Bucks County Pennsylvania Middletown Grange Fair Festival
For five days each August, Wrightstown Township fills with livestock pens, exhibit tables and antique tractors as the Middletown Grange Fair takes over the grange’s own fairgrounds on Penns Park Road. It is the largest undertaking of the Middletown Grange, a volunteer fraternal organisation rooted in farming, built around more than five thousand entered exhibits the grange itself describes as ranging “from cows to quilts.” Admission costs nothing; the car park is the charge. Doylestown, the county seat, does not host it, and no county department runs it — volunteers produce everything on land the grange bought in the nineteen sixties.
Run by Volunteers on Penns Park Road
The organiser is the Middletown Grange, which calls itself a “grassroots, non-partisan, non-sectarian, fraternal organization with its roots in agriculture.” Its own 2024 Premium Guide uses the numbered form Middletown Grange #684, naming the grounds the Middletown Grange #684 Fairgrounds, while a nonprofit directory lists the organisation as Middletown Grange Fair; the three forms stand unmerged. Reports from 2025 describe an all-volunteer fair — “Nobody’s paid” — sustained by parking, food and ride revenue; named directors and board members hold working roles only. Bucks County 4-H, through Penn State Extension, is judged at the fair in the 4-H Round-Up, and an Extension office stands on the grounds as a tenant — an exhibitor programme, never the organiser. Skelly’s Amusements supplies the midway. The 2024 guide thanks the Lingohocken Fire Company, the Bucks County F.O.P. Lodge #53 and the Newtown Township Police Department as supporters, a 2026 guide layer adds that parking money helps support local fire and police organisations, and the Bucks County Herald publishes the guide.
The grounds sit on Route 413, three miles north of Newtown, in the village of Penns Park within Wrightstown Township. The homepage and 2024 guide print the address as 576 Penns Park Road, Wrightstown, Pennsylvania 18940; the contact page and the Extension office’s listing give the same road address as Newtown, Pennsylvania 18940 — two postal forms for one grounds, left unmerged. Despite the grange’s name, the fair is not held in Middletown Township, nor in Newtown borough or Doylestown. A 2025 layer gives forty-eight acres and fourteen buildings on the fair director’s figures.
Quick Facts
| Detail | What the record shows |
| Event | Middletown Grange Fair, a five-day grange fair held each mid-August |
| Organiser | Middletown Grange, an all-volunteer grange organisation |
| Host community | Wrightstown, in the village of Penns Park, Wrightstown Township |
| County seat | Doylestown, per the state archives table; does not host the fair |
| Grounds | Middletown Grange Fairgrounds, 576 Penns Park Road |
| Admission | Free in every documented modern year |
| Parking | Twenty dollars per car in the 2025 and 2026 layers |
| Camping | No fair-side camping term is documented anywhere in the record |
A Corn Contest, Two Founding Dates and One Move
The fair’s own Grange History gives the origin. The fair began in 1948 as a grange project to enter a national contest sponsored by Farm Journal Magazine, a contest to raise three hundred bushels of corn to an acre. The crop was planted on Heston Manor Farm near Yardley and hand harvested in October 1948 under the Bucks County Agricultural Agent’s supervision, yielding one hundred five bushels per acre; that first gathering already showed farm machinery, supplies and household goods. A two-day fair followed in 1949 for three experimental crops, and by 1950 the fair counted sixty exhibitors.
The chicken barbecue dinners were introduced in 1954, the year the fair stretched to three days, and the Horse Show was added in 1965. The grange bought land in Wrightstown in 1966 and held the first fair there in 1967; exhibit buildings followed in 1976 and a Judging Arena in 1991. Its own history records the Zone IV award from the Pennsylvania State Association of County Fairs in January 1993 and the extension to five days in 1997.
For a useful comparison, see the Bradford County Pennsylvania Troy Fair Festival for another county festival.
One point refuses to settle. A 2025 anniversary report states that the fair’s beginnings “trace back to 1949, when it was first held at Heston Manor Farm,” on the border of Newtown and Yardley. The fair’s own history dates the project and first harvest fair to 1948, the 2025 reportage dates the first held fair to 1949, and the two stand unmerged. The county’s 2023 layer, calling the fair held annually since 1948 at this location since 1967, supports the two missed Covid editions, in 2020 and 2021, without settling the founding year. The edition billings — seventieth in 2018, seventy-first in 2019, seventy-second in 2022, seventy-third in 2023, seventy-fifth in 2025 — are billing only. The grange’s own 1876 founding, placed in Langhorne by one secondary layer, is the grange’s date, never the fair’s, and Langhorne is not the fair’s host. An 1811 Solebury agricultural fair is an antecedent, not this fair’s beginning.
