Northumberland County Pennsylvania Fair Festival
The queue title names a verifiable event: the Northumberland County Fair, the annual August agricultural fair of Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, held at Tall Cedars Grove in Sunbury. In its own homepage billing the fair calls itself the best little fair in PA, self-description from that layer which a 2026 tourism listing repeats in its own frame.
Sunbury matters twice here: the Pennsylvania State Archives county courthouses table verifies it as the county seat, and the fair’s own pages place the fair there, so seat and host coincide. What that record will not support is a founding year or a continuous run.
About the Northumberland County Fair
The fair’s character comes through in its own 2026 schedule: a sale of baked goods, livestock shows, garden and pedal tractor pulls, bale contests, free pavilion and main stage entertainment, and closing fireworks.
On organisation the fair-side record is deliberately thin. The only organiser-level name in the fair’s own current record is the fair itself, Northumberland County Fair. No separate incorporated or association name appears in any gathered fair-side layer, so any legal-form organiser name is unverified and none is invented. Tall Cedars names the grounds, never the organiser, and Penn State Extension with the county 4-H community is a programme community, never the organiser.
Two people surface in reportage layers, and both stay inside them. A preview layer for 2026 names Matt Reader as president, for that layer alone. Farm-press reportage from August 2014 quotes James Temple, a veterinarian with a Sunbury animal hospital, describing how the hospital and other volunteers organised the fair then; neither describes who runs it now. A 2006 article gives the organisation’s official name as The Northumberland County Expo, A County Fair, a form belonging to that layer alone.
For a useful comparison, see the Northampton County Pennsylvania Blue Valley Farm Show Festival for another county festival.
Sunbury’s seat status rests on the Archives table alone, which dates the county’s creation to March 21, 1772; no fair page proves it. The fair belongs to Sunbury itself, not the separate borough of Northumberland elsewhere in the county, and addresses listing pages attach to its name in that borough are not its address in any layer.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Event | Northumberland County Fair, an annual August agricultural fair |
| County seat and host | Sunbury, per the Pennsylvania State Archives table; seat and host coincide |
| Grounds | Tall Cedars Grove, 522 Seven Points Road, Sunbury, Pennsylvania 17801 |
| Organiser | The fair under its own name; no separate association name is published fair-side |
| Documented 2026 dates | August 18 to 22, 2026 |
| 2026 public hours | Tuesday to Thursday 3 p.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Saturday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. |
| Admission in 2026 | One dollar; children aged 12 and under free; entertainment free |
| Parking in 2026 | Free, in the fair’s own wording |
| Camping | No fair-side camping terms are published for this fair |
A History Written in Billings, Not Beginnings
No founding statement exists in the fair’s own record, so any founding year for the modern fair is unverified and none is asserted here. What survives is a set of edition counts in separate layers, and they do not agree.
The earliest layer is 2006 reportage, which billed an Expo in its sixth year and quoted Ed Mashburn giving the official name as The Northumberland County Expo, A County Fair, advertised under that name for five years. A farm-press report of August 30, 2014 described the fair as only in its fifteenth year. The fair’s own 2026 homepage bills the 26th Annual, echoed by a preview layer’s twenty-sixth-year phrasing.
Those figures cannot all sit on one unbroken annual sequence, and the gaps between them cannot be closed by subtraction. No founding year, edition count or continuous run is therefore back-calculated or implied; at least one year was either not counted or not held, and nothing gathered documents which, or why. The county’s creation in 1772 belongs to the county, never to this fair.
One more layer needs quarantining rather than quoting. A fall 2014 magazine layer printed a web address as the fair’s own; the content now served there is a template site claiming a run since 1855, an original name of the Sunbury Fair, a move to Elysburg, a home in Coal Township, over 160 years and headline country stars. Every claim contradicts the fair’s own record; none is used here, and the 2014 printing does not rehabilitate what that address serves today.
What to Expect
Five Days on the 2026 Schedule
The bill below belongs to 2026 alone, from the fair’s own 2026 Event Schedule. Tuesday, August 18 ran 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., with baked goods on sale from 4 p.m., Jeremy Goodling at the entertainment pavilion in the early evening, billed as new for 2026, and Garden Tractor Pulls at 6:30 p.m. with an eleventh-year billing in that layer. Wednesday, August 19 kept those hours, brought animal weigh-ins before 7 p.m., and put Night Howls at the pavilion and Nate and the Aces on the main stage.
