Walsh County North Dakota Fair Festival

Most county fairs belong to summer. The Walsh County Fair belongs to October. When the rest of North Dakota’s fair season has already closed, Park River opens its fairgrounds for four days in the third week of the month, a slot held over the old teachers’ convention for more than thirty years in its manager’s telling. Schools let students out on the Thursday and Friday so they can take part. It is, by the state’s own calendar, the latest county fair of the North Dakota season.

First, where it is: Park River, not Grafton. Grafton is the county seat, a fact since 1881, and it appears in the fair’s own record only as a hometown of exhibitors and FFA chapters. The fair itself is a Park River event at the Walsh County Fairgrounds, run by the Walsh County Fair Association.

About the Fair

The Walsh County Fair is a working county fair with an unusually strong youth core and an unusually large open-class show. Its two engines are the county’s 4-H and FFA young people, whose livestock and static projects fill the arenas and halls, and the open-class exhibitors, whose art, photography, home economics, crops and gardening entries make up a large open show. Around those engines sit the fair’s signature home-grown contests: potato picking, pedal tractor pulls, rabbit races, mutton busting, Barnyard Olympics, Bessie Bingo and the stick pony barrel race. There is no open livestock show here, the fair’s own exhibitor page says so plainly, and livestock showing belongs to the 4-H and FFA side.

The fair’s other signature is its ending. WoJo’s Rodeo brings Bulls and Broncs to the arena as the culmination of the fair week, with mini broncs, saddle broncs, bareback broncs, ranch bronc riding, mini bulls and bull riding. It is a contracted rodeo production, not the fair’s organiser, closing the fair the way a grandstand show closes a summer fair, except indoors in October.

Quick Facts

Item	Detail
Event	Walsh County Fair
Town	Park River, Walsh County
County seat	Grafton, since 1881, hosts no part of the fair
Grounds	Walsh County Fairgrounds, Park River
Season	October, third week, over the old teachers’ convention
Organiser	Walsh County Fair Association
Youth side	Walsh County 4-H and FFA programmes
Admission	Free for the 2026 fair, in the fair’s own words
Camping	No event camping published

History

The fair’s age is a puzzle the record refuses to solve. The fair’s own layers bill the 108th fair in 2023, the 109th in 2024 and the 110th in 2025, while the Association’s testimony from January 2025 states that the fair celebrated one hundred years in 2014. The two layers do not reconcile, and no founding year, first fair or continuous run can be derived from either. The billing is printed here as billing.

For a useful comparison, see the Traill County North Dakota Fair Festival for another county festival.

The 4-H Council’s testimony describes fairgrounds structures maintained by fair and county for over seventy-five years, a grounds-maintenance claim rather than a claim about the fair’s age. The Art and Photography Show People’s Choice contest began in 2018 and reached its seventh annual edition in 2025, its sequence standing as printed, including its gap in 2020.

The fair’s recent history is dominated by one building: an aging main fair building used for livestock shows, youth activities and static projects, which an engineer’s report finds in need of at least extensive structural repairs, a new building possibly more cost-effective. The testimony prices the repair or replacement work at around two million dollars, a project-cost estimate in a testimony layer, never a visitor price. Against that problem, the state awarded the Association one hundred thousand dollars in July 2025, the joint-maximum resiliency grant toward new facilities, with Paul Klose as the named contact. The grant is state infrastructure money, never money a visitor pays.

The people behind the fair are recorded in separate layers, never to be merged into invented offices. Paul Klose is the grant award’s contact and the filer of the Walsh County 4-H Council’s testimony, with no fair-office title in the record beyond those two roles. Anna Ramsey appears in three layers: filer of the Association’s testimony, 2024 newsletter Secretary, and open-class contact, never folded into one invented office. The 2024 officers roster names Luke Lillehaugen, Kelly Houser, Dale Pesek, Sarah Arndt, Anna Ramsey and Brad Brummond as President, President-Elect, Past President, Treasurer, Secretary and Fair Manager respectively, with a directors list that includes Paul Klose. That roster belongs to 2024 and is never presented here as a current board. Brummond describes himself, in his own testimony layer, as fair manager for around twenty years and former county agent of thirty-one years. The Walsh County 4-H Council and the county’s 4-H and FFA programmes are the fair’s youth side and partners, never its organisers; NDSU Extension stands behind the 4-H programme as an office layer only.

