Reynolds County Missouri Fair Festival

Most county fairs sprawl across a week or more. Reynolds County’s fair does the opposite: three days, Thursday to Saturday in late September, at the Reynolds County Fairgrounds in Redford. Redford is the first surprise the fair offers, because it is neither the county seat nor the county’s largest town. Centerville holds the courthouse and Ellington holds more of the county’s people, yet the fair belongs to neither.

What fills the three days is drawn from the working life of a heavily forested Ozark county. The arena bill has carried mule jumping, a jackpot bull ride, team roping and team penning, ATV races and a coon dog treeing contest. Around the arena sit a carnival that runs all three days, a parade, 4-H exhibits, the crowning of Miss Reynolds County and a church fish fry.

One honest warning belongs at the top. This fair leaves a thin paper trail: there is no glossy fair book to quote, and the surviving details arrive in previews published before individual editions. Every price and date here is therefore tied to its year, and nothing pretends an old figure is current.

A Small Fair in a Quiet Corner of the County

Reynolds County sits in the southeastern Missouri Ozarks, a county of timbered hills, small communities and long drives between them. Redford, the fair’s home, is among the smallest of them. The fairgrounds stand at 4586 Highway O, and the event is run by the Reynolds County Fair Board, the organiser named in the fair’s own listings.

The fair’s shape is the opposite of the big regional exhibitions. Redford compresses everything into three days at the end of September, after the worst of the summer heat has drained out of the hills. Thursday has been the family day in recent documented editions, Friday builds, and Saturday carries the fullest grounds.

For a useful comparison, see the Ray County Missouri Fair Festival for another county festival.

That compression changes the feel of the place. At Redford the arena is close to the whole point, and the crowd around its fence on a Saturday night is, for one weekend a year, the nearest thing this scattered county has to a town square.

Reynolds County Fair at a Glance

Item	The published record
Event	Reynolds County Fair
Fair town	Redford, which is not the county seat
County seat	Centerville
Grounds	Reynolds County Fairgrounds
Grounds address	4586 Highway O, Redford
Organiser	Reynolds County Fair Board, as published
Season	Three days, Thursday to Saturday, in late September
Documented recent editions	September 26 to 28 in 2019; September 28 to 30 in 2023
Admission	Most recent published ladder is fenced to 2023; current-year prices are not settled in the fair’s record
Camping	No camping offer is published for the grounds

An Edition Number Instead of a Birthday

Anyone looking for the year this fair was founded will not find it stated in the fair’s own material. What the record offers instead is an edition number: the preview published before the 2019 fair billed that year’s event as the 42nd Annual Reynolds County Fair. That billing belongs to the 2019 edition alone. It is not converted into a founding year anywhere in this article, and it cannot say what number the next edition carries.

What can be said is that a fair able to bill itself as the forty-second of its line in 2019 was already a settled institution, and later documented editions kept the same shape: Thursday to Saturday in late September, on the same grounds, around the same arena programme, carnival, parade and crowning.

The social furniture has stayed in place too. Coverage of the 2022 fair recorded the naming of a First Lady of the fair, an honour that sits beside the crowning of Miss Reynolds County and gives the weekend a pair of ceremonial bookends.

Three Days, Fully Loaded

The Arena: Mules, Bulls, Ropes and Hounds

Mule jumping is the signature most visitors have never seen anywhere else. A mule is led to a barrier and asked to clear it from a standstill, in the manner of the coon-hunting mules that once had to jump fences in the dark rather than be led around to a gate. The judging is plain: the heights rise until one animal is left clearing them.

The rest of the arena bill keeps the same working accent. The jackpot bull ride puts local riders on serious stock with prize money on the line. Team roping and team penning bring the county’s horse people in, and ATV races add a newer, louder note. In 2023 the programme added a cowboy mounted shooting event, riders firing at targets from a moving horse; it was new that year, not an old fixture.

The coon dog treeing contest belongs to the night. Hounds are judged on the work they were bred for in these hills, following scent and treeing their quarry, with judges reading the dogs rather than a clock.

