Clarion County Pennsylvania Fair Festival
For seven days in the last full week of July, the southern end of Clarion County, Pennsylvania, fills a municipal park with livestock barns, exhibit halls, a carnival midway and a grandstand, and calls the result the Clarion County Fair. The fairground is Redbank Valley Municipal Park, and the week runs on a pay-one-price gate under which one payment covers entry, parking, unlimited rides and grandstand seats. Clarion borough, the county seat, sits roughly twenty miles to the north and does not host this fair. What began in 1938 as a one-day picnic meant to patch up relations between farmers and merchants now stretches across a full Sunday-to-Saturday week of 4-H shows, demolition derbies, truck and tractor pulls and drag racing.
About the Clarion County Fair
The name that runs the fair in its own pages and in fair-week reporting is the Clarion County Fair Board, which meets on the third Tuesday monthly at the park’s fair office, open to the public. A nonprofit-directory layer names the organisation behind the fair’s site as the Clarion County Fair Association, crediting it with gate admissions, exhibitor fees and registration fees. The two forms are never reconciled in the record, so they stand unmerged here: Board for the working fair, Association for the tax-layer form. The grounds are governed by the Redbank Park Commission, a multi-municipality body drawn from townships and boroughs on both sides of the Clarion and Armstrong county line. Penn State Extension and its 4-H programme carry the youth side, and sponsors, including the Redbank Valley Church Association behind the Sunday Festival of Music, support individual days without becoming the organiser.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Event | Clarion County Fair, a seven-day county fair |
| Grounds | Redbank Valley Municipal Park |
| Published address | 137 Park Road, Fairmount City, Pennsylvania 16224 |
| County seat | Clarion borough, which does not host the fair |
| Organiser | Clarion County Fair Board; Clarion County Fair Association in the tax-layer form |
| Standing season | Last full week of July, Sunday to Saturday |
| Documented spans | July 20 to 26, 2025; July 26 to August 1, 2026; July 25 to 31, 2027 |
| Gate in 2024 and 2025 | Ten dollars pay-one-price, parking and unlimited rides included |
| Premium scale | No Clarion scale published in the record gathered |
| Fair camping terms | None published by the fair; the park campground is the park’s own |
From Picnic Grounds to a Seven-Day Fair
Fair-side history text republished with the 2025 previews states directly that the fair began in 1938 as the Farmers and Merchants Picnic, a one-day event uniting merchants and farmers and welcoming over 5,000 guests in its first year. The same picnic also reaches print as the Farmers & Merchants Picnic, the two spellings standing unmerged. A longer narrative adds balloon-blowing contests, potato races and a greased pig chase on grounds then known as Alcola park, devised to mend farmer and merchant relations.
The park beneath the fair changed hands and names along the way. In the narrative layer the grounds passed from the Frank R. Johnson family to the Walter W. Craig Post of the American Legion in New Bethlehem, which built the grandstand and converted an auditorium into the skating rink. By 1967 the event had expanded to seven days, and in 1969 it was officially renamed the Clarion County Fair, the park rechristened Redbank Valley Municipal Park the same year. Billings float around those fixed points: 2018 was billed the 80th anniversary year, 2019 marked fifty years of the Clarion County Fair name, and the 2025 previews billed an 87th Annual. No edition number may be back-calculated into a founding year or used to correct the direct 1938 statement, and the record, documenting no cancellation, equally supports no claim of an unbroken run.
What to Expect
Livestock, Exhibits and the Working Barns
The 4-H and open livestock shows run through the fair; the Friday of the 2024 edition brought the 4-H Livestock Sale alongside the tractor pulls, and the 2025 previews put a Livestock Auction on the Friday programme. Home and Family Living exhibits fill the Skating Rink, and the fair publishes a premium book listing its contest categories and prizes, referenced on the fair’s own site in a 2023 layer. No Clarion premium dollar scale was extracted from any fair-side layer, and the detailed premium tables crowding this fair’s search results belong to the Clearfield County Fair’s books. Vendor and exhibitor fee rates are likewise unpublished in the record gathered. The Blue Building works as the Children’s Barn, while Barn 7 and the Horse Rink serve the animal programme.
For a useful comparison, see the Chester County Pennsylvania Mushroom Festival for another county festival.
