Dickey County North Dakota Fair Festival
Ellendale hosts its own county fair in July, in the county seat itself, and the fair is run by a volunteer board whose account of its work is unusually candid. The Dickey County Fair takes place at the Dickey County Fairgrounds in Ellendale, and its published record offers no founding year and no general gate price. What it does offer is a clear 2026 frame — two rodeo nights, a Saturday concert, a closing community meal, and a published grandstand ladder — plus testimony explaining how a fair of this size pays for itself.
About the Dickey County Fair
The event’s own name, in every fair-side layer, is simply the Dickey County Fair. Its own website publishes a schedule for 2026, advance ticket sales, and a grandstand price ladder, and it places the fair at the Dickey County Fairgrounds in Ellendale. The fair is an annual July event in every dated layer, and its documented centre is rodeo in the evening, youth livestock and static exhibits, a Saturday night concert, inflatables and games for children, and a community meal to close the weekend.
Quick Facts
| Item | Documented record |
| Event | Dickey County Fair |
| Fair town | Ellendale, the Dickey County seat |
| Grounds | Dickey County Fairgrounds, Ellendale |
| Grounds address | 402 B. Park Road, Ellendale, North Dakota 58436 |
| Season | July, in every dated layer |
| 2026 frame | July 9 to July 12, 2026, in the fair’s own layer |
| Organiser | Dickey County Fair Board, a volunteer board |
| Board president in 2025 | Val Wagner, in legislative testimony |
| Programme core | Rodeo, youth exhibits, concert, community meal |
| 2026 grandstand prices | Adults twenty dollars, ages six to eighteen ten dollars, ages five and younger free |
Who Runs the Fair
The Dickey County Fair Board runs the fair. Its president in the January 2025 legislative record is Val Wagner, who described herself as president of the board in Ellendale. The board’s character, in her own wording, is volunteer fundraising done exhaustively, paired with county funding through a mill levy, and the money raised pays for the entertainment, the community meal, and the youth awards each year.
Other bodies have distinct roles that should not be folded into the organiser’s credit. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association sanctions and documents the rodeo; it does not organise the fair. North Dakota State University Extension and the Dickey County 4-H programme are the youth programme and a user of the grounds, not the organiser. Dickey County part-funds the fair through the mill levy, and the Ellendale Area Community Foundation appears as a grant-maker in 2026.
History of the Fair and the County
No founding year, first fair, edition number, anniversary, or attendance figure for the Dickey County Fair is published in any layer examined, and none is printed here. Two tempting dates belong to other things entirely. Ellendale was founded in 1882 and established as the seat of the newly formed Dickey County in that same year, and Dickey County itself was created in March 1881 and organised in August 1882. Those are town and county facts, and they say nothing about when the fair began.
For a useful comparison, see the Cass County North Dakota Red River Valley Fair Festival for another county festival.
The rodeo record gives the fair a documented run of recent years, though only in rodeo layers. The professional rodeo journal layers place the rodeo at Ellendale on July 6 and 7 in 2023, and on July 11 and 12 in 2024, each time with two evening performances at half past seven. The 2026 results layers record a held rodeo at Ellendale on July 9 and 10. Those are rodeo nights, not full fair runs, and the farm press schedules add July 8 to 11 in one layer and July 7 to 10 in another, standing unmerged.
What to Expect
The Rodeo Nights
The rodeo is the fair’s evening anchor, and in 2026 it occupies the first two nights. The fair’s own schedule lists a professional rodeo at half past seven on Thursday, July 9, and again at half past seven on Friday, July 10, and the 2026 results layers corroborate those two nights as held, with team roping and calf roping among the published results.
The Saturday Concert and Children’s Activities
Saturday evening in 2026 belongs to a concert act called Saved by the Nineteen Nineties, listed by the fair’s own schedule at seven in the evening on July 11. Nothing beyond the fair’s own listing is claimed for it here. The same 2026 layer prices wristbands for inflatables and games, which include grandstand entertainment for children.
Youth Exhibits, Awards, and the Community Meal
The fair’s standing core, in the board president’s own 2025 testimony, is entertainment, a community meal, and awards for youth achievement each year. A second testimony, by a Dickey County 4-H leader and parent, fills in the working content: static exhibits in the commercial building, and livestock shows in the barn and the showring. The youth programme documented in fair-side layers is 4-H throughout, and no FFA programme for this fair is documented in the fair’s own site or in the board’s testimony.
