Thurston County Fair

The Thurston County Fairgrounds lie on Carpenter Road, about three miles south of Martin Way, with Long Lake beside them. Near the front stands a log building with a carved sign in the gable over its porch that reads “HERITAGE HALL.” On the Saturday morning of the 2026 fair, the county commissioners served a free pancake breakfast inside it from 8:30 to 10:00. Thurston County runs the fair. Its fairgrounds and event manager is Thomasina Cooper.

Four days at Long Lake

The 2026 fair ran Thursday, July 30, through Sunday, August 2, and each day had its own gate price. On Thrifty Thursday, admission was $1 for anyone carrying a non-perishable food item for the Thurston County Food Bank. Friday was Fun Friday, when one carnival wristband bought unlimited rides. Saturday was Military and First Responders Day, with a $2 entry on showing an ID. Sunday was Kids Day, with a $2 entry for children six to fourteen. Children five and under got in free every day. The carnival ticket windows opened at one in the afternoon, and the rides admitted no one in open-toed shoes or sandals.

In the barns, 4-H and FFA members showed livestock for the judges, and the Thurston County Youth Animal Market Sale was held. Baking contests ran every day, from Thursday’s “Bake Us Proud” Apple Pie Contest to Sunday’s Cupcake Contest. The Vuelta La Luna Circus performed stunts on the main stages. Grizzley Artwork gave chainsaw carving demonstrations, and Reptile Isle and the Lion Gypsie Fire Experience filled out the grounds. The music ran from classic rock to country on several stages, with local acts including the Cliff Rice Band, RaeAnn Phillips, Driftwood Drive, and Catherine Loyer & Strawberry Roan. Concerts came free with admission. The county’s own notice for the fair mentions deep-fried treats, and a 2014 account names elephant ears.

At noon on Friday, July 31, the Lucky Eagle Main Stage held the first Kiddie Krawl Contest, a diaper derby for the county’s youngest racers. It was put on by KGY, the radio station that Father Sebastian Ruth began broadcasting from Saint Martin’s College and that received its call letters in 1922.

Visitors who did not want to park on the grounds could leave their cars at the Bus Barn or at Woodland Elementary and ride free shuttles. North Thurston Public School Transportation ran the buses with volunteer drivers. The county lists the 2027 fair for Thursday, August 5, through Sunday, August 8.

The log hall

Heritage Hall is a one-and-a-half-story building of horizontal peeled logs on a post-and-pier foundation. A state inventory form, revised in 1987, records the details. The tall gable roof is shingled in wood and carries exposed log rafters, wide overhangs, and two brick chimneys at its center. Vertical log uprights frame tall multi-paned windows, and wood shakes cover the upper gable ends. Log fretwork fills the open gable over the recessed front porch. Inside, the auditorium keeps its peeled-log walls and posts and its open roof framing. When the old Thurston County Courthouse was abandoned in 1978, its light fixtures were hung there. A shed addition from the 1950s stands against the rear wall without being structurally joined to it. According to the Nisqually Valley News, the logs were trees cut on the property itself.

The sources give two accounts of who built the hall. The inventory form calls it the Long Lake Recreation Hall, a work of the Civilian Conservation Corps completed in 1933 on a lakeshore parcel donated for the purpose. It describes the hall as the only community hall the CCC built in Thurston County and an example of the Rustic Style the Corps used at Millersylvania State Park. The Nisqually Valley News credits the Works Progress Administration and gives the year as 1939. Both accounts agree that the land was donated for recreation and that local groups met there before the fair came.

The fair was held in the building during the 1940s. Here the dates differ again. The inventory form says the fair has owned the property since 1952 and has used the hall as its administrative building since 1958. The Nisqually Valley News says the building was deeded to the county in 1953, became the fair’s official home that year, and was renamed Heritage Hall in 1958. It was listed on the Thurston County Historic Register in 1987 and on the National Register and the Washington Heritage Register in 1988. It was refurbished in 2006.

