Cambria County Pennsylvania Fair Festival
Each September, in the week opening over Labor Day weekend, the Cambria County Fairgrounds on North Julian Street in Ebensburg fill with livestock, judged exhibits, midway rides and a nightly-changing grandstand bill. Today’s fair is the American Legion County Fair, the name it took in 2017. For most of its life it was the Cambria County Fair, and its own published history carries the grounds back to a first fair in June 1891. Ebensburg is both the seat of Cambria County and the fair’s host, and the Cambria County Legion Association has run the event in full since 1958.
About a Fair With Three Names, All of Them Its Own
The three names in this fair’s record belong to one event, not three. American Legion County Fair is the current name, used by the fair’s own site, the state fair guide for 2026 and fair-week reporting. Cambria County Fair is the documented former name, carried in the heading of the fair’s own history page. Ebensburg Fair, the name of the 1891 original in that same history, belongs to the history sections only.
The organiser is the Cambria County Legion Association, in the form the fair’s own history gives. Its nonprofit charter dates to January 9, 1946; the American Legion Post Home had bought the fairgrounds mortgage, the fair was revived that year, and the county commissioners signed the lease over to the Legion. A commissioned group ran the fair under contract until 1958, when the Association declined to renew the contract and took over full responsibility for the annual event, which it has done since.
Supporting pieces are never the organiser itself: 4-H and FFA supply exhibitors, grandstand acts bring their own promoters, the Legion posts named as donors in 1946 stay in that historical layer, and the fair manager quoted in 2026 reporting is a person, not the organisation’s name. The fair’s own record is uneven: its history and exhibitor arrangements are published in detail, while its site offers no gate price, schedule text or street address.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Event | American Legion County Fair, renamed from Cambria County Fair in 2017 |
| Host town | Ebensburg, the seat of Cambria County |
| Grounds | Cambria County Fairgrounds, North Julian Street, Ebensburg |
| Organiser | Cambria County Legion Association, operating the fair in full since 1958 |
| Season | Early September, in the week opening over Labor Day weekend |
| Documented spans | September 1 to 7, 2024; August 31 to September 6, 2025; September 6 to 12, 2026 |
| Admission | Ten dollars one price in the documented 2024 to 2026 layers |
| Exhibitor lanyards | Ten, twenty and twenty-five dollars in the fair’s 2025 lanyard form |
| Camping | Documented only as an exhibitor and family camper credential |
Two Beginnings, a Collapse and a Legion Rescue
The fair’s own history begins the grounds in June 1891, when the first fair in Ebensburg was held at the present fair grounds and became known as the Ebensburg Fair, originated by farmers and local businessmen headed by Ira Bloom, F. J. Hartman, W. E. Lewis, John Gable, Mr. Crane and others.
For a useful comparison, see the Butler County Pennsylvania Big Butler Fair Festival for another county festival.
A second organisational beginning stands in the same history, unmerged with the first: incorporation as the Cambria County Fair, with its charter amended creating the Cambria County Fair Association in 1924. Charles M. Schwab, whose organising letter of October 1, 1924 survives in the history, drove the rebuilding: a first exhibition in the first week of September 1924, roughly half a million dollars spent, and 76 acres reached. Schwab was a promoter and funder, never the operator. In 1925 the entry fee was fifty cents and parking fifty cents, free after 6 p.m. Schwab’s 1930 line (the fair opens on Labor Day, September 1 and runs for that week) and the slogan Always open Labor Day preserve the season in the history’s own words.
Decline followed: unpaid bank loans brought bankruptcy and foreclosure, the grounds’ title passed to Cambria County for unpaid taxes with the commissioners holding the lease, and the Second World War shut the fair down. Revival came in 1946, when the Post Home bought the mortgage and a fair was held in dilapidated buildings. A grandstand fire on June 22, 1955 and a December 1967 fire that took the arena, the wildlife building, the home economics building, rest rooms and a dairy barn were answered with steel rebuilding. A proposed sale was rejected in 1974, a repair grant of three hundred thousand dollars arrived in 1990, and in 2017 the name was changed to American Legion County Fair.
Because the same history documents bankruptcy, a tax-title passage and a wartime shutdown, no unbroken run can honestly be claimed for this fair. Fair-week reporting in 2026 billed the edition the 134th annual, but that figure is billing only: it agrees with neither 1891 nor 1924 as printed, and no founding year may be computed from it.
What to Expect
Seven Nights in the Grandstand, 2026
The one fully documented modern programme is the 2026 bill in fair-week preview reporting, to be read as that edition’s bill rather than a permanent script. Professional bull riding under the Bullride Mania name opened the week at 7 p.m. on September 6, and country artists Darryl Worley and Andy Griggs played at 7 p.m. on September 7, a night a concert listing independently confirms for Worley. Then came a semi-tractor trailer and truck pull on September 8, quad 4×4 drag racing on September 9, a compact demolition derby on September 10 and a large car demolition derby on September 11. The week closed at 8 p.m. on September 12 with a monster truck show fielding four monster trucks plus a ride truck.
Midway, Barns and Exhibit Halls
The same 2026 reporting put the Wall of Death motorcycle stunt shows and a returning Jurassic Kingdom on the midway, alongside rides, food vendors, farm equipment and animal displays, with full livestock barns and 4-H and FFA members showing through the week. Judged entries are the fair’s backbone: the fair’s own homepage for 2026 set out an agricultural check-in block from Wednesday, September 2 to Saturday, September 5, non-food entries first, then all entries, baked goods and flower arrangements on the Saturday morning. Those check-in days are exhibitor mechanics standing before the public span, never extra fair days.
What Other Years Can and Cannot Tell You
For 2025 the record holds season-level colour rather than a bill: agricultural exhibits, livestock, truck pulls, a hay hauling contest, a band competition, food and entertainment in tourism and lodging layers, plus a 2025-dated Jurassic Kingdom image on the fair’s own site. No dated 2025 grandstand programme was extracted, and none should be reconstructed from the 2026 nights. The fair’s showcase page is photographs only, so no act or date should be taken from it. The 1930 programme preserved in the fair’s history (rifle, pistol and revolver shooting, trap shooting, coon hound trials, fly and bait casting, horse racing and circus acts) belongs to the Schwab era, not the modern midway.
Planning Your Visit
Dates, Edition by Edition
Each documented span stands with its own year: September 1 to 7, 2024 (tourism listing); August 31 to September 6, 2025, opening on the Sunday before