Sunday in 2026 closes with a free community meal, listed by the fair’s own schedule as a Free Feed at eleven in the morning on July 12. That meal is consistent with the board’s account of providing a community meal each year, and it should be understood exactly as listed: a free meal event on the closing day. It is not an admission policy, and it does not make the fair a free-admission event.
What Is Not Documented
Visitors should not arrive expecting programme elements that no fair-side layer documents. No carnival or midway company is documented for this fair in a non-excluded layer; the word carnival survives only in nonprofit filing summaries and resale copy. No demolition derby, tractor pull, parade, or pageant is documented for this fair in any non-excluded layer either.
Planning Your Visit
Getting to the Grounds
The fairgrounds are the Dickey County Fairgrounds in Ellendale, at the fair’s own published address of 402 B. Park Road, Ellendale, North Dakota 58436. That form, including the letter B, is the only address form that should be used for the fair itself. Other layers print other forms, and they are not interchangeable.
Dates and Timing
The fair is a July fair in every dated layer, and the only full run of days published in a fair-side layer is the 2026 frame: Thursday, July 9, to Sunday, July 12, 2026. Within that frame, the rodeo occupies Thursday and Friday evenings at half past seven, the concert occupies Saturday evening at seven, and the community meal occupies Sunday at eleven in the morning. No 4-H show times are published for 2026. For other years, only fragments are published: rodeo nights in 2024 and 2023, a rodeo-calendar layer giving July 7 and 8 in its own year, and farm press ranges standing unmerged. For 2025, the fair is documented as operating, but no 2025 dates are published.
Grandstand Prices and Other Costs
The only admission money published for this fair in any layer examined is the fair’s own 2026 grandstand ladder. For the 2026 fair, grandstand prices are adults twenty dollars, ages six to eighteen ten dollars, and ages five and younger free, with wristbands for inflatables and games at fifteen dollars, including grandstand entertainment for children. No separate general-admission gate, season pass, or grounds-entry price is published, and the 2026 ladder must never be carried to another year. Exhibitor premiums, youth entry terms, stall fees, vendor fees, and parking prices are all unpublished.
The Grounds in Detail
The grounds’ fabric, as described in the two January 2025 testimonies, is a working agricultural plant with visible needs. The commercial building is used for static exhibits and for community events such as weddings, and it needs major improvements, specifically in its restrooms, which have been out of order for several years, forcing the board to bring in portable restrooms during the fair. The livestock barn has seen an increase in young people exhibiting animals, and space has become an issue in the barn, in the wash rack, in the tie-outs, and in the showring. The board was, in January 2025, building a community-use building with accessible bathrooms, at an estimated cost of one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars, with a grant of approximately thirty-five thousand dollars and a loan for the remainder, while a new barn was estimated at between five hundred thousand and seven hundred fifty thousand dollars. None of that is presented here as completed work.
Staying Over
Camping at the fairgrounds is documented only in one governing layer, and its limits are part of the record. A 4-H leader and parent testified in January 2025 that she had camped at the fairgrounds with her children over the previous three years, and that the electrical supply did not support the campers, with breakers consistently blowing, while the showering facilities were in desperate need of improvement, leaving her with very quick, freezing cold showers. That is fair-family camping as testified in 2025. No camping fee, hookup count, site count, reservation rule, or camping season is published, and no general-public camping offer may be asserted beyond that testimony.
A Sample Day at the Fair
Take Saturday, July 11, 2026, as the pattern for a full fair day. Arrive in the daytime to walk the commercial building, where the static exhibits are displayed, and to look in on the livestock barn and the showring. Younger children can use the inflatables and games, covered by the wristband in the fair’s own 2026 price list. In the evening, take a grandstand seat for the concert at seven,
How This Fair Compares
Most county fairs in this series are described from a thick published record: a fair book, a full schedule, a gate ladder, and a founding story. Dickey County’s fair is different. Its published record is thin where larger fairs are thick — no founding year, no general gate, no day-by-day exhibit schedule — and thick where larger fairs are often silent, namely a legislative testimony record that explains how the money is raised and what the buildings need.