Midway Noise and Grandstand Nights
The midway provider’s name changes with the year, and the record keeps those names in their years. Bartlebaugh Amusements supplied the midway in the 2024 and 2025 layers, the 2022 preview named Tropical Amusements, and neither company organises anything beyond its rides. That 2022 bill closed Saturday with Dave Martin’s Bull Ride Mania and the Rhinestone Roper. The 2024 grounds shows brought Areli Equine Entertainment’s horse stunt show, the Kountry K-9 Show and Patriot Games Laser Tag, with the Derby Dogs Demolition Derby closing Saturday. The 2025 bill ran different daily shows: Rock-n-Circus, the Boston Bachert Magic Show, First Bite Fishing Adventure and Agri-Puppets, with Nick Ferraro & The All Stars on Wednesday, a Truck Pull on Tuesday and Derby Dog Demo derbies on Thursday and Saturday. A further bill belongs to no named year: the fair’s own schedule page, printing no year, lists Captain Jim is Magic, Pretty Bird Paradise, Magician TJ Hill and Bar C Ranch as free shows, credited to that page alone.
Days With Their Own Shape
The week’s rhythm is set by themed days whose terms belong to the years that printed them. In 2024, Sunday opened free with a donation to a local charity, Monday admitted military visitors free, Wednesday halved the gate for Half Price Family Day and admitted disabled visitors with one caregiver free until 3 p.m., and Friday admitted seniors free until 3 p.m. The 2025 layers repeat that structure, a habit of those two editions rather than a promise for every future fair.
Planning Your Visit
Dates First, Because Every Figure Has a Year
Pin your plans to a named year, because the span moves between editions. Reportage documents July 22 to 28, 2018 and July 21 to 27, 2019, then Sunday, July 24 through Saturday, July 30, 2022, July 23 to 29, 2023, Sunday, July 21 through Saturday, July 27, 2024, and Sunday, July 20 through Saturday, July 26, 2025. The fair’s own annual-events layer, matched by the state fair guide, publishes July 26 to August 1 for 2026, the one edition in the record finishing in August, a finish belonging to 2026 alone, not to the standing season. The same layer already publishes July 25 to 31, 2027. Entry-acceptance days, animal check-in and exhibit pick-up are exhibitor mechanics beside those spans, never added public days.
What the Gate Costs, Year by Year
Admission is pay-one-price. The 2017, 2018 and 2019 layers put the gate at eight dollars, covering entrance, parking, all shows, carnival rides and exhibits, with advance tickets at six dollars and Sunday admission taken as a donation. The 2022 preview holds eight dollars, admits children under two free unless they ride, and prices advance tickets at six dollars again. The 2024 layers raise the gate to ten dollars, halve Wednesday to five dollars for Half Price Family Day, and admit children under two free; the 2025 reportage says the fair kept its admission again at ten dollars, wording tying 2025 to 2024 alone, with presale tickets at eight dollars. A twelfth figure owns no year: the fair’s own schedule page prints twelve dollars for a July 25 to 31 week, children two and under free without rides, quoted to that unyeared page only. Parking never appears as a separate charge, because it rides inside the gate.
Finding the Park Among Four Place Names
The published street address is 137 Park Road, Fairmount City, Pennsylvania 16224, and Fairmount City is an unincorporated place and postal form, not a borough. The fair’s own pages place the park there, one and a half miles northwest of New Bethlehem on Route 28, making New Bethlehem the directional anchor you navigate by rather than a rival host. Older layers call the same ground Alcola park, the locality name surviving in news datelines across the 2018 to 2025 reportage. A fourth name, Hawthorn, heads some fair stories purely as a newsroom dateline for the neighbouring borough, never proof of where the fair sits. The fair’s site also uses a short form, Redbank Valley Park. Treat the four place forms as one grounds in different labels. Advance-ticket outlets in Limestone, Knox, Rimersburg, Shannondale and Clarion itself are shops selling tickets, never fair addresses.
Sleeping Over, and the Limits of the Record
The fair’s own pages describe admission, presale tickets and livestock in detail yet contain no camping section, so no fair-week camping rate, rule or offer can be quoted for this fair. The campground that exists belongs to the park: its directory layer describes full hook-up sites for recreational vehicles, tent camping, and water and electric primitive sites available at minimum cost, that phrase being the directory’s wording and not a price, with sites let by the year, month, week or day and no rate published. Lodging elsewhere, including the Cook Forest stock, belongs to other businesses and is never this fair’s camping.
