Bennington County Vermont Bondville Fair Festival
For three days at the end of August, a village in the southeastern corner of the town of Winhall hosts one of Vermont’s most self-assured small fairs. The Bondville Fair is not a county fair in its own name, and no fair-side layer ever calls it the Bennington County Fair. It is a town and village fair, run by volunteers, built around exhibit halls, pulling contests, midway rides and free entertainment. The fair’s homepage bills the 2026 edition as the oldest fair in Vermont, operating continually since 1797, while its About page prefers oldest continuous fair in Vermont, billing lines repeated here as the fair presents itself, not as verified record. Stated plainly: the fair is current and recurring, its 2026 dates and gate schedule are published in full by the fair itself, and its grounds sit at 30 VT-30 in Winhall.
A Village Fair Carrying a Very Long Story
The Bondville Fair takes its name from Bondville, an unincorporated village along Route 30 in the southeastern corner of Winhall, the host town. Town-geography layers place Winhall in northeastern Bennington County, bordered by Windham County to the east and south, a border only: no layer places the village or grounds across that line. On its own record the fair is compact and agricultural: Floral Hall and the Crafts-Quilt Hall hold the exhibits, a sugar house and a schoolhouse stand as permanent structures, the track hosts pulling contests and the midway supplies rides. Its three-day shape is not ancient, since the About page dates that format from 1995. DigInVT’s 2024 layer called it the biggest little fair in Vermont, wording the About page also uses for itself.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Event | The Bondville Fair, a town and village agricultural fair |
| Host town | Winhall, Vermont, at its village of Bondville |
| Grounds address | 30 VT-30, Winhall, VT 05340, in the fair’s own footer form |
| Organiser | Winhall Industrial Society, in the fair’s own form |
| County | Bennington County, Vermont |
| Shire towns | Bennington and Manchester, two shire towns, neither hosting |
| Season | Late August, three days, Friday through Sunday |
| 2026 dates | August 28, 29 and 30, 2026 |
| 2026 admission | Five dollars seniors and veterans; Friday ten or twenty dollars; Saturday twenty-five; Sunday twenty dollars |
| Camping | No fair-side camping term published in the record checked |
Charters, a Hotel Lawn and the Move to Permanent Grounds
The fair’s own About page tells the early story as a sequence of town dates, belonging to Winhall rather than to any fair society. In 1791 Winhall received its state charter, which specified that the town could have two fairs each year. The town was incorporated in 1796, with the first Bondville Fair held the following year, in the About page’s own wording. Fair-side layers state that year expressly as 1797, so 1797 is reported here only as the fair-side stated first-fair year, never as an independently documented founding. The earliest fair was a one-day October gathering at the Monteverde Hotel. The fair moved eastward, settled in the 1920s at its present location, where Floral Hall was built, and gained a Dance and Crafts Hall in the 1930s. Its newest named structures are the sugar house of 1999 and the schoolhouse of 2000.
Billing stays in its layers. The 2026 homepage calls the fair the oldest fair in Vermont, operating continually since 1797; the About page in 2025 and DigInVT in 2024 both use oldest continuous fair in Vermont, DigInVT adding since 1797. A 2016 tourism layer instead said the fair started in 1796, conflicting with the fair-side sequence and left unmerged. No layer documents a gap or a cancellation, and none independently verifies an unbroken run, so a continuous run stands only as the fair’s own billing. The About page also gives no founding date for the Winhall Industrial Society itself, leaving any society founding year unverified.
What to Expect
Pulling Contests Bookend the 2026 Weekend
The two fully dated items on the fair’s own 2026 record are pulls, one opening and one closing the weekend. The Oxen Pull is set for Friday, August 28, 2026, at 10:00 a.m., with scales open at 8:30 a.m. for weigh-in. Its four classes, 2400 pounds and under, 2401 to 2800, 2801 to 3200, and Open, each pull over a six-foot course under the rules of the Association of New England Ox Teamsters, Incorporated. The Thomas G. Eddy Memorial Antique Tractor Pull follows on Sunday, August 30, at 11:00 a.m., with weigh-in by 9:30 a.m. Its eight weight classes run from 3,000 to 9,500 pounds, beyond them an Open Class and an Off The Field Class, for pre-1960 stock-appearing machines. That page names Lincoln Maple’s Hardware as sponsor and Clark’s Sled Service as sled provider. These are the 2026 bills in those pages only, carried into no other year.
For a useful comparison, see the Addison County Vermont Fair & Field Days Festival for another county festival.
