Snyder County Pennsylvania Fair Festival

No fair-side layer, state guide entry or Extension listing fetched for this title publishes an event under the county’s name. What the record does publish is the Beaver Community Fair, a seven-day agricultural fair that describes itself as Snyder County’s only agricultural fair. The title points to that fair, and this article follows the record to Beaver Springs rather than inventing a differently named event elsewhere.

The fair calls itself a real country fair serving Snyder County and nearby communities, run by volunteers in its history’s words.

About the Beaver Community Fair

The Beaver Community Fair is the agricultural fair that the state guide lists for Snyder County, as entry eighty in its 2026 guide, separately from the county’s other fair at McClure. Its name form is the same in the fair’s own site, its fair book, the state guide entry and the Extension listing, and the Extension programme page lists it under a heading for county fairs, but no layer fetched shows the fair carrying the county’s name as its published title.

Beaver Springs hosts the fair; Middleburg, the county seat, does not. The seat is proved independently, from the Pennsylvania State Archives table, which lists Middleburg as Snyder County’s seat and gives the county’s creation date as March 2, 1855. Middleburg appears in the fair’s history only as a pageant story: after a school merger in 1955, the Miss Susquehanna Valley pageant spent one year there before moving on.

The grounds sit at 785 Snyder Avenue in Beaver Springs, from the fair’s own site form; a places layer carries the same address with the avenue word shortened, which this article expands rather than copying. No mailing address for the fair appears in the fair-side layers fetched, and the Extension office in Selinsgrove is an office address rather than a fair address. The organiser’s name comes in several forms, kept apart here: the Beaver Community Fair Association in the History page, the Beaver Community Fair Association Inc. in an appended heading form, incorporated January 6, 1941, and the shorter Beaver Community Fair as payee form in its own entry forms. Extension, 4-H and FFA take part through exhibits, limited to Snyder County 4-H and FFA members, but none organises the fair.

For a useful comparison, see the Schuylkill County Pennsylvania Fair Festival for another county festival.

Quick Facts

Item	Detail
Event	Beaver Community Fair, the seven-day agricultural fair of Beaver Springs, Snyder County
Host community	Beaver Springs, Pennsylvania
County seat	Middleburg, verified from the Pennsylvania State Archives table; the seat does not host the fair
Grounds	785 Snyder Avenue, Beaver Springs, Pennsylvania
Organiser	Beaver Community Fair Association, in its published name forms
Documented 2026 dates	September 20 to 26, 2026, in the fair’s own homepage and the state guide
Admission	No general public gate price is published for any year; passes exist as sponsor and exhibitor benefits
Parking	No fair-side parking price or term is published
Camping	No fair-side public camping term is published; an exhibitor overnight rule exists in the animal rules

A School Project That Became a County Week

The fair’s own History page, a fiftieth-anniversary account covering 1928 to 1978 and updated in 2018, tells an opening story that does not quite line up with the homepage billing. The fair was first sponsored by the Vocational Agriculture and Home Economics Departments of Beaver Vocational High School, as a school project that soon developed into a community activity. The first Beaver Fair was announced on Wednesday, October 9, 1929, by principal Ira G. Sanders, and the page records that the fair as a whole was a decided success on Friday, October 11, 1929, in the school gymnasium. That is the page’s direct first-fair statement.

The homepage bills the fair as celebrating country living since 1928, and as a fair of over ninety-five years, while the History page is framed 1928 to 1978. Those layers are left standing side by side. The History page’s thirtieth annual fair fell in 1958, consistent with a 1929 first fair counted inclusively, but this article draws no founding year from any of these forms.

The fair grew from one day to a Friday-and-Saturday event, then to three days, then four, and finally to five days in 1971, while the modern fair is billed as a seven-day event on its 2026 homepage, as its own layer. By the late 1930s the fair’s future was in doubt on finances, and the Association followed: the name Beaver Community Fair was duly registered on September 20, 1940, as a proposed nonprofit corporation, a Constitution and By-Laws of the Beaver Community Fair Association was drafted August 7, 1941, and Judge Curtis C. Lesher approved the Decree of Incorporation dated January 6, 1941. The page gives those three dates in that order, and this article repeats them in that order. The earliest recorded officers were Arthur M. Felker as president, B. Paul Ross as treasurer and Kenneth H. Boyer as secretary.