A Sample Day at the Fair
Build a Saturday around the documented shape of recent editions and the day fills itself. Arrive in the morning and walk the livestock rows before the midway crowds thicken. Spend midday inside the Skating Rink among the Home and Family Living exhibits, then take the afternoon at the grandstand for the antique tractor pull both the 2024 and 2025 Saturday programmes carried. Stay to the end: the Derby Dogs Demolition Derby closed the 2024 Saturday, and a Derby Dog Demo for full-size cars and trucks closed the 2025 one.
How This Fair Compares
The most useful comparison sits inside the same county. The Wolfs Corners Fair, held around the week of the Fourth of July at its own grounds elsewhere in Clarion County, is a separate fair with its own pulls, derby and livestock auction, and county tourism material lists the two fairs side by side without merging them; sharing a county never turns two fairs into one event.
Your Fair Week Checklist
- Confirm your year’s span before travelling, because the 2026 edition ends on August 1 while its neighbours stay inside July.
- Carry your year’s gate money, ten dollars in the 2024 and 2025 layers, and ask about presale tickets before fair week.
- Aim a Wednesday visit at Half Price Family Day if your trip matches the 2024 or 2025 pattern.
- Navigate by New Bethlehem and Route 28, then follow the park address at 137 Park Road in Fairmount City.
- Do not drive to Clarion borough expecting the fair, because the seat town hosts no part of it.
- Plan animal time early and grandstand time late, when the pulls and derbies run.
- Arrange a bed or campsite through the park or valley businesses directly, as the fair publishes no camping terms of its own.
Beyond the Fairgrounds
The Redbank Valley spreads around the park in small boroughs and townships that share the fair as a common front yard. New Bethlehem, the borough the fair’s directions lean on, is the nearest place for a fair week’s ordinary errands, and its American Legion post built the grandstand and converted an auditorium into the skating rink in the fair’s history. Twenty miles north, Clarion borough keeps the courthouse and county government offices, the seat that lends the fair its county name without hosting it. The park’s other year-round events are its own calendar, not the fair’s programme.
Why This Fair Matters to Its Valley
A fair that began as diplomacy does diplomatic work. The 1938 picnic was invented to get farmers and merchants talking again, and the modern fair keeps it running between the valley’s townships, 4-H families and the merchants selling presale tickets from their counters. The grounds make the point physically: the park belongs to a commission of several municipalities rather than any single town, so the fairground is shared property.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the fair actually held, if Clarion borough does not host it?
It is held at Redbank Valley Municipal Park, addressed as 137 Park Road, Fairmount City, Pennsylvania 16224, in the county’s south about twenty miles from the seat and one and a half miles northwest of New Bethlehem on Route 28. The Alcola and Hawthorn names are a historic locality form and a newsroom dateline, not other grounds.
How much does it cost to get in?
That depends on the year, because the gate rose across the record. For both 2024 and 2025 the figure is ten dollars per person, covering parking, unlimited rides, shows, exhibits and grandstand attractions, with presale tickets at eight dollars in 2025 and a five-dollar Wednesday in both years. Earlier layers charged eight dollars, and a twelve-dollar figure on the fair’s own schedule page belongs to that unyeared page alone.
Can visitors camp at the fair?
The fair publishes no camping terms of its own, so no fair-week rate or rule can be quoted. A campground with full hook-up sites, tent camping and primitive sites does exist at the park, but it is the park’s facility, let by the day, week, month or year with no rate published, never a fair camping offer.
Is this the same event as the Wolfs Corners Fair?
No. Wolfs Corners holds its own fair around the Fourth of July week at separate grounds, with its own programme and prices, while this fair occupies the last full week of July at Redbank Valley Municipal Park. County tourism material lists them as neighbours, not editions of one another.
What to Expect From the Next Clarion County Pennsylvania Fair Festival
How often is Clarion County Pennsylvania Fair Festival held?
The fair returns once each year as a seven-day, Sunday-to-Saturday production of its board, filling the last full week of July in the editions documented from 2018 through 2025.
When is the next Clarion County Pennsylvania Fair Festival?
After the edition of July 26 to August 1, 2026, the fair’s own annual-events layer publishes the following span as July 25 to 31, 2027. Reconfirm that forward-published span against the fair’s current notices as summer approaches.
Will the dates change?
The spans wander by several days year to year while staying anchored to late July, and the 2026 edition shows the closing day can tip to August 1. Expect the season and the Sunday-to-Saturday shape to hold, and the dates to be settled edition by edition.
The Clarion County Fair endures because a valley decided, back in 1938, that its farmers and merchants needed a standing appointment with each other.