The Midway, the Parade and the Games

A carnival has run on all three days in the documented editions, and the 2019 preview described armband sessions, under which one payment buys an evening of rides. A parade opens the fair’s social side, and old-fashioned games fill the gaps between arena events.

In 2023 the programme also included a cutest cowboy and cowgirl contest, aimed squarely at the county’s smallest residents in their best boots and hats. The 2019 fair put a Color Run on its Saturday, the untimed fun run in which participants finish covered in coloured powder.

Exhibits, Crowns and a Fish Fry

The 4-H show and exhibits give the fair its agricultural core, built by the county’s young people over a full season of feeding, grooming and record-keeping. The crowning of Miss Reynolds County supplies the formal ceremony. And the Church of the Nazarene fish fry supplies supper, the church-kitchen cooking that anchors rural gatherings across the Ozarks and that many regulars plan their evening around.

Planning a Trip to Redford

Choosing Your Day

The three days are not interchangeable. Thursday is the gentle entry: recent documented editions treated it as family day, and in both the 2022 and 2023 accounts the Thursday evening gate was free. Friday is the middle gear, and Saturday, with the fullest programme and the biggest arena crowd, is the day to pick if you can only come once. The fair board announces exact dates as the season approaches, so settle your weekend once that announcement is out.

Reaching the Grounds

Set your destination as the Reynolds County Fairgrounds at 4586 Highway O in Redford, and beware the two wrong turns this county invites. Centerville, the seat, hosts courthouse business but not the fair, and Ellington, the largest town, hosts other county fixtures but not this one. The roads in are rural highways, so allow more time than the distance suggests and plan the drive home from a dark fairground in advance.

What Admission Has Cost

Prices are where this fair’s thin record demands the most care, so here are the published ladders with their years attached. In 2019 the gate was one dollar on Thursday, three dollars on Friday and six dollars on Saturday, with carnival armbands at twenty dollars. In 2023 the ladder was: Thursday evening free, Friday five dollars, and Saturday ten dollars for adults and five dollars for children aged five to twelve, with under-fives free. Figures for the coming edition are settled in no fair-side source, and the numbers still circulating are the 2023 ones. Treat both ladders as evidence of the fair’s modest scale, bring small bills, and confirm the current gate before you set out.

Staying Over

No camping offer, rule or rate for the fairgrounds appears in the fair’s published material, so do not arrive with a camper expecting a hookup. Rooms in this part of the Ozarks are limited and scattered, which makes booking ahead the sensible move in fair week rather than an errand to leave for the drive down.

One Saturday at the Fair

Arrive mid-afternoon and walk the exhibits first, while there is daylight to read the 4-H displays and the exhibitors are still near their animals to talk. If your edition repeats the 2019 programme, the day may have opened with a Color Run, and the grounds will still carry a cheerful trace of it.

Eat at the fish fry early, because the church cooks serve the crowd that gathers before the evening programme. Take a turn through the carnival while the light fades, then claim a place on the arena fence. The treeing contest and the bull ride belong to the dark, and the arena is where this fair keeps its heart, so give it the last hours of your day.

A Fair That Refuses to Spread Out

Set Redford beside a six-day fair such as Ray County’s, held each July in its seat at Richmond, and the contrast is one of philosophy as much as size. A long fair can dedicate whole days to single departments and let visitors drift in across a week. Reynolds County’s fair cannot, and does not try.

The compression has real advantages. Nearly everything happens in front of nearly everybody, a one-evening visitor genuinely sees the fair rather than a slice of it, and the free family Thursday cuts the cost of a first visit to the price of the drive. The trade-off is real too: three days leave no spare date if the weather turns.

