Caledonia County Vermont Fair Festival
For five days at the end of August, Mountain View Park fills with livestock judging, pulling contests, exhibit halls and a midway, and the Caledonia County Fair takes over its corner of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. The fair’s own homepage bills the August 26 to 30, 2026 edition under a line celebrating 180 years, billing wording rather than a settled age. What the record supports without argument is narrower and stronger: a current, recurring agricultural fair run by the Caledonia County Fair Association, with published 2026 dates, published 2026 advance-ticket terms and a fair-side history reaching back to an 1844 society and an 1855 first fair.
An Agricultural Fair at Mountain View Park
The title names the Caledonia County Fair itself, the annual five-day late-August agricultural fair of Caledonia County, Vermont. Its own homepage characterises the event through animal shows and judging, a maple sugar house, ox shows and pulling, horse pulling and Floral Hall exhibits, alongside live music, truck pulls, a demolition derby and a Grand Cavalcade. Dreamland Amusements supplies the midway, named on the fair’s own pages as a provider and never as the organiser. In its mission layer, where the initials CCF appear as the fair’s own abbreviation, the Association states its intent to present Vermont’s agricultural background, past and present, enjoyably and educationally. The current organiser form is Caledonia County Fair Association, tax listing layers carry the shortened Caledonia County Fair Assn, and the two stand unmerged.
The fair’s own record places the grounds at Mountain View Park in Lyndonville, the village form. A Vermont agriculture-programme layer instead files the event under Lyndon, the town form, placing the grounds on Fairgrounds Road in Lyndon with the 05851 postal code, and the two forms are never merged here because the layers keep both. Saint Johnsbury is the county’s shire town under the Vermont Statutes, Title 24, section 4, which names it as such in its own spelling and lists Lyndon among the county’s towns. It does not host the current fair.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Event | Caledonia County Fair, a five-day agricultural fair |
| Host place | Mountain View Park, Lyndonville, the village form; Lyndon, the town form |
| Organiser | Caledonia County Fair Association, current form |
| County | Caledonia County, Vermont |
| Shire town | Saint Johnsbury, named in the Vermont Statutes; not the current host |
| Season | Late August, five days, Wednesday through Sunday |
| 2026 dates | August 26 to 30, 2026 |
| 2026 admission | Advance tickets twenty dollars through August 26 at 4 p.m.; gate figure unpublished fair-side |
| Parking and camping | Parking included in the 2026 and 2025 admission wordings; camping terms unpublished beyond a 2019 contact line |
Societies, Fires and the Move to Lyndon
The fair’s own About page supplies the spine of the story, and only its direct statements count as history here. Until 1834, its account runs, numerous old-fashioned cattle fairs were held throughout the county, culminating in the creation of the Caledonia county Agricultural Society by 63 local men on January 23, 1844, at the present-day site of the Saint Johnsbury House, with Henry Stevens of Barnet as president and J.P. Fairbanks as secretary. The Caledonia county Fairground Company was organised in 1855, money was raised to purchase grounds above Paddock Village that year, and the first fair held was on September 15, 1855. On October 11, 1857, the body was reorganised as the Caledonia Fair Ground Company under a legislative act, and new grounds were laid out on the Passumpsic Road with a half-mile track and Floral Hall, first opened for the fair of September 28 and 29, 1859.
The same page refuses to tidy its own wrinkles, and neither does this article. Its Civil War passage names the camp Camp Barter and, within the same passage, the commemorating stone’s Camp Baxter, both spellings standing exactly as printed. The grounds also carry a dairy centre dedicated on August 21, 2000, named the Northeast Agricultural Sales Inc. Dairy Center in the About history. In September 1921 a devastating fire destroyed the grandstand, bandstand, vaudeville stage and horse stalls, leaving only Floral Hall and the dining hall. The Fairground Association went into receivership, its remaining grounds deeded to Saint Johnsbury Academy in December 1930. On March 28, 1932, the Lyndon Community Fair Association incorporated, and during that period the fair moved to its present location at Mountain View Park in Lyndonville. In 1994 an arson fire levelled the grandstand, the fair carried on with borrowed bleachers, and its directors later voted to divest their stock and become a non-profit organisation.
For a useful comparison, see the Bennington County Vermont Bondville Fair Festival for another county festival.