Halls, Exhibits and the Standing Programme
Away from the track, the fair’s standing families are named in its own About history layer: Floral Hall and Crafts-Quilt Hall exhibits, with the Children’s Pet Show among its general arrangements. DigInVT’s 2024 layer describes the Ailene Capen Floral Hall displays as garden produce, cooking specialties, artistic endeavors and original works, and names three new categories judged that year, bread, pickles, and handmade clothing, all belonging to 2024 alone. A guide layer whose spans are the 2022 dates, August 26 to 28, characterises its edition with pulling events, a kids’ tractor-pull contest, live music, clogging, a quilt show, farm animals for petting, midway rides, kids’ games and a children’s pet show, in that layer only. For 2026 the homepage’s wider families are unlimited amusement rides, free track events and free entertainment, folded into admission in that layer, with gates at 10:00 a.m. and rides from 11:00 a.m. daily across August 28 to 30.
Music and Editions Remembered Separately
The one named musical act in the recent record belongs to 2025 alone: a performer’s own page bills the Erin Harpe Country Blues Duo at the fair on Friday, August 22, 2025, from 4:00 to 6:00 in the afternoon. No fair-side layer names a comparable act for 2026. The pre-World-War-II programme recalled in the About history, a Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, square dancing and a horse pull, is history, never a current programme.
Planning Your Visit
Reaching 30 VT-30 in Winhall
The grounds address in the fair’s own record is 30 VT-30, Winhall, VT 05340. A Seven Days guide layer prints 350 Route 30, Bondville, a guide-layer form only that never moves the grounds, and the society’s mailing form, PO BOX 339, BONDVILLE, VT 05340-0339, appears in a tax-exempt listing layer as a postal address only, never the fairgrounds address. The Vermont Statutes, Title 24, section 3, names Bennington and Manchester together as the county’s shire towns, proven from the statute alone. Neither hosts this fair, and any single-shire-town statement for Bennington County is incomplete on this record.
The 2026 Gate, Read Carefully
The fair’s own homepage publishes the complete 2026 admission schedule, the only complete gate on record. Seniors and veterans pay five dollars at all times, the layer specifying 65 and over or identification for veterans. Friday admission is ten dollars before 5:00 p.m. and twenty dollars after 5:00 p.m.; Saturday is twenty-five dollars and Sunday twenty dollars. The front gate is cash only, and every admission includes free parking, unlimited amusement rides, free track events and free entertainment. Participant terms on two separate fair-side pages are not a second visitor gate: pull participants pay a fair gate fee of twenty dollars under the Tractor Pull page’s wording, while the Oxen Pull page adds no hitching fee on the same basis.
Earlier Gates and What Remains Unpublished
For 2025 the record holds fragments only. A performer’s own page for her Friday, August 22, 2025 set gives admission as a range of five to fifteen dollars at the gate, in that artist layer only, and a 2025 roundup layer’s gate sentence is truncated in its source, so only its seniors-paying-five-dollars-all-weekend wording can be taken from it. The full 2025 gate schedule is unverified and must never be completed by guesswork or filled in from 2026. No visitor gate was published in any layer fetched for 2024 or 2019, and a place-listing generated summary mentioning fifteen-dollar Saturday tickets is not a published price.
Parking, and the Camping Question
Parking is free and included with admission in the fair’s own 2026 wording, and the 2025 performer’s layer likewise mentions free parking for that edition; those are the only fenced parking terms in the record. Camping is a blank: no fair-side camping rate, hookup term, camper rule or fair-week provision appears anywhere in the record fetched, so camping terms are unverified entire, for public and exhibitors alike, and nobody should promise themselves a campsite or hookup at these grounds on this record.
One Full Saturday at the Fair
A sample Saturday built only from the fair’s own 2026 terms might run like this. Arrive at the 10:00 a.m. opening and pay the twenty-five-dollar Saturday admission in cash, parking, rides, track events and entertainment already inside it. Give the first hour to the Ailene Capen Floral Hall and the Crafts-Quilt Hall, then look in at the sugar house and the schoolhouse. When rides open at 11:00 a.m., take the midway’s turn, and keep the afternoon loose for the free track events and entertainment. Saturday carries no dated pull page of its own in 2026, so the day’s honest shape is halls first, rides second, the track whenever its programme runs.