The fair stayed at Beaver Vocational High School, now Beaver Adams Elementary School, through the 1950s, and 1955 to 1957 were, in the History page’s phrase, filled with uncertainty as to the future of the fair, though it was continued at the original site. Uncertainty is not a cancellation, and no cancellation year is stated. The move to the present grounds came in time for the thirtieth annual fair, September 17 to 20, 1958: a triangular plot of about three and a half acres of woodland leased from the West Snyder School Board in 1957, at the northern part of the present grounds. The grounds later grew by a donated tract to about seven acres in the early 1960s, and by eight acres purchased from Carson Gill in 1988. Later milestones include a green steel building in 1975 and a red steel commercial building in 1996. The Miss Susquehanna Valley pageant, first sponsored by the Association in September 1950, was transferred to Middleburg for one year after the 1955 school merger, then held at West Snyder High School until discontinued after the 1965 pageant.

What to Expect

Exhibits and Livestock

The heart of the week is the judged work: exhibits in sewing, photography, school work, garden produce and farm products, alongside livestock and farm competitions. The fair book adds 4-H project and livestock departments, limited to Snyder County 4-H and FFA members, a Youth Poster Contest from a statewide contest in its layer, and the General Animal Rules regime, with health paperwork, check-in windows and the exhibitor overnight rule below.

Pulls and Games for Children

Truck and tractor pulls, with a sanctioned sled, are central to the homepage programme. The fair book gives Department 22 Tractor Pulls, with Farm Stock, Off The Farm and Open classes, interstate classes and Snyder County classes under Snyder County Tractor Puller rules, plus a Horse Shoe Pitch Contest. For children, the homepage lists nail driving, pedal pulls, corn shelling, water hauling and grain bagging, a tug of war and midway rides.

Evenings on Stage in 2026

Stage entertainment runs six nights in a row in 2026, and the names below belong to 2026 only. The Resistors play on Monday, September 21, at 7 and 9 in the evening. Erich Cawalla and The Uptown Band play on Tuesday, September 22. Chris Hughes and Aaron Himes, in a Contemporary Christian programme, play on Thursday, September 24. Katz 22 plays on Friday, September 25. Forever George and Tammy, featuring Alyssa and Wayne Brewer, play on Saturday, September 26. No Wednesday-night act appears in the stage-schedule layer fetched, so none is named here.

Planning Your Visit

Admission and Passes

No general public gate price is published for any year in the fair’s record. What the record does publish is a pass system, best understood as benefits rather than a published gate ladder: on the Sponsors page, a Platinum donation of two thousand five hundred dollars brings five weekly admission passes, a Gold donation of one thousand dollars brings three weekly passes, a Silver donation of four hundred dollars brings two weekly passes, and a Bronze donation of one hundred fifty dollars brings two daily admission passes. No public sale price for either pass is published in that layer.

Exhibitors have their own pass policy in the livestock entry-form layer: youth under sixteen, and non-driving youth, receive three admission passes, one for the exhibitor and two for parents; exhibitors aged sixteen and over receive one. Additional passes can be purchased at fifteen dollars per pass, for immediate family members only, through the Livestock Office. That figure belongs strictly to that exhibitor-family layer, never as a general gate price. Other book money is competitor money: a horseshoe-pitch entry fee of three dollars per person, tractor-pull entry fees of twenty dollars in the Farm Stock, Off The Farm and Open class rules, and a rabbit entry fee of three dollars per animal.

Getting There and Parking

Beaver Springs is the destination, at 785 Snyder Avenue, not the county seat. Parking is unpublished: no fair-side parking price or term exists in the record fetched. The only parking-related fact in the History page is a land fact from the early 1960s, when William and Meriam Markley donated a triangular tract south of the original plot after noting the need for additional parking space. That donation is history, not a parking promise, and a places-layer summary mentioning free parking is an aggregator’s summary, not the fair’s own statement.

Overnight Stays

Public camping is likewise unpublished: nothing in the fair’s own pages or book layers offers, prices or regulates public camping, campsites, recreational vehicle parking or hookups at the Beaver Springs grounds for fair week. The only overnight term is an exhibitor rule in its General Animal Rules document: exhibitors staying overnight must register at the livestock office, exhibitors under eighteen must complete a permission slip, all exhibitors must check in with the nightly chaperone at ten in the evening, and only exhibitors are eligible for an overnight form. No fee is attached to that rule.