What to Expect

The Youth Showcase

The youth side is the fair’s working heart. In 2023, the last year with full figures, 102 4-H members and 12 FFA members exhibited 697 projects, 150 animals and 547 static projects, from seven 4-H clubs and three FFA chapters. The 4-H Council’s testimony calls the county’s 4-H livestock show one of the largest in eastern North Dakota. The 2024 fair opened with interview judging of 4-H and FFA youth projects, and the Little International showmanship contest, in which young exhibitors show animals they may not have raised themselves, closed the 2023 Friday programme.

The Open-Class Show

The open-class show is the fair’s second engine: in 2023 it was one of the biggest in a decade in the newsletter’s own billing. The show drew 669 entries: 266 in art, 150 in photography, 201 in home economics, 26 in crops and 26 in gardening, 130 more than the year before. The results layer lists divisions across home economics, hobbies and crafts, junior entries, canned foods, baked foods, art and photography, crops and gardening. Open-class entries use entry tags filled out on the day of entry, and no statewide entry-system listing for this fair was found.

Homegrown Contests

The contests are the fair’s personality, home-grown rather than imported. Potato picking runs in adult, youth aged eleven to sixteen, and ten-and-under divisions in the results layer. Rabbit races, mutton busting, with fifty-three participants in 2023, and the stick pony barrel race give children their own arena moments. Barnyard Olympics, new in 2023, and Bessie Bingo sit alongside the teen Cornhole tournament, a recent addition in 2025. None of this is a midway: no carnival company, parade or headline concert act is documented for this fair, and none is claimed here.

Bulls and Broncs Under the Lights

The fair closes with WoJo’s Rodeo Bulls and Broncs. Brought back for the 108th fair in 2023, it returned for the 109th in 2024, running on the Saturday evening at seven o’clock in the newsletter layer, with the press report describing the 2024 fair as culminating in Bulls and Broncs. The programme runs from mini broncs and mini bulls up through saddle broncs, bareback broncs, ranch bronc riding and bull riding. The main arena and the Chris Midgarden Arena are the named arenas in the newsletter layer, mutton busting in the main arena and the 2023 hypnotist in the Chris Midgarden Arena.

Planning Your Visit

When to Come

Come in October, in the third week of the month, and check the current year’s dates before travelling. The documented layers give October 21 to 24 in 2026, in the state handbook calendar, with the local calendar carrying the fair at Park River on October 22 and 23 within that run, doors opening at half past seven and activities until nine. The 2025 fair ran October 15 to 18, billed as the 110th. The 2024 fair ran October 16 to 19, billed as the 109th. The 2023 fair was billed as the 108th, with no calendar dates printed for that year in the fetched newsletter text. The 2022 line gives October 19 to 22, and the 2021 line October 20 to 23, both at Park River. The season for this fair is October, never a specific run of days carried as a timeless fact.

Getting There and the Grounds

Head for Park River and the Walsh County Fairgrounds. The fair’s own pages publish no street address for the grounds, and tourism listings carry an address form of their own, so the grounds are given here by name and town. Grafton, the county seat, is not a venue for any part of the fair. The Extension and courthouse addresses in the Grafton area belong to offices, never to the fair.

What Things Cost

For the 2026 fair, admission is free, in the fair’s own homepage words: admission is free to the 2026 Walsh County Fair. That statement belongs to 2026 only. No gate price, season pass or free statement for 2025, 2024, 2023 or any earlier year appears in any layer fetched, and the 2026 free statement must never be extended backwards. The record carries no parking figure at all. The one hundred thousand dollar state grant and the around two million dollar building estimate are infrastructure and project figures, never visitor prices.

A Sample Four-Day Visit

A visitor planning around a four-day October run could shape the trip this way, as a suggestion rather than a published programme. Arrive for the opening days and start with the youth work: interview judging, livestock and horse shows, and static exhibits in the main building. Give the middle of the fair to the open-class show and the home-grown contests, and save the Saturday evening for the Bulls and Broncs in the arena.