What Fills the Five Days
Exhibits, Livestock and the 4-H Round-Up
The grange’s own figure is more than five thousand entered items, and a 2019 layer recorded about twelve thousand dollars in prize money across five thousand plus entries — a yearly total, not a premium scale, since no per-class figures were extracted. Animal counts run five hundred plus in that 2019 layer and between four hundred and five hundred in the 2025 report. Extension’s 2024 dairy layer lists the Bucks County 4-H Dairy Show and the Open Holstein Show, and the 2024 guide places the 4-H Market Hog Sale at three in the afternoon on Saturday.
Tractors in Motion: Parades, Pulls and Games
Tractor Games and daily Tractor Parades were new in 2018. The 2022 layer describes nightly tractor parades at half past six. The 2024 guide fragments add a pedal-tractor pull, and the 2025 report describes pulls from garden tractors to twelve thousand pound farm tractors — introduced the year before, in that report’s terms — plus a nightly parade of seventy-five antique tractors.
The Midway, the Pig Races and the Chicken Dinner
Skelly’s Amusements provided the midway in the 2022, 2024 and 2025 layers; only the provider’s 2025 listing prices it: tickets at two dollars each, bundles of twelve tickets for twenty dollars or thirty-two for fifty dollars, each ride costing one to three tickets, wristband specials at thirty dollars in Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon windows, and Mega Passes at fifty-five dollars per person good all week, parking not included. No midway ladder was extracted for 2024 or 2026, so other years’ ride money is undocumented. Hot dog pig races appear in the 2019 and 2022 layers and on Saturday and Sunday of the 2024 guide fragments.
A fair institution since 1954 in the fair’s own history, the chicken dinner is priced only in a 2016 food account: fifteen dollars an adult dinner, ten dollars child size, tickets on sale from half past three Thursday to Saturday until sold out — 2016 figures only, the modern price unpublished in this record.
Music and Special Shows, Kept in Their Years
Entertainment names belong to their editions. The 2019 layer bills Big Chill in an all-new music line-up. The 2023 layer names five area bands: School of Rock Newtown, the Yall or Nothin Band, Shameless, Buzzerband and the Tri-County Band. A 2024 hospitality layer lists tent headliners — a School of Rock Battle of the Bands, Aubrey Rey, Jimmy Mowery, Frank Vieira and Suns of Beaches. The 2025 report headlines the Fearless Flores Thrill Show and the Aim High Canine Stunt Dog Show. For 2026 a guide layer bills 4-H shows, rides, pig races, headliner concerts and the chicken dinner in general terms only; no named 2026 act is documented fair-side.
Planning Your Visit
Dates and Hours, Edition by Edition
The standing shape is five days in mid-August, Wednesday through Sunday, and the documented spans run: August 15 to 19 in 2018, August 14 to 18 in 2019, August 17 to 21 in 2022, August 16 to 20 in 2023, August 14 to 18 in 2024, August 13 to 17 in 2025 and August 12 to 16 in 2026. Gate hours run ten to ten Wednesday through Saturday and ten to five on Sunday in the 2024 guide and 2026 layers. The premium guide’s Monday check-in day is an exhibitor mechanic, never a public fair day, and the contact page’s stale seventy-second-fair line is a carried-over layer, not a current billing.
Admission, Parking and Other Money
Admission is free — announced on the homepage, printed in the 2024 guide’s essentials, and confirmed by county and listing layers for 2018, 2022, 2025 and 2026. No admission price other than free appears in any fair-side, county or Extension layer for this fair. Parking is the real charge. In 2018 a daily parking pass cost ten dollars per vehicle and a five-day pass thirty dollars. The 2022 listing and the fair’s own 2024 guide agree on twenty dollars per car per day and a fifty-dollar five-day pass; the guide includes every vehicle occupant and parks veterans and active military free with identification, and the 2022 veterans remark is likewise a parking term. For 2025 and 2026 the figure is twenty dollars per car, cash only in the current homepage wording, with no five-day pass figure extracted. Exhibitor and vendor fees are referenced but never priced: the 2024 guide tells entrants to pay a fee at check-in without printing an amount.
Camping: An Honest Gap in the Record
No camping term exists in the material gathered: the fair’s pages, its 2024 guide as extracted, and every county and Extension layer are silent on public, exhibitor and vendor camping alike. That silence reads neither as camping offered nor as camping prohibited. A Scout jamboree document records Scout units camping on these grounds for that separate event, which promises nothing for fair week; arrange lodging off the grounds.