Seventeen grounds since 1871

The hall at Long Lake is the latest of seventeen sites the fair has used, according to Ann Shipley, its historian. The first fair was held in 1871. At that time the fair was meant to draw settlers to Washington Territory by showing its best livestock, industry, and goods. ThurstonTalk places that first fair in the Columbus Building in downtown Olympia, now the 4th Ave Tavern, where “Columbus Building” is still cut above the doorway. Upstairs were birds and fowl, among them Captain Percival’s pet cockatoo. Downstairs were the farm exhibits and the dancing. The Nisqually Valley News calls the building Columbia Hall and says the event went by the name Mutual Aid Fair.

In 1874 the fair moved to Sylvester Park, then called Town Square. Large livestock appeared for the first time, the crowd watched horse races and foot races, and Captain Percival showed his cranberries. By 1876 there were cash prizes for “best handmade shoes,” “best two-horse wagon,” “best collection of canaries,” “best catsup and chow chow,” and “best variety of pickled fish.” The prizes ranged from $1.00 for the best crochet shawl to $5.00 for the best collection of grain. Early fairs also gave a ribbon for the “best bowl of oatmeal.” An advertisement in 1879 promised “trials of speed” on “one of the finest race courses on the West Coast.” The first purpose-built fairgrounds were finished in 1881 after a decade of work, on ground where the Tumwater Safeway now stands. A baseball tournament with cash prizes was played there in 1882.

In 1884 the fair was held in Chehalis, and none followed for more than a decade. From 1891 to 1901, local people sent their goods to be judged at the larger fairs in Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland.

The fair came to Lacey in 1913. HistoryLink gives the opening date as October 6, 1913, on the grounds of the old Woodland driving park. Isaac Ellis had opened that horse track in 1891, and it never succeeded as a racing venue. ThurstonTalk places the 1913 fair at the site of today’s Lacey Post Office, where the Wonderwood Track once stood, and says ostriches were exhibited that year. After another long gap, the fair returned in 1926 in Tenino and stayed there several years. The 1927 fair closed with the wedding of a local couple.

From 1937 to 1946, a fair was hard to hold. The event went by the name Harvest Festival, and 4-H groups held camps at Millersylvania State Park and at local schools. The official fair resumed in 1946. In 1956 it was held at the South Bay Grange, and its advertisement promised “253 animals” and “rides for the children.” The 1957 fair closed with an all-livestock parade drawing more than 630 4-H entries. The next year the fair moved to Long Lake for good.

Its years at Long Lake have their own stories. In 1964 the fair put up the Cloverleaf Building in the shape of a four-leaf clover. The design caused many architectural problems, and the building was soon taken down. The food court was built in 1970, the same year a pet porcupine escaped its exhibit and was never found. In the 1970s a hang glider landed on the grounds, and the fair board voted to buy the manager an adding machine. For the national Bicentennial in 1976, the play 1776 was staged twice. The 1990s brought the Horticulture Building, a rebuilt horse arena, and a layered-cake contest. In 2003, “Pocket Pets” became a 4-H category, and the air-conditioned Expo Hall went up in the 2000s.

Ann Shipley’s ribbons

Shipley became involved with the fair in 1976, when her daughter was in 4-H. By 2014 she had served on the Fair Board for more than twenty years and was its president. She has said a conversation about the fair’s origins sent her through decades of microfiche at the local library. She spent ten years researching and writing Memories: The History of the Thurston County Fair. In 2014 a small museum on the grounds held historic photographs and fair ribbons dating to the 1930s.

“A lot of the events and contests at the fair are deeply tied to Thurston County history and Washington state history,” Shipley said. “They tie directly to what life was like for the pioneer settlers in the Pacific Northwest.”

On Saturday, August 1, 2026, Shipley joined Commissioners Wayne Fournier, Rachel Grant, and Carolina Mejia outside Heritage Hall and posed with them beside a figure billed as “George Washington.” With Fournier’s help, she unveiled a stone monument naming the building a Thurston County Heritage Site. Cooper thanked the Thurston County Historic Commission and said, “This is a special building.”