Visitor Checklist
- Confirm the current year’s dates and grandstand prices from the fair’s own publication before travelling
- Aim for the Dickey County Fairgrounds in Ellendale, at 402 B. Park Road, and do not substitute another layer’s address form
- Treat the published 2026 prices as grandstand prices for 2026 only, never as a general gate or another year’s ladder
- Plan the rodeo evenings for Thursday and Friday, and the concert for Saturday, in the 2026 frame
- Give the daytime hours to the static exhibits and the livestock shows, which are the fair’s agricultural core
- Attend the Sunday community meal as a meal, not as an admission offer, and do not budget around free food generally
- Expect portable restrooms during the fair, since the permanent restrooms have been out of order for years
- Arrange overnight lodging independently, since no general-public camping offer is published for the fair
Beyond the Festival Grounds
Ellendale is a small county seat, and a visit to the fair is also a visit to a town that has administered Dickey County since 1882, when it was established as the seat of the newly formed county. The fairgrounds sit in that town, in agricultural country where a volunteer board raises the money to keep the youth programme open.
Why This Small Fair Matters
A fair with a yearly budget of roughly one hundred twenty thousand dollars, raised in large part by volunteers and local gifts, matters precisely because it is not large. It gives Dickey County’s young people a showring, a barn, and awards, and it gives the wider community entertainment, a shared meal, and a reason to gather in July.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the Dickey County Fair held?
The fair is held at the Dickey County Fairgrounds in Ellendale, at the fair’s own published address of 402 B. Park Road, Ellendale, North Dakota 58436. Ellendale is the county seat of Dickey County and hosts the fair. Other layers’ address forms must not be substituted for the fair’s own address.
Who organises the fair?
The Dickey County Fair Board organises the fair, and its president in the January 2025 legislative testimony is Val Wagner, who described a volunteer board that fundraises exhaustively alongside county mill levy funding. The professional rodeo association sanctions the rodeo, Extension and the county 4-H programme are the youth programme and a grounds user, the county is a funder, and the community foundation is a grant-maker; none of those bodies is the fair’s organiser.
What does it cost to get into the grandstand?
In the fair’s own 2026 layer, grandstand prices are adults twenty dollars, ages six to eighteen ten dollars, and ages five and younger free, with wristbands for inflatables and games at fifteen dollars, including grandstand entertainment for children. Those are grandstand prices for 2026 only, and the fair must not be described as free-admission on the strength of the youngest age tier or the closing-day meal.
What can visitors actually watch?
In the 2026 frame, visitors can watch a professional rodeo on Thursday and Friday evenings, a Saturday night concert, and the youth exhibits and livestock shows that form the fair’s agricultural core, with inflatables and games for children and a closing-day community meal on Sunday. No carnival company, demolition derby, tractor pull, parade, or pageant is documented for this fair in a fair-side layer.
What to Expect From the Next Dickey County North Dakota Fair Festival
How often is Dickey County North Dakota Fair Festival held?
The fair is an annual July event in every dated layer, returning each year to Ellendale, as its president’s 2025 testimony describes. The exact days shift from year to year within July, so the individual dates must be confirmed for the year of travel.
When is the next Dickey County North Dakota Fair Festival?
The firmest current pointer is the fair’s own 2026 frame, Thursday, July 9, to Sunday, July 12, 2026, with rodeo evenings on July 9 and 10, a concert on July 11, and a community meal on July 12. Beyond that published frame, no later edition’s dates are given in the layers examined.
Will the dates change?
The precise days shift from year to year. The rodeo layers alone place the fair’s rodeo nights on July 6 and 7 in 2023 and on July 11 and 12 in 2024, while the farm press schedules give July 8 to 11 in one layer and July 7 to 10 in another, and the 2026 frame runs July 9 to 12. July is the stable season, and the individual dates are something to verify each year.
Closing
The Dickey County Fair is a small, volunteer-run July fair in the county seat that hosts it, and it is best described in its own terms. It has a published 2026 frame of rodeo nights, a concert, and a closing community meal, a published grandstand ladder for that year and no general gate, and a youth programme built around 4-H exhibits and livestock shows. It has no published founding year and no programme borrowed from resale guides.
