Beaver County Pennsylvania Fair Festival
No Pennsylvania fair is published under a county-fair name for Beaver County. The fair documented behind this title is the Big Knob Grange Fair, a five-day Grange fair on the Grange’s own land in New Sewickley Township, held around the weekend before Labor Day: livestock judging and a market animal sale, truck and tractor pulls, a demolition derby, a rodeo, nightly Grange dinners and exhibit halls full of 4-H work.
A Grange Fair on the Grange’s Own Ground
Big Knob Grange conducts the fair on its own property, in the words of the fair’s 2017 programme, and the fair’s own history page says it presently runs for five days under the supervision of an Executive Board. Sponsorship applications for 2025 and 2026 take payment to Big Knob Grange Fair, the payee form; the 2024 vendor contract shortens it to Big Knob Fair. The fair belongs to the Pennsylvania State Association of County Fairs, one of the county’s two member fairs, and membership is not management by the association. The Big Knob Livestock Club, Inc., an independent incorporated club, runs the livestock show and sale; the Pennsylvania State Cooperative Extension Service supervises the 4-H programme behind Department 10; and a Junior Fair Board, advertised in 2026, is a youth board, never the organiser.
The ground sits at 336 Grange Road, Rochester, Pennsylvania 15074, just off Big Knob Road and State Route 68, and that address serves in the fair’s own applications and books as both grounds and mailing address. The county’s polling-place listing puts Big Knob Grange Hall at that address inside New Sewickley Township Precinct 2. Its spaces are the Grange Hall, the Bingo Pavilion, the Dining Room, the Livestock Barns and Arena, the Horse Arena, the Track and the Exhibit Buildings and Tents. Beaver borough, named county seat in the Commonwealth’s State Archives courthouse table, stages none of this; Aliquippa, the county’s largest city in secondary layers, is not the seat, and Rochester is a postal town, not a host.
Quick Facts
| Point | What the record shows |
| Event | Big Knob Grange Fair, a five-day Grange fair; short form Big Knob Fair |
| Host place | New Sewickley Township, on property owned by Big Knob Grange |
| County seat | Beaver borough, which does not host the fair |
| Grounds | 336 Grange Road, Rochester, Pennsylvania 15074 |
| Organiser | Big Knob Grange, the fair supervised by its Executive Board |
| Standing season | Late August into early September, around the weekend before Labor Day |
| Latest documented span | September 1 to 5, 2026, in newspaper and state guide layers |
| Admission | No fair-side gate figure published; free entry only in a 2017 news layer and an undated township guide |
| Camping | No camping rule, rate or reservation term published anywhere in the record found |
Two Beginnings, a War, a New Hall
The fair’s own history page gives the event two beginnings, and they must stay two. An indoor circus fair was held in December 1937. In September 1938, the first outdoor fair was held and realised a profit of two hundred fifty-two dollars and twenty cents. Neither collapses into a founding year; the annual fair was held each September.
On July 15, 1942, it was voted not to hold a fair that year in the wartime emergency, and the fair was not held again until September 1946. After the war a Fair Committee was appointed by the Master, the Grange’s own officer title; that committee belongs to its era, not the present management. On January 18, 1950, the permanent weekend-before-Labor-Day date was established, and the same page records the fair discontinued again for 1950 and 1951 while the new hall was built. It has continued each year since 1952, with an estimated attendance of forty thousand in that layer. A township layer’s more-than-forty-thousand figure stands unmerged beside it, and a school-press summary describing the fair as held every year since 1938, the war gap as a five-year period, conflicts in detail with the fair’s own page, which governs. The edition numbers are billing rather than arithmetic: a seventy-fifth annual in the 2017 programme, a misprinted eighty-second billing in the 2024 vendor contract against an eighty-second in a school-press layer, an eighty-fourth season in a 2026 newspaper layer, and a 2026 place-description layer still reading eighty-second annual, contradicting both as stale copy.
For a useful comparison, see the Armstrong County Pennsylvania Dayton Fair Festival for another county festival.