Two cautions govern that spine. An outside history layer claims the society’s first county fair was held in 1844 itself, conflicting with the fair’s own September 15, 1855 statement, and the outside claim stands in its layer, unreconciled. The billing also disagrees with itself: the About page calls the event the oldest fair in Vermont, the mission speaks of more than 150 years of family fun, the 2026 homepage celebrates 180 years, a 2023 mirror celebrates 177 years, 2016 layers bill a 161st year and one listing bills a 163rd fair. Those numbers cannot all describe the same count, so no founding year, edition number or continuous run is back-calculated from any of them, and the fires, receivership and arson become neither a cancellation claim nor a continuity claim here.
What to Expect
The 2026 Bill, Straight From the Entertainment Page
The fair’s own Entertainment page bills its 2026 shows as free with admission. The Aquatic Acrobat Show performs twice daily across August 26 to 30, 2026. The Loyal Horses Show appears daily through the same span, with Roman riding, western vaulting, bareback riding, liberty horses and comedy riders in its page. Adin Marcotte and Northbound bring bluegrass to the Midway Entertainment Stage on Friday, August 28, at 4 p.m. and again at 5 p.m. The New England Rodeo, billed as Bulls and Barrels, takes the Grandstand on Saturday, August 29, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. One absence is documented just as firmly: the Sealion Splash Show will not be featured at the 2026 fair, because its equipment was involved in a traffic accident, with all crew, staff and animals safe and unharmed.
The 2025 Fair Book’s Highlights, Kept in 2025
The fair-supplied book for the August 20 to 24, 2025 edition carries its own bill, and none of it is carried into 2026. Its infield acts were Extreme Raptors and Mermaid and Pirate Man Dan. Wednesday night brought Raized on Radio and Kingdom’s Got Talent; Thursday, Farm Tractor Pulls and Green Mountain Wrestling; Friday, a Tailgate Party with Truck Pulls and a Cornhole Tournament. Saturday held Flatout Freestyle in two shows, and Sunday closed as Demo Derby Day with a Pig Scramble. A 2024 concert booking appears only as cancelled by a hospitalised headliner, so no performance is asserted for that year at all.
Planning Your Visit
Getting to Mountain View Park
Navigate by the park and village rather than by any single printed street form, whose layer variants stand unmerged: agenda layers print 1 Fairground Road, Lyndonville, Vermont, paired with Mountain View Park, a guide layer prints 1 Fairgrounds Road, a directory layer attaches the park name and the 05851 code to the same road, and a place-listing layer offers a back-road variant. The fair book’s own direction line is the simplest on record: Exit 23, Mountain View Park, Lyndonville. The Post Office Box 343, Lyndonville, VT 05851-0343 form in nonprofit and tax layers is a mailing address only, never the grounds address.
Advance Tickets, and a Gate Figure Nobody Publishes
Admission is where this record most demands year-by-year reading. For 2026, the fair’s own homepage sells advance tickets at twenty dollars through August 26 at 4 p.m., including unlimited amusement rides, shows, entertainment, parking and much more. After that cutoff, gate admissions can be purchased online or at the fair, but no gate figure is published, so the 2026 gate price is unverified. A tourism blog’s August 20 cutoff conflicts with the fair’s own August 26 wording; the two are never merged, and the fair-side wording governs. For 2025, the fair book also prices advance tickets at twenty dollars, its gate admission including parking, all grandstand events, all amusement rides and all entertainment, yet no legible 2025 gate figure stands in the book text. Earlier layers hold their own money only: a 2023 mirror layer prices advance tickets at sixteen dollars through August 23 at 4 p.m. with the same inclusions, and a 2016 tourism layer records a thirty-dollar Wednesday-night carload price for its edition alone.
Parking as an Inclusion, Camping as a Blank
Parking never appears as its own charge anywhere in the fair-side record: it stands as an inclusion inside the 2026 advance wording and the 2025 book’s gate wording, those editions only, and no standalone parking price exists for any year. Camping is thinner still: the 2019 fair book closes its notice with a camping contact line naming Larry Norrie, and that single line is the whole camping record. It publishes no rate, no hookup term and no camper rule. No camping provision for 2024, 2025 or 2026 is documented in fair-side text, so nobody should count on a campsite, a recreational vehicle pitch or a hookup at Mountain View Park on this evidence.
A Sample Fair Day
Start at the 2019 book’s gates-open hour of 7:00 a.m., stated in that layer, and give the morning to the barns and judging rings. Walk Floral Hall and the maple sugar house before the crowds thicken. Take the Aquatic Acrobat Show at one of its two daily performances, and stay for the Loyal Horses Show and its Roman riding. On Friday, settle near the Midway Entertainment Stage for the bluegrass sets at 4 p.m. and 5 p.m.; on Saturday, save the evening for the rodeo in the Grandstand at 7 p.m.