Thursday, August 20 ran the same hours, with Bloodline at the pavilion, Mutton Busting in the Animal Show Ring at 6 p.m. and Lite Switch closing the main stage. Friday, August 21 stretched to 10 p.m.: Bonnie and Larry at the pavilion, the Rabbit Show at 5:30 p.m., the Beef Cattle Show at 6 p.m., the pedal tractor pull and the bale throwing and stacking contest, both billed as part of the Farmer’s Triathlon, from 7 p.m., and Alexis Bradford on the main stage.
Saturday, August 22 was the long day, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. The Sheep and Market Goat Show opened at 8:30 a.m., a sanctioned dairy goat show followed at 11 a.m., and the stages rotated through Jake and Friendz at the pavilion, Strawberry Ridge on the main stage and Mountain House Revival at the pavilion again, while the Triathlon contests ran once more. Deuce closed the main stage, and fireworks described as fantastic ended the fair at about 9 p.m. Act names, new-for-2026 tags and sponsor credits are 2026 material only.
What Earlier Layers Add
Programme colour from before 2026 survives in 2014 layers only: bale stacking, water hauling, nail driving and corn shucking contests, animals, a goat show and an art contest at the grove, themed days including a Farmers Day theme about encouraging interest in agriculture, and a livestock show framed as a low-pressure learning ring. None of it promises anything for a later edition, and no theme list beyond Farmers Day is documented.
Planning Your Visit
Dates and Hours on Record
The 2026 span, August 18 to 22, is the best-corroborated fact here: the fair’s own homepage and schedule, the state guide and a tourism listing all agree on the same five days at Sunbury, with the public hours set out in the Quick Facts table. A state guide layer headed with 2022 dates gives a shorter fair, August 24 to 27, 2022; an older local layer with matching day numbers is a separate frame, its identical figures a calendar coincidence, never merged with the guide’s. The 2024 edition is proven by the fair’s own registration forms, but no gathered layer publishes its exact span, and no fair-side 2025 span was found at all; both are unverified. The standing season is mid-to-late August: five days in 2026, four in the 2022 layer.
Getting to Tall Cedars Grove
Set your destination as Tall Cedars Grove, 522 Seven Points Road, Sunbury, Pennsylvania 17801, the grounds form in the fair’s own homepage layer. No township for the grounds is named in any fair-side layer, so none is asserted. A fuller lodge form, Tall Cedars of Lebanon, appears in a fall 2014 layer only and implies no Lebanon connection.
Entry paperwork uses addresses different from the grounds, never to be merged with each other or with the grove: the fair’s own 2024 form directs entries to a Sunbury mail-to address at 3920 State Route 890, while its 2026 animal entry form uses 14 Gravel Lane, Sunbury. Each is an entry mechanic in its own year’s form; neither is where the fair happens.
Admission, Parking and Camping
For 2026 the fair’s own homepage and schedule agree: admission was one dollar, children aged 12 and under entered free, and entertainment and parking were free. One conflict must be flagged: a tourism listing for the same edition describes the fair as free, contradicting the fair’s own one-dollar gate. The fair-side figure governs for 2026, and the tourism wording never stands here as the gate. Free admission exists in the record only inside an older local schedule layer, for its own edition, never to be carried into 2026. No gate figure for 2024 or 2022 appears in any gathered fair-side layer, so those gates remain unverified, and no parking charge exists for any year in the record.
The only other money in the fair’s own forms is exhibitor money: entries received after August 2, 2026 attracted a ten-dollar late-entry fee, with a parallel provision in the 2024 form, and that fee is never visitor admission. Camping is unverified in its entirety: no camping rate, hookup term or fair-week rule appears anywhere fair-side, and the word grove in the venue’s name is not a camping offer, so nobody should plan to stay overnight at the grounds.
A Sample Day at the Fair
Take the documented Saturday of 2026 as the template. Start at the show ring for the Sheep and Market Goat Show at 8:30 a.m. and the sanctioned dairy goat show at 11 a.m. Drift between the pavilion, where Jake and Friendz played from noon, and the main stage, where Strawberry Ridge took over at 3 p.m., then catch Mountain House Revival at the pavilion from 5 p.m. while the Triathlon’s bale and pedal contests run nearby. Finish with Deuce on the main stage and the fireworks that followed at about 9 p.m. All of it is Saturday, August 22, 2026 only.