What to Expect
The 2025 Fair, Day by Day
The fullest programme in the record is the fair’s own Full Schedule for Tuesday August 26 to Saturday August 30, 2025. Tuesday: the parade, the Fair Queen’s crowning, opening ceremonies with the Freedom Big Red Marching Band, a midway opening at 6 p.m., a Monster Truck Show at 7:30 p.m., goats and lambs judging and bingo. Wednesday: hog and steer judging, Figure 8, Half Car, Side by Side and Rough Truck timed races, the Kid’s Peddle Tractor Pulls and the Crows Run Band. Thursday centred on the Big Knob Livestock Market Animal Sale at 7 p.m. on Thursday August 28, 2025, per the livestock rules, with Full Pull Productions’ Truck and Tractor Pulls, the Project Band and a watermelon eating contest. Friday belonged to Derby Dog’s Demolition Derby, a Kid’s Power Wheels Demolition Derby, the Eldorado Band and pony pulls. Saturday: Antique Tractor Pulls at 8 a.m., a horse show and the midway matinee, James Tobin and the Dewey Decimators from noon to 3 p.m., the Part Time Cowboys, and a Rodeo by Bullride Mania at 7 p.m., before exhibits were released between 9 and 11 p.m. Grange dinners ran nightly in the Dining Room, the two schedule layers’ Saturday forms, roast beef against country-fried steak, standing unmerged, and Department 10 carried the 4-H work under the 2025 theme Cultivating the Future Generations, that year’s theme only, as Flourishing in Opportunity, Rooted in Agriculture was 2024’s.
The 2024 Fair, and What 2026 Shows
A Freedom Area school-press layer describes the 2024 fair, Tuesday August 27 to Saturday August 31 under the fair’s own vendor contract, with two standouts: a rodeo at the track, a new element, and the revival of the Big Knob Fair Queen contest, halted in 1999 and returned twenty-five years later with three contestants and a Freedom class-of-2024 alumna, Josephine Brenckle, crowned. Market goats, lambs, steers and hogs were judged that year, as a judging account confirms, and none of those features may be carried into another year’s programme. Newspaper and parenting layers describe 2026, September 1 to 5: livestock shows, exhibits, food and live entertainment under an America-250 theme of two hundred fifty years of freedom, family and Pennsylvania fairs. No act-by-act 2026 schedule was found, so not one 2025 performer, pull or derby may be assumed for 2026.
Planning Your Visit
Dates and Hours
The documented spans are August 29 to September 2 in 2017, August 27 to 31 in 2024, August 26 to 30 in 2025 and September 1 to 5 in 2026. Around them sit working days that are never public fair days: 2017 wine entries (due August 23) and closed judging (August 28), 2024 vendor set-up (preceding Sunday and Monday), and 2025 registration (August 24) and closed judging (August 25). Buildings open at 4 p.m. on weekdays, noon on Saturday, closing at 11 p.m. in the 2024 contract. The history page’s weekend-before-Labor-Day formula is a standing-date statement, never a year’s span.
The Admission Question
No fair-side document publishes a gate price. An Ellwood City news layer reported of the 2017 fair that admission and parking were free. An undated township guide describes the Grange as having one of the last fairs in Pennsylvania with free parking and admission, a statement assigned to no year, so it cannot be printed as the gate for 2025 or 2026; the fair-side gate for 2024, 2025 and 2026 remains unverified, and the silence of vendor paperwork is not itself proof of a free gate.
Ride Money, Vendor Money and Premiums
In 2017, unlimited riding all night cost fifteen dollars in that news layer. The 2025 schedule layer prices one-price wristbands at twenty-five dollars each evening, and for Saturday August 30, 2025 offers fifteen-dollar wristbands for the noon to 4 p.m. matinee or thirty-dollar wristbands covering noon to 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. to close. The 2026 wristband price is unverified, cut off in the layer fetched.
The fair’s 2024 vendor contract charges exhibitor space by the front foot: twelve dollars per front foot when paid by June 1, 2024; fourteen dollars by July 15; fifteen dollars per foot after July 15. Food vendors and game or attraction operators instead pay twenty percent of gross sales nightly, with a nonreturnable sixty-dollar deposit required. Sponsorship applications for 2025 and 2026 list identical tiers — Brass fifty dollars and up, Bronze one hundred, Silver two hundred fifty, Gold five hundred, Premier one thousand two hundred, Platinum two thousand five hundred dollars and up — with Platinum and Premier sponsors choosing five Grange Meal Tickets or five Track Passes, sponsor perks rather than published gate or grandstand prices. Premiums appear only in the Department 10 books: a 4-H Best of Show ribbon plus three dollars in the 2025 book, and club exhibits at fifteen, twelve, ten, eight and five dollars for first through fifth — no general premium scale.
Staying Over
No camping rule, rate or reservation form appears in any fair document, so camping at this fair is unverified entire: it can neither be offered nor declared unavailable. The Camping Adventures and Backpacking Expedition entries in the Department 10 books are 4-H project class names, not a camping offer, and no term may be imported from the Hookstown Fair, the Centre County Grange Fair or any other event.