The Night-Before Checklist

• Confirm the coming edition’s exact dates with the fair board before fixing your weekend
• Aim for Redford and the Reynolds County Fairgrounds, not Centerville or Ellington
• Carry small bills for the gate, and check the current year’s prices rather than trusting old ones
• Bring a layer for after dark, because late-September evenings in the hills cool quickly
• Arrive on Saturday by mid-afternoon if you want the exhibits and the arena in one visit
• Eat at the fish fry early, before the evening programme draws the crowd
• Save your place at the arena fence before the night events begin
• Book a room ahead if you are staying, since local lodging is limited
• Leave the camper at home unless the board publishes a camping offer for your year
• Check whether armband sessions are running if the carnival is your children’s main event

Beyond the Fairgrounds

The fair makes a good excuse to see the rest of a county most travellers only pass through. Centerville, the seat, is the courthouse town, the modest centre of government for a county that has never had a large town. Ellington, the largest community, holds fixtures of its own, including a farmers market; that market is a separate Ellington institution, not to be confused with the fair at Redford.

Between the towns, the county is mostly itself: forested ridges, creek bottoms and national forest land, small churches and smaller crossroads communities. Come in fair week and the drive to your bed is part of the experience, with the hills just turning towards autumn.

Why Three Evenings Matter in Reynolds County

In a county this rural, a fair is not decoration. It is one of the few occasions in the year when the whole county is invited to the same place at the same time, and Redford’s version discharges that duty with the materials at hand. The arena skills, jumping a mule from a standstill, reading a hound at night, roping as a team, are the county’s own, shown to the county itself.

The 4-H exhibits matter for the same reason. A young exhibitor’s project animal gets, on fair weekend, the largest audience that work will ever have, and the free Thursday ensures no family in the county is priced out of that audience. Small is not an apology here. It is the design.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the Reynolds County Fair held?

The fair is held at the Reynolds County Fairgrounds in Redford, at 4586 Highway O. Redford is a small community in Reynolds County, Missouri, and it is not the county seat. The seat is Centerville, which hosts county government rather than the fair, and the county’s largest town is Ellington. Visitors who set off for either town on fair weekend are heading the wrong way.

On which days does the fair run?

The fair runs for three days, Thursday to Saturday, in late September. That shape held across the documented editions: the 2019 fair ran from September 26 to 28, and the 2023 fair ran from September 28 to 30. The board announces each edition’s exact dates as the season approaches, so the pattern is dependable even though the particular weekend moves.

What will the gate charge?

The most recent published ladder, from 2023, charged nothing on Thursday evening, five dollars on Friday, and on Saturday ten dollars for adults and five dollars for children aged five to twelve, with under-fives free. An earlier ladder from 2019 was lower still. Prices for the coming edition are not settled in the fair’s published record, so treat the 2023 figures as a guide to scale rather than a promise.

What is the fair best known for?

The arena programme gives the fair its reputation: mule jumping judged from a standstill, a jackpot bull ride, team roping and penning, and a coon dog treeing contest after dark. Around that core sit a three-day carnival, a parade, 4-H exhibits, the crowning of Miss Reynolds County and a church fish fry. A cowboy mounted shooting event joined the bill in 2023.

What to Expect From the Next Reynolds County Missouri Fair Festival

How often is the Reynolds County Missouri Fair Festival held?

The fair is held once a year. Each edition is a single three-day event, Thursday to Saturday in late September, rather than a series of weekends. Everything the fair has to offer, arena, exhibits, carnival and crowning, sits inside that one short run.

When is the next Reynolds County Missouri Fair Festival?

The next edition falls in late September, on the Thursday-to-Saturday pattern kept across the documented editions. The fair board announces the exact dates as the season approaches, and those announcements, rather than any standing calendar date, are what visitors should plan around. Late September itself is the anchor to hold.

Will the dates change?

The shape has been steadier than the calendar. Documented editions have all kept the late-September, Thursday-to-Saturday form, while the actual weekend has shifted: the 26th to the 28th in 2019, the 28th to the 30th in 2023. Expect the pattern to hold and the precise dates to move a little, which is why checking the board’s announcement for your year is worth the small effort.

Three Evenings, Honestly Described

The Reynolds County Fair will not overwhelm anybody, and that is its charm. It asks for one short weekend at the end of September, in a small town that is easy to miss on the map, and in return it offers the county to itself: its mules and hounds, its young exhibitors, its church cooks and its arena crowd. Confirm the year’s dates and prices before you set out, and Redford’s three evenings will give you a fair exactly the size of the place that built it.