A Sample Day at the 2026 Fair

A Saturday visit in 2026 gives a fair shape to the week without pretending to be a published schedule. Start with the exhibit buildings, then the livestock areas, where 4-H and FFA exhibitors show animals under the fair’s animal rules. Spend the afternoon on the children’s games and the tug of war, and watch a pull if the programme includes one. End the day with Forever George and Tammy featuring Alyssa and Wayne Brewer, and the midway rides.

How the Beaver Community Fair Compares

Snyder County has two fairs in the state guide, and confusing them is the easiest mistake a visitor can make. The other fair is the McClure Bean Soup Festival and Fair at McClure, listed, with its own bean-soup and reunion identity and its own grounds. Its dates, programme and identity belong to McClure, and vice versa. A secondary layer misplacing McClure in Middleburg is doubly wrong.

The same care applies elsewhere. Beaver County in Pennsylvania has its own fairs, Hookstown and Big Knob Grange, sharing only the word Beaver with this one. Beaver County fairs in Oklahoma and Utah are other states’ events, as are a university club-tabling event in Corvallis, Oregon, and a near-named fall fair in Ontario, Canada. Beaver Springs Dragway and other host-town venues are separate operations.

Visitor Checklist

• Travel to Beaver Springs, not to Middleburg, and use 785 Snyder Avenue as the grounds address.
• Expect a seven-day agricultural fair in mid-to-late September, with exhibits, livestock, pulls, games and evening music.
• Do not expect a published general gate price: sponsor and exhibitor passes are benefits, not a published public ladder.
• Remember that the fifteen-dollar figure in the record is an exhibitor-family additional pass, not a gate price.
• Do not assume a parking charge or a free-parking promise, since no fair-side parking term is published.
• Do not plan on fair camping: no public camping term is published, and the overnight rule is for exhibitors only.
• Keep the two Snyder County fairs apart.

Beyond the Fairgrounds

Beaver Springs and the surrounding countryside are farm country, and a visitor with an extra day can use Beaver Springs as a base, but should not expect the fairgrounds to offer facilities that the record leaves unpublished.

Why the Beaver Community Fair Matters

The fair matters because it has kept, for nearly a century of documented life, the link between a school project and a county’s agricultural year. It began as a school display, grew through a volunteer association formed in the early 1940s, survived uncertainty in the mid-1950s, and moved to grounds that grew by lease, donation and purchase. The record’s gaps — no published gate price, no parking term, no public camping offer, no single founding date — are part of its honesty.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this fair the same as the fair at McClure?

No. The McClure Bean Soup Festival and Fair is Snyder County’s other fair, listed separately, with its own identity and grounds at McClure. Beaver Community Fair is separate, and the two fairs should never be merged.

Does Middleburg host this fair?

No. Middleburg is the county seat, proved from the Pennsylvania State Archives table, and it does not host the fair. Beaver Springs hosts it; Middleburg’s only appearance in the fair’s history is the one-year pageant transfer after the 1955 school merger.

What does it cost to get in?

No general public gate price is published for any year, so this article gives none. Weekly and daily passes exist as sponsor and exhibitor benefits, but none is a published public gate price.

Can visitors camp at the fairgrounds?

No public camping term is published, so visitors should not plan on fair camping. The overnight rule applies to exhibitors only, who must register at the livestock office and check in with the nightly chaperone.

What to Expect From the Next Snyder County Pennsylvania Fair Festival

How often is Snyder County Pennsylvania Fair Festival held?

The Beaver Community Fair is an annual fair, held in mid-to-late September, with a seven-day billing on its 2026 homepage.

When is the next Snyder County Pennsylvania Fair Festival?

The most recent documented span in the fair’s homepage and the state guide is September 20 to 26, 2026. A secondary guide reproduction gives September 20 to 27 for 2026, standing unmerged, so it should not be used as the dates. A visitor planning beyond 2026 should wait for the fair’s announcement, since the September 14 to 20, 2025 span rests only on a secondary listing.

Will the dates change?

The dates have moved within September, from September 17 to 20 in 1958, through September 20 to 26 in 2015 and September 18 to 24 in 2022, to September 20 to 26 in 2026, so a future edition should not be assumed to sit on exactly the same days. The exact days are whatever the fair publishes.

The Beaver Community Fair rewards a visitor who arrives with the record in mind: a small town’s agricultural fair at Beaver Springs, judged in its exhibit halls and livestock areas, and entertained on its stage for six nights.