How This Fair Compares
Scale is the honest first comparison. The Bloomsburg Fair in neighbouring Columbia County is a different and much larger event, and nothing about its dates, programme or scale crosses into this article; this fair’s identity is a compact five-day grove fair. A preview layer for 2026 characterised it as drawing about 14,000 visitors a year, that layer’s figure alone.
The shared county name travels further than the fair does. The Northumberland County Show in England and the fairs of Northumberland County in Ontario, Canada, share nothing with this event beyond the name. Closer to home, the Montour-DeLong Community Fair is a separate valley fair, Sunbury’s river festival, celebration and talent show are distinct events sharing only local listings, and a Northern District Fair book surfaced in searches is a different fair’s book.
Visitor Checklist
- Plan for mid-to-late August; the five-day span is verified for 2026 only
- Budget the 2026 gate as published: one dollar, children aged 12 and under free
- Treat any listing calling the fair free as a known conflict, not the price
- Aim for Tall Cedars Grove, 522 Seven Points Road, Sunbury, not either mailing address
- Exhibitors: mail paperwork to the address in that year’s own form
- Note the 2026 Wednesday weigh-in deadline of 7 p.m.
- Stay for the fireworks that closed the 2026 fair on Saturday
- Make overnight plans away from the grounds; no camping terms are published
- Recheck the fair’s own current pages before travelling
Beyond the Fairgrounds
The grove is a small cluster of named spaces: the Pavilion, the Main Stage and the Animal Show Ring. Anyone combining the fair with the rest of Sunbury’s summer should keep the calendar honest: its other festivals are separate events, and the borough of Northumberland, despite the shared name, is a different municipality from the city that hosts.
Why the Northumberland County Fair Matters
This fair matters because its own record shows what a small county fair runs on: a one-dollar gate, free parking, volunteer labour and a schedule filling five days without one invented attraction. Its documentation also carries a warning. A fabricated history for this fair circulates under an address that once genuinely belonged to it, which is why its own current pages matter. Preserving the fair as documented, gaps included, protects both.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to get in?
For 2026 the fair’s own homepage and schedule set admission at one dollar, children aged 12 and under free, entertainment free as well. A tourism listing described the same edition as a free fair, but that wording conflicts with the fair’s own pages and the fair-side figure is the one to budget by. The ten-dollar figure in the entry forms is an exhibitor late-entry charge.
Where exactly is the fair held?
At Tall Cedars Grove, 522 Seven Points Road, Sunbury, Pennsylvania 17801. Two other Sunbury addresses appear in the paperwork, one on State Route 890 in the 2024 form and 14 Gravel Lane in the 2026 form, but both are entry mailing addresses inside their own year’s forms, never the grounds and never to be merged.
Can I camp at the grove?
Nothing in the fair’s own record offers camping: no campsite, hookup or overnight rule for fair week is published anywhere in it, so camping at the grove is unverified in its entirety.
When was this fair founded?
Nothing gathered for this article settles the question. The fair’s own pages state no founding year, and the surviving counts, a sixth-year Expo billing in 2006, a fifteenth-year statement in 2014 and a 26th Annual billing in 2026, cannot be reconciled into one continuous sequence. The county was created in 1772, but that date belongs to Northumberland County, not to its fair.
What to Expect From the Next Northumberland County Pennsylvania Fair Festival
How often is Northumberland County Pennsylvania Fair Festival held?
The fair returns every August, resting on several anchors rather than any single billing: its own 2024 registration forms, its full 2026 record and state guide listings. One honest gap sits inside the pattern: no fair-side span for 2025 was found in the layers gathered, so the rhythm is documented around that year rather than through it.
When is the next Northumberland County Pennsylvania Fair Festival?
The edition on record ran August 18 to 22, 2026, and the pattern points to another edition the following August. No span for a later edition appears in the record as gathered here, so no future dates are stated as fact; the fair’s own announcements are the only safe source for the next days.
Will the dates change?
The span has shifted before. The 2022 guide layer shows August 24 to 27, a four-day span a week later than the five days documented for 2026. A shift of several days, or a change in the fair’s length, is therefore entirely possible.
The Northumberland County Fair rewards a visitor who reads it on its own terms: a small, inexpensive Sunbury fair whose prices and hours are published plainly, whose history sits in billings nobody should force into agreement, and whose one fully documented programme needs no embellishment.