Names That Sound Alike and Places That Are Not This Fair
Several near neighbours in name or place contribute nothing here. The Boonville Fair in Oneida County, New York, spelled with two o’s, is a separate event whose dates, prices, programme and history have no bearing here. The Bond County Fair in Illinois, and the campground layers attached to Bondville, Illinois, are another state’s record entire, including for camping. A country festival staged at these same grounds in October 2026 is a different event under its own organisers, and a fairgrounds location alone is never evidence of the Bondville Fair. The Pownal Valley Fair and Garlic Town, USA are likewise separate Bennington County events.
Before You Set Out
- Carry cash, because the fair’s own 2026 wording makes the front gate cash only.
- Check which side of 5:00 p.m. a Friday arrival falls on before counting gate money.
- Bring identification if a seniors or veterans five-dollar admission is part of the plan.
- Aim for the 10:00 a.m. opening on pull days to catch the weigh-ins.
- Leave camping plans open, since no fair-side camping term exists.
- Navigate by the fair’s own footer form, 30 VT-30 in Winhall, rather than any guide listing.
- Keep Saturday flexible, because the dated 2026 pull pages cover Friday and Sunday.
- Treat any price quoted for another year as unproven until the fair publishes it.
Beyond the Fairgrounds
Bondville’s fair makes most sense inside its own small geography. The village sits in Winhall’s southeastern corner along Route 30, and the grounds’ named buildings read like a village green in miniature. Bennington and Manchester carry the county’s formal business as its two shire towns, while this village carries its fair. A visit can therefore be paired with nothing more elaborate than the host town itself: the village the fair is named for and the Route 30 corridor every address layer agrees on.
Why a Small Village Fair Carries So Much Weight
The Bondville Fair matters because it shows how little machinery a durable fair needs. No county government runs it and no county lends it a name; a volunteer society conducts it, a village hosts it, and its programme rests on exhibits, animal power and machinery, not headline spectacle. Its billing reaches back to a first fair placed by the fair-side record in the year after Winhall’s 1796 incorporation, yet its modern form is candidly recent: a three-day format from 1995, its newest buildings from 1999 and 2000.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the Bondville Fair held?
At the Bondville Fairgrounds in the town of Winhall, at the village of Bondville in the town’s southeastern corner, in the fair’s own footer form 30 VT-30, Winhall, VT 05340. A guide layer prints a different Route 30 number, a form belonging to that layer only, and neither of the county’s two shire towns, Bennington and Manchester, hosts the fair.
How much is admission in 2026?
The fair’s own homepage sets the complete 2026 schedule: five dollars at all times for seniors and veterans, ten dollars Friday before 5:00 p.m., twenty dollars after it, twenty-five dollars Saturday and twenty dollars Sunday, cash only at the gate. Admission includes free parking, unlimited rides, free track events and free entertainment. No complete gate exists for any other year, and the 2025 fragments do not add up to a schedule.
Can visitors camp at the Bondville Fairgrounds?
No camping arrangement can be confirmed from the fair’s own record, whose pages contain no camping rate, hookup term, camper rule or fair-week provision at all. Camping terms are unverified entire, and camping information attached to a Bondville in Illinois belongs to that place and cannot be borrowed for Winhall.
Who organises the Bondville Fair?
The Winhall Industrial Society, the form used throughout the fair’s own record, where it is a non-profit, volunteer-run organisation named as the sponsor charged with conducting the fair. A tax-exempt listing carries the fuller form WINHALL INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY INC, and the two forms stand unmerged. Officers named in single layers are persons in those layers only.
What to Expect From the Next Bennington County Vermont Bondville Fair Festival
How often is Bennington County Vermont Bondville Fair Festival held?
Once a year, across three days in late August, on the pattern proven by the 2026, 2025, 2024 and 2019 layers. The three-day format dates from 1995 in the About history, and a single documented Sunday in 2023 shows the fair held that year too, without proving that year’s full span.
When is the next Bennington County Vermont Bondville Fair Festival?
The fully documented edition is the 2026 fair, August 28, 29 and 30, 2026, gates at 10:00 a.m. and rides from 11:00 a.m. daily. No 2027 dates were published in any layer fetched, so the following edition cannot be dated here; watch for the fair’s own announcement.
Will the dates change?
They can, and recent editions move gently rather than holding a fixed slot: August 23 to 25 in 2024, August 22 to 24 in 2025 and August 28 to 30 in 2026, each a Friday-to-Sunday span. Until the fair publishes a year’s dates, treat any weekend as unconfirmed.
The Bondville Fair asks little of its visitors: cash at the gate, a late-August weekend, and a willingness to let exhibit halls and pulling contests carry the day, in a village that has hosted it, on the fair-side account, since the year after its town was incorporated.
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