brohemians played, followed by Kill the Headlights, a rock band from Vancouver, Washington. On Saturday Alta Adicción, a four-piece band from White Salmon, played first. Countryside Ride closed the night with honkytonk and Western swing. Between sets, Rhys Thomas juggled, and Handy Andy, a magician from Shelton, twisted balloon animals. Fireworks had been set for Saturday night in 2026. The fair cancelled them on Thursday, working with the vendor and the fire marshal, because of the wind forecast and a full burn ban in the county.

Axes, chokers, and the misery whip

“Skamania County is a heavily forested county rich in logging history,” the fair writes, and the Timber Carnival is held each year to honor those logging traditions. It is meant for amateurs. Officials may disqualify any contestant they judge unable to compete “in an orderly manner.” The Junior Timber Carnival fills Friday morning and early afternoon, with competitors grouped into lots by age. Children five and under do the pine cone toss, the water bucket race, and the mini log toss. Ten- to fourteen-year-olds throw hatchets, climb the obstacle pole, and set chokers. The fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds move up to the axe throw. Every child gets a participant ribbon, and ribbons go to first, second, and third in each lot.

The Senior Timber Carnival begins at six on Friday evening and resumes at one on Saturday. Its lots include men’s and women’s axe throw, obstacle pole, beer keg throw, log roll, and boom stick race. It also has choker setting and powder puff choker setting, the horizontal log chop, log load wrapping, and two kinds of misery whip, team and Jack & Jill. Kelsey Baxter superintends the senior events and, with Justine Mathany, the junior ones. The fair keeps photographs of Timber Carnival winners from 1984 and of the junior contest in 1993.

Saturday on Second Street

The parade steps off at eleven on Saturday morning from the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center. It runs through downtown Stevenson and ends at the Skamania County Library. Its entries include classic cars, logging trucks, horses, local businesses, youth groups, and a good deal of thrown candy. Older photographs on the fair’s pages show bagpipers in 2010 and a Cub Scout entry in 1990. People set out chairs early along 2nd Street. The American Legion organizes the parade with Skamania County Events and Recreation. The 2026 grand marshals were Skamania County Veterans.

The route once ran the other way, from Stevenson High School to Vancouver Avenue and then east along Second Street, which is also State Route 14. For a time the Skamania County Horseback Club held parades on both Friday and Saturday. In 2016 the Fair Board reversed the parade’s direction. That same year it cut the fair by one day, dropping Sunday, because fewer people came on Sundays and animal owners needed to take their stock off the grounds safely. Sunday is now haul-out day. After the 2026 fair, the fair’s own page described its search for authenticity as running “from the real hard work of our quilts and cakes, to the real tears on Sunday at haul-out.”

From fruit tables to the west bank

Stevenson was platted on August 26, 1893, by two sets of brothers. George H. and J. Momen Stevenson had come from Missouri. Seymour and George Bell published the area’s first newspaper, the Skamania County Pioneer, which printed its first weekly edition on May 19, 1893. The town incorporated in December 1907 after a vote of 55 to 9. In 1908 the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway finished its line through the county on the north bank of the Columbia, and settlers followed.

The Pioneer of October 1, 1908, announced the first Skamania County Agriculture Fair, held October 5 to 10. Residents showed fruits and vegetables, and livestock apparently was not included. Among the prize-winners were Prindle, Glur, Rakestraw, and Butler, names that now mark county roads. In 1941 the fair lasted a single day, August 22. After Pearl Harbor it appears to have stopped while the war went on. On August 24, 1946, a 4-H Club Fair was held at the Mount Pleasant Grange in the west end of the county.

By 1950 the fair had settled into much its present form. It had flower and vegetable exhibits, livestock shows, a talent show, a parade through downtown, and fireworks. In 1966 it grew to four days and added an Indian Village and the Skamania Stampede Rodeo. Jack Fuller photographed the rodeo grounds across Rock Creek around 1955 to 1959. In 1978 the fair itself crossed the creek, onto land on the west side given by Rudy and Helen Hegewald. The next year Commissioners Del Schulze, Dean Evans, and Ed Callahan presented the couple with a plaque of appreciation, and the Exhibit Hall went up. Handicap parking today is behind the Hegewald Center. Philip L. Watness of the Skamania Pioneer compiled the fair’s history.

The hall in the parking lot

The five-dollar lot belongs to the Stevenson Grange Hall, which has held fair exhibits and installations over the years. According to the Skamania County Pioneer, Scandinavian families built it as a dance pavilion near Rock Creek and the Columbia, families named Aalvik, Iman, Skaar, Nelson, and Lillegard. On weekends loggers came down from the woods, steamship crews came ashore, and traveling bands came up the river to play. The fir floor lay over widely spaced old-growth girders and was said to move like a drum beneath the dancers. Clear-span trusses left the floor free of columns. The side walls could be removed to let in the summer air.

When Bonneville Dam raised the river in the late 1930s, the community moved the whole hall uphill, set it on a new foundation, and enlarged it as a grange hall. Over the following decades it hosted free dinners with local preserves and pies, melodramas, the Miss Stevenson pageant, Red Cross blood drives, and a roller rink in the 1970s. It now slumps eastward as its girders rot out of the foundation. A local nonprofit, the GRACE Project (Grange Renovation and Community Engagement), holds a short-term lease from the county. It has commissioned an engineering report, which found restoration feasible. The group reports that the open timber framing and rafters still stand, and that the original dance floor remains in remarkable condition.