A Late-Season Fair, Beside a Summer Fair

It helps to place this fair beside the summer county fair it is often measured against. A summer fair runs on heat, daylight and a midway, with a carnival company, a parade and an outdoor grandstand. The Walsh County Fair runs on October light, indoor exhibit halls and arena evenings, with neither in its record. A summer fair’s livestock barns are usually open-class affairs. Here the livestock side is entirely a youth side, and the open-class strength lies in art, photography and home economics rather than animals. A summer fair is usually priced at the gate. This fair, for 2026, is free at the gate in its own words, with no other year’s gate published at all. Park River offers not a smaller version of a summer fair, but a different kind of fair, built around a school calendar, a youth showcase and an October slot no other North Dakota county fair occupies.

Visitor Checklist

• Plan on October, in the third week, and confirm the current year’s dates first
• Head for Park River, not Grafton, and the Walsh County Fairgrounds
• Expect a youth showcase and a large open-class show, not an open livestock show
• Do not expect a carnival, midway company, parade or headline concert act
• For 2026, admission is free in the fair’s own words; no other year’s gate is published
• Do not expect event camping; none is published for this fair
• Save the Saturday evening for the Bulls and Broncs arena finale
• Remember the fair’s age is billed two ways that do not reconcile; take neither as a founding year

Beyond the Festival Grounds

Park River repays a slower look once the fair week closes. The town that hosts the fair is a small Red River Valley community, its streets and storefronts carrying the character of a farming county in October: harvest finished or finishing, grain country settling into winter. The county’s own history, organised in 1881 and named for George Walsh in the county record, gives the stop a depth beyond the four days of exhibiting.

Why It Matters

A county fair is a community taking stock of itself, and an October fair takes stock at a different moment from a summer one. By the third week of October, the growing year is over, the school year is under way, and the fair becomes a place where the county’s young people show what they raised and made, and its adults show what they grew, baked, photographed and crafted. The building problem matters here too: a fair whose main building needs extensive structural repairs, and whose association has won the state’s maximum resiliency grant toward new facilities, has a future being argued in public rather than assumed. What is settled is the present: a fair in Park River, in October, free at the gate in 2026, run by its association, filled with young exhibitors and open-class entries, and closing under arena lights with bulls and broncs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the Walsh County Fair held?

In Park River, at the Walsh County Fairgrounds. Grafton is the county seat, since 1881, but it hosts no part of the fair.

When does it take place?

In October, in the third week of the month, over the old teachers’ convention. The documented layers give October 21 to 24 in 2026, October 15 to 18 in 2025, and October 16 to 19 in 2024. Look up the current year’s dates before you travel.

Does it cost anything to attend?

For the 2026 fair, admission is free, in the fair’s own homepage words. No gate price or free statement for any other year is published in any layer fetched, so no other year can be priced or called free here. Parking, too, carries no published figure.

How old is the fair?

The record gives two incompatible answers, and neither is repaired here. The fair’s own layers bill the 108th fair in 2023, the 109th in 2024 and the 110th in 2025, while the Association’s testimony states that the fair celebrated one hundred years in 2014. No founding year can be derived from either layer.

What to Expect From the Next Walsh County North Dakota Fair Festival

How often is Walsh County North Dakota Fair Festival held?

It is an annual event, held each year in October, in the third week of the month, at Park River, over the old teachers’ convention slot it has held for over thirty years in its manager’s telling.

When is the next Walsh County North Dakota Fair Festival?

The next edition falls in the same October slot, following the October 21 to 24 run of 2026 in the third week of the following October. Check the current year’s dates before setting out.

Will the dates change?

The dates shift from year to year within the October slot, as the 2021 through 2026 layers already show. The season stays in October, but the individual days move within it, so check the current year’s dates before setting out.

The invitation at the heart of this fair is simple: come to Park River in October, when North Dakota’s fair season is nearly done, and see a county take stock of its young people and its makers under arena lights. It is the state’s latest county fair, and it earns that place by being unlike any summer fair at all.