Greene County Pennsylvania Fair Festival
Each August the Greene County Fairgrounds in Waynesburg fill with livestock trailers, exhibit entries and midway lights. The fair is the annual agricultural fair of Greene County, Pennsylvania; its own site titles it “Greene County Fair – Agricultural Fair – Waynesburg, Pennsylvania,” and the word Festival in this article’s title is generic, the event’s own name being Greene County Fair alone. Its board minutes run into June 2026, yet its own current pages publish no general gate price, and this article will not invent one where the fair itself is silent.
About the Fair
The Greene County Fair is a full county agricultural fair: livestock and home and garden exhibits, 4-H and FFA shows, harness racing, a carnival midway, and grandstand motorsport and rodeo events. Waynesburg hosts it, and Waynesburg is also the county seat. That seat status rests on no fair source: the Pennsylvania State Archives County Courthouses table lists Waynesburg as the seat of Greene County and records the county as created on February 9, 1796, a county date and never a fair date.
Greene County government’s fairgrounds page describes grounds of approximately 40 acres holding 12 buildings, two outside arenas, one baseball field and a half-mile track. The fair’s own About page adds that the fairgrounds is, in its words, one of two county-owned fairs in the State of Pennsylvania, and that the County Commissioners purchased the fairground in 1940.
The current fair is organized by the Fair Board, as the About page states directly; county government publishes minutes headed Greene County Fair Board, including meetings on February 24, 2025 and June 15, 2026 covering the schedule, midway, rodeo and parking. In the 2024 camper agreement, checks are made payable to Greene County Fair, a payee form inside a camping document, not a second organiser. The Waynesburg Central Fair Association and the Waynesburg Fair and Agricultural Association belong to the history below and organise nothing today.
Two pattern statements stand unmerged: the About page says the fair is always held in August, four weeks before Labor Day, while the county fairgrounds page calls it a beginning-of-August event.
For a useful comparison, see the Fulton County Pennsylvania Fair Festival for another county festival.
Quick Facts
| Detail | What the record shows |
| Event | Greene County Fair, the annual agricultural fair of Greene County, Pennsylvania |
| Host town | Waynesburg, which is also the county seat |
| Grounds | Greene County Fairgrounds, 107 Fairgrounds Road, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania 15370 |
| Organiser | Greene County Fair Board |
| Documented editions | August 4 to 10, 2024; August 3 to 9, 2025; August 9 to 15, 2026 |
| Gate admission | No general gate price published for 2025 or 2026; ten dollars in a 2022 state tourism listing only |
| Parking | Free public parking documented in the 2022 fair book only; the current price is unpublished |
| Camping | Documented for 2024 only: exhibitor spaces, two hundred dollars back row and one hundred fifty dollars front row, by lottery |
| Ownership | County-owned fairgrounds, purchased by the County Commissioners in 1940 |
A History With Honest Gaps
The fair’s own About page tells the early story without pretending the line runs unbroken. The initial fair, in its words, was held about 1867 in Waynesburg, sponsored by the Waynesburg Central Fair Association, on grounds on the south side of Waynesburg, east of Morgan Street near the Crawford Bridge over Ten-Mile Creek, on land that is now the Waynesburg University football field.
In the early 1890s that association dissolved after the Mary Elizabeth Wiley shooting-gallery lawsuit, and its property was sold at sheriff’s sale on August 12, 1893, for six thousand two hundred dollars. No fairs were held in Waynesburg from 1902 to 1910, and during that gap the Carmichaels Fair was advertised as the “Greene County Fair,” a historical billing layer only.
By 1911 a new body, the Waynesburg Fair and Agricultural Association, had formed and purchased the 60-acre farm of R.S. Sayers, a half-mile east of Waynesburg; the first fair on the present site ran from October 3 to 6, 1911. In 1940 the County Commissioners purchased the 41-acre fairground for twelve thousand five hundred dollars, the amount of the association’s debt, sponsored one fair in 1941, and the next was held in September 1946. The About page closes by saying the fair has been held in Waynesburg every year since, without interruption; that sentence stands here as published, in its post-1946 setting, and the same page documents the gaps that stop it being read as an unbroken run from 1867.
No “Nth Annual” billing was found in any fair-side layer, so no edition count may be derived from “about 1867”; county tourism’s 2026 line about 150 years of heritage is tradition language, not a founding date.