A Sample Day at the Fair
The Saturday of the 2025 edition is the one day the record fills in completely:
- Arrive for the Antique Tractor Pulls at 8 a.m.
- Ride the midway matinee, the window the fifteen-dollar Saturday wristband covered in 2025.
- Catch James Tobin and the Dewey Decimators between noon and 3 p.m., then the Part Time Cowboys.
- Eat the Grange dinner in the Dining Room before the evening programme.
- Finish at the Track with the Rodeo by Bullride Mania at 7 p.m., before the exhibit release at 9 p.m.
Look-Alikes and Other Beaver Fairs
The county’s other association fair is not this one. The Hookstown Fair, at Hookstown, is a separate event with its own dates, gate and grounds; an aggregator’s suggestion that it hosts the county fair is that aggregator’s claim only, and no Hookstown pricing or programme belongs here. A fair at Beaver, Oklahoma, shares the county-fair name form this Pennsylvania event never uses, and the website domain built from that name belongs to the Oklahoma fair, never to this one. A fair at Minersville serves Beaver County, Utah; the Beaver Community Fair at Beaver Springs sits in Snyder County, where Beaver is a village name rather than a county; and old guide layers list a Blue Knob Grange Fair from 2013, Blue Knob being a different mountain.
Deepest sits an antique: an early-1900s county fair at Junction Park in New Brighton, described in its layer as a major farming exposition. No layer connects that event to this one, and the Grange fair’s own history begins indoors in 1937, so no continuity or successor relationship may be claimed. Old Economy Village in Ambridge completes the traps: Economy Borough appears in no fair layer as this fair’s host or grounds, and the village is not its namesake either.
Before You Go
- Work from the fair’s own current schedule, since spans have fallen in both late August and early September.
- Budget for midway wristbands using the most recent priced year only as a guide.
- Ask the Grange directly about overnight stays, because no camping term is published.
- Keep the Hookstown Fair’s dates and prices out of planning for this fair.
Beyond the Fairgrounds
New Sewickley Township is rural Beaver County ground: visitors drive through farmland to reach a fair no town’s street grid contains. Rochester, the postal town on the address, is the nearest borough errand stop rather than the destination, while Beaver borough, the county seat, holds the courthouse.
Why a Grange Fair Still Matters
The Grange is a farm fraternity, and a fair conducted by a local Grange on its own property is a surviving specimen of a form that once dotted Pennsylvania. Everything in the record points inward to that ownership: the Grange writes the history, supplies the board, serves the dinners, sells the sponsorships and takes the entry forms at its own hall, and its history prints its small early profit, wartime cancellation vote and two-year building silence plainly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the fair behind this title actually called?
It is called the Big Knob Grange Fair in the fair’s own papers, shortened to Big Knob Fair inside its vendor contract. No Pennsylvania fair is published under a county-fair name in the listings examined, and no layer calls this event the county’s official fair.
Where exactly does the fair take place?
On Big Knob Grange’s own property in New Sewickley Township, at 336 Grange Road with Rochester as the postal town. Neither Rochester borough nor Beaver borough hosts it.
How much does it cost to get in?
No fair-side document publishes a gate figure, so the modern gate is unverified. A 2017 news report described admission and parking as free that year, and an undated township guide praises the fair as one of the last in Pennsylvania with free parking and admission, but neither fixes a gate for recent editions.
Can I camp at the fairgrounds?
The record found contains no camping rule, rate or reservation term, so camping can neither be offered nor ruled out. The camping phrases in the 4-H books are project class names, not visitor camping.
What to Expect From the Next Beaver County Pennsylvania Fair Festival
How often is Beaver County Pennsylvania Fair Festival held?
Once a year, as a five-day fair in the late-August to early-September window, unbroken since 1952 in the history page’s account.
When is the next Beaver County Pennsylvania Fair Festival?
The most recent span in the record is September 1 to 5, 2026, carried by newspaper and state guide layers under an eighty-fourth-season billing. No later span was found, so the next edition’s dates await the fair’s own announcements.
Will the dates change?
They have moved before within their window: late August in 2024 and 2025, then September 1 to 5 in 2026. The weekend-before-Labor-Day formula describes the traditional slot, yet the documented modern spans were never simply read off it, so a shift of a few days should surprise nobody.
Nothing about this fair needs inflating. A Grange that still runs its own fair on its own ground, feeds its visitors in its own dining room and prints its own history with the gaps left in has given Beaver County a late-summer institution: the Big Knob Grange Fair, in New Sewickley Township, once a year as summer turns.