Names That Sound Alike, Fairs That Are Not This One
The comparison this title most needs is a warning. Ontario, Canada, holds a Caledonia Fair under a Caledonia Agricultural Society, running October 1 to 4 in 2026, whose own layers price its general admission at twenty dollars and its seniors at fifteen; that is a Canadian gate for a different country’s fair, and its dates, prices, passes and programme contribute nothing here, despite the resemblance of both name and numbers. New York’s Livingston County holds another Caledonia Fair, billed as first held in 1833, whose listed 2025 span matches this fair’s by pure accident, a coincidence that is evidence in neither direction. The Caledon Fair in Ontario, the Queens County Fair at Caledonia, Nova Scotia, Caledonian Highland games, the Danville Community Fair and other Saint Johnsbury events are likewise separate entire, since a shared county line alone never makes an event the county fair. Another Vermont fair’s competing oldest-fair billing stays unmerged and unadjudicated.
Visit Checklist
- Buy the twenty-dollar advance ticket before August 26 at 4 p.m. for the 2026 edition
- Treat the 2026 gate figure as unpublished and carry flexible money for it
- Navigate to Mountain View Park, Lyndonville, using the fair book’s Exit 23 line
- Catch the Aquatic Acrobat Show at one of its two daily 2026 performances
- Arrive at the Grandstand early on Saturday for the Bulls and Barrels rodeo
- Do not plan around the Sealion Splash Show, which is withdrawn for 2026
- Leave camping unplanned, since no current camping term is documented
Beyond the Fairgrounds
The fair book’s Exit 23 line makes the grounds an easy anchor for a wider Northeast Kingdom stay. Lyndon, the town around the village, carries the fair’s everyday services, while Saint Johnsbury, the shire town a short drive south, holds the earliest grounds story: Paddock Village, the Passumpsic Road site and the academy that received the old grounds in 1930. Read as history rather than as the fair’s present home, those places turn a fair trip into a county story.
Why This Fair Matters
Few American fairs document their own institutional churn as openly as this one does. Societies, fairground companies and associations succeed each other across its history in distinct, named forms, and the fair never pretends they were one body. Its record also models an honesty worth copying: prices are published where they are published, the gap where a gate figure should be is left as a gap, and a withdrawn act is announced as withdrawn. That paper trail honours the mission’s educational promise before a visitor reaches the gate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where exactly is the fair held?
At Mountain View Park in Lyndonville, the village form used by the fair’s own record, within the town of Lyndon, the form an agriculture-programme layer uses when filing the event. Saint Johnsbury, the shire town, hosted the grounds only before the 1932 move.
How much is admission for the 2026 fair?
The fair’s own homepage prices 2026 advance tickets at twenty dollars through August 26 at 4 p.m., including unlimited amusement rides, shows, entertainment and parking. After that cutoff, gate admissions are sold online and at the fair, but no gate figure is published in fair-side text, so the 2026 gate price is unverified.
Will the Sealion Splash Show perform in 2026?
No, and the fair says so itself: its Entertainment page states that, due to unforeseen circumstances, the Sealion Splash Show will not be featured in 2026, because the show’s equipment was involved in a traffic accident, with all crew, staff and animals safe and unharmed. The act therefore stands as a documented non-appearance, not as part of the bill.
Can I camp at the fairgrounds?
Nothing current can be promised: the only camping trace is a single contact line closing the 2019 fair book’s notice, publishing no rate, no hookup term and no rule, and not even whether its camping was public or exhibitor-only. No recent edition documents a camping provision in fair-side text, so camping terms are unverified beyond that line.
What to Expect From the Next Caledonia County Vermont Fair Festival
How often is Caledonia County Vermont Fair Festival held?
Once a year, across five late-August days running Wednesday through Sunday on the documented pattern. The editions in the record fall on August 21 to 25, 2019, August 23 to 27, 2023, August 21 to 25, 2024, August 20 to 24, 2025 and August 26 to 30, 2026.
When is the next Caledonia County Vermont Fair Festival?
No 2027 dates were published in any layer checked, so the next edition’s span is unverified and cannot be projected from 2026. The documented run of recent editions makes a late-August return the fair’s established habit.
Will the dates change?
They already vary within the record, sliding across late August rather than holding a fixed week, and nothing in the fair’s published material promises a settled future span. Each new edition’s dates should be read from that year’s own announcement.
Read year by year and layer by layer, with billing enjoyed as billing and gaps respected as gaps, this fair rewards the effort. Come for the horses, the acrobats, the pulls and the exhibit halls, and let Mountain View Park’s fire-marked, stubbornly documented story do the rest.
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