What to Expect
Livestock, Exhibits and Youth Shows
The competitive heart of the fair is its livestock and home and garden exhibits, shown by adult exhibitors and by 4-H and FFA members. For 2026 the fair’s own homepage separately highlights the 4-H and FFA Market Steer and Lamb showing and sale, the payoff to a year of feeding and fitting.
Harness Racing and the Grandstand
The half-mile track anchors the grounds, and the fair’s About page states that the fair continues to have harness racing, a standing-feature statement from the fair’s description of itself, not a dated booking for any single year. Around it sit the grandstand motorsport and rodeo events.
The 2026 Preview, Night by Night
Everything here belongs to 2026 alone, from the county tourism authority’s preview published on July 31, 2026, which pointed readers to the fair’s own site for admission and schedules. Monday, August 10 was Kid’s Night, with children’s activities, the Barnyard Petting Zoo, Sky Circus and the Mascot Mayhem Parade and Games. Tuesday, August 11 brought the Redeye Rodeo; Wednesday, August 12 introduced new Live Wrestling with Ryse Pro Wrestling. Truck and tractor pulls ran Thursday, August 13 and Saturday, August 15, and the demolition derby took Friday, August 14, with carnival rides and midway games throughout. The Greene County Historical Society exhibited the county’s Bells Across PA bell, Coal & Country, under the state fair theme “Celebrating 250 Years of Freedom, Family & PA Fairs.” None of it carries into another year’s programme.
Planning Your Visit
Finding the Grounds
The prose address used here is 107 Fairgrounds Road, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania 15370, the county government’s fairgrounds page form; the fair’s own site footer gives the same address without the ZIP code. The About page locates the site on Roy Furman Highway, between Route 21 and Route 188, with three entrances: one off Route 188, which is Jefferson Road, and two off Route 21, on its eastern and western sides. The P.O. Box 806 address in the fair’s 2024 camper documents is a mailing form only.
Admission: The Price the Fair Does Not Publish
Stated plainly: the fair’s own current pages publish no general gate price for 2025 or 2026, and current gate admission is unverified. The only figure in an admissible layer is ten dollars, from the state tourism listing for the August 7 to 13, 2022 edition; an eight-dollar figure from a 2018 listing is likewise not current. The Fair Board’s minutes of February 24, 2025 record that a potential gate admission price increase was discussed and tabled, proof the price was under review and one more reason no figure may be asserted here.
Parking, Fenced to Its Year
Free parking is documented once: the fair’s premium-book text mirrored from the 2022 fair book states that free public parking during the fair is available outside of the gates adjacent to the fairgrounds. That is a 2022 statement only; whether parking is free or charged in 2025 or 2026 is unverified. The board’s June 15, 2026 minutes discuss parking organisation, tunnels, traffic control and gate scanners without naming a price. A 2024 camper rule adds designated-lot parking for camper renters, with no parking in the camper area itself.
Camping: The 2024 Terms, and Only Those
Camping terms exist for one edition only, the fair of August 4 to 10, 2024, in the fair’s Camper Space Rental Application. Back-row spaces with full hookups cost two hundred dollars for the week of the fair; front-row spaces cost one hundred fifty dollars. Spaces were assigned by a lottery run by the Greene County Fair Board, with the back row drawn first; applications went to P.O. Box 806, Waynesburg, PA 15370 by July 1, 2024, and payment with a signed contract was due by July 24, 2024 or the space was forfeited. The companion agreement limits spaces to verified exhibitors of the 2024 fair, barring vendors and other non-exhibitors, and adds no subletting, no pets beyond exhibited animals, no fireworks and no alcohol.
The two 2024 documents disagree about the front row, and the disagreement stands: the application says front-row spaces do not have hookups, while clause 7 of the agreement includes water, sewage and electricity for the back row and electricity for the front row. Neither wording is corrected here. No camping terms for 2025 or 2026 were found, so later-year camping is unverified, and exhibitors should ask the Fair Board for the current arrangement.
A Sample Day at the Fair
Take the Monday of the 2026 edition as the template, the named features belonging to that year. Start in the exhibit buildings and barns, walking the exhibit entries and livestock rows early, then watch the youth market steer and lamb showing. Give midday to the midway and the Barnyard Petting Zoo, and stay into the evening: in 2026 Monday was Kid’s Night, with Sky Circus, children’s activities and the Mascot Mayhem Parade and Games after dark. On other nights that week the anchor changes, to the rodeo, the wrestling, a pull or the derby.