A Sample Day on the Grounds
Arrive near the ten o’clock Saturday opening; the 2024 guide runs the grounds until ten at night. Give the morning to the exhibit buildings and barns, then claim a spot for the hot dog pig races, which the 2024 fragments place on Saturday and Sunday, and for the 4-H Market Hog Sale at three that afternoon in the same guide. Let the midway fill the late afternoon and finish with the chicken dinner.
How This Fair Differs From Its Namesakes
Pennsylvania’s other great grange fair, the Centre County Grange Encampment and Fair at Centre Hall, is a separate event: its encampment, famous tent and recreational vehicle city and prices are Centre County’s own. The state’s other grange fairs — Big Knob at Rochester in Beaver County, Dawson, Harmony, Mercer County and the Plainfield Farmers Fair — are each their own grange’s production. Delaware Valley University’s A-Day is an April university fair in Doylestown, and Doylestown hosting it does not make Doylestown this fair’s host. The weekly Wrightstown Farmers Market and the grounds’ car shows and township festivals are tenant events, not the fair. The Middlesex County Fair in East Brunswick, New Jersey, shares the same Skelly’s listing, but it is a separate fair with its own priced gate — New Jersey’s figure, never this fair’s.
Before You Go
- Check the fair’s own pages for the current year’s dates; each edition is announced separately
- Carry cash for the car park, which the fair’s homepage lists as cash only
- Budget twenty dollars per car for parking, the recent documented figure
- Treat any five-day parking pass price as unconfirmed for the newest editions
- Plan midway spending from the current year’s own listing
- Arrive before half past three for the chicken dinner, and expect a sellout
- Arrange lodging off the grounds, since no fair camping is documented
- Remember that Monday of fair week is exhibitor check-in, not a public day
Beyond the Fairgrounds
The fairgrounds stay busy outside fair week with tenant events such as the weekly Wrightstown Farmers Market, which shoppers should not confuse with the August fair itself. Doylestown, the county seat, is where the county government buildings stand.
Why This Fair Matters to Bucks County
The Middletown Grange Fair shows what a fraternal farm organisation can still carry on its own shoulders: self-sustaining without a paid staff, it gives 4-H members their Round-Up showcase and open exhibitors thousands of judged entries a year, and it turned a corn contest into a five-day institution a state association of county fairs once judged the best in its zone. Its parking receipts ripple outward to the fire and police organisations it thanks each year.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Middletown Grange Fair free to enter?
Yes, in every documented modern year, on the fair’s homepage, in its 2024 guide’s essentials, and in county and listing layers for 2018, 2022, 2025 and 2026.
How much does parking cost, and is there a multi-day pass?
Ten dollars a day in 2018, with a five-day pass at thirty dollars; twenty dollars per car per day in 2022 and 2024, the five-day pass at fifty dollars in both the 2022 listing and the fair’s own 2024 guide, which also parks veterans and active military free with identification. The 2025 and 2026 layers document twenty dollars per car, cash only, with no five-day figure extracted.
Where exactly is the fair held?
At the Middletown Grange Fairgrounds, 576 Penns Park Road, in the village of Penns Park within Wrightstown Township. The fair’s pages print that address with both Wrightstown and Newtown postal forms, left unmerged here. It is not in Middletown Township, despite the grange’s name, and not in Doylestown, the county seat but not the host.
Can visitors camp at the fairgrounds during fair week?
Nothing in the gathered record offers, prices or prohibits camping for fairgoers, exhibitors or vendors, so camping here is undocumented rather than available or banned. Scout units have camped on the same grounds for a separate jamboree, and another Pennsylvania grange fair is famous for its camping city, but neither fact creates a camping term for this fair.
What to Expect From the Next Bucks County Pennsylvania Middletown Grange Fair Festival
How often is Bucks County Pennsylvania Middletown Grange Fair Festival held?
Once each year, for five days in mid-August, Wednesday through Sunday in every documented edition.
When is the next Bucks County Pennsylvania Middletown Grange Fair Festival?
The most recent edition documented in the fair’s own pages and the state fair guide is the 2026 fair, held August 12 to 16; the next should be looked for across five mid-August days of the following summer.
Will the dates change?
The weekday pattern is steady while the dates drift slightly, from an August 12 start to an August 21 finish across the documented spans; each edition’s exact days are confirmed only when that edition is announced.
The fair endures because a volunteer membership keeps choosing to do the work — from a corn contest to bought ground and a kitchen feeding thousands, opening the gates free every August.