How It Compares
The name travels badly. Ohio’s Greene County Fair at Xenia, run by a Greene County Agricultural Society, advertises in its 2026 fair book a ten-dollar daily gate, a forty-dollar seasonal pass and a thirty-dollar membership; those Ohio terms dominate search results for this name and are not Pennsylvania’s. Tennessee’s fair at Greeneville carries layers claiming a fair in some form since 1870 and an association incorporated in 1949; those layers are Tennessee’s. The Greene County Youth Fair at Cairo, New York, and the fair at Paragould, Arkansas, share a name and nothing else.
Nearer home, the Jacktown Fair at Wind Ridge is a separate July fair inside Greene County itself, and the King Coal Show at Carmichaels is its own event; neither is the county fair. The Greene-Dreher-Sterling Fair belongs to Wayne County and merely shares the word Greene. Even at the Waynesburg grounds, standalone fall events such as the Rollin’ Coal Pull, the Wreck n’ Roll demolition derby and the Mega Pull are Fair Board grounds events, not the fair, and their 2025 prices, twenty to twenty-five dollars at the gate and forty dollars for track-side reserved parking, are not fair prices.
Fair Week Checklist
- Confirm the current year’s dates and programme on the fair’s own site; the named features documented here belong to 2026.
- Arrive by Roy Furman Highway and choose among the three entrances, one off Route 188 and two off Route 21.
- Carry gate money without assuming an amount, because no current general gate price is published.
- Treat any claim that parking is free as a 2022 statement until the current year’s terms appear.
- Exhibitors wanting a camper space should watch for the current year’s application; the detailed terms on record are 2024’s, lottery and all.
- Leave alcohol and fireworks at home during fair week, as the 2024 camper agreement requires on the fairgrounds.
Beyond the Fairgrounds
Waynesburg rewards the visitor who connects the fair’s two homes. The present grounds sit out on Roy Furman Highway, but the fair began across town, east of Morgan Street near the Crawford Bridge over Ten-Mile Creek, on a site now covered by the Waynesburg University football field. The borough is the county seat, the working centre of a rural county, and fair week is when its two roles most visibly overlap.
Why This Fair Matters
County ownership is the fair’s quiet distinction. A fairgrounds held by the county since 1940, run by a board whose minutes are public county records, is civic infrastructure as much as entertainment, and the About page’s claim that this is one of only two county-owned fairs in Pennsylvania makes the county an outlier. Harness racing continues on the half-mile track, and on the fair’s own telling the run since 1946 has continued every year. For a small county, it remains the one week when farms, schools and borough all exhibit in the same place.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does admission cost?
The fair’s own current pages publish no general gate price for 2025 or 2026. The only admissible figure is ten dollars, from the state tourism listing for the 2022 edition, and the board’s February 2025 minutes show a possible increase discussed and tabled. Any current price quoted elsewhere is unverified.
Where exactly is the fair held?
In Waynesburg, at the Greene County Fairgrounds, 107 Fairgrounds Road, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania 15370. Waynesburg is both county seat and host town, and the fair’s About page places the site on Roy Furman Highway between Route 21 and Route 188, with three entrances.
Can I camp at the fair?
Documented camping exists for 2024 only, as exhibitor camping: two hundred dollars back row, one hundred fifty dollars front row, assigned by lottery. The 2024 documents even disagree about front-row hookups, the application denying them while the agreement includes electricity. No terms for 2025 or 2026 are published.
Is parking free?
In one layer only: the 2022 fair book offered free public parking outside the gates adjacent to the fairgrounds. No later fair-side layer publishes a parking price or repeats that promise, and the board’s June 2026 minutes discuss parking logistics without a figure, so current terms are unverified.
What to Expect From the Next Greene County Pennsylvania Fair Festival
How often is Greene County Pennsylvania Fair Festival held?
Once a year, in August. The pattern statements describe an August fair, four weeks before Labor Day on the About page and a beginning-of-August event on the county page. The documented editions ran August 4 to 10 in 2024, August 3 to 9 in 2025 and August 9 to 15 in 2026.
When is the next Greene County Pennsylvania Fair Festival?
No 2027 dates are published in the record behind this article, so none are stated. The most recent documented edition is August 9 to 15, 2026, and the fair’s own announcements are where the next span will appear first.
Will the dates change?
They move within their month: across the three documented years the fair opened on August 4, then August 3, then August 9, always in early-to-mid August. Expect an August week, and confirm the exact days each year.
Closing Note
The Greene County Fair asks to be taken on its own documented terms: a county-owned, board-run August fair in Waynesburg with a long, honestly interrupted history. Where the fair has not published a gate price, a parking term or a camping rule, the gap is left open on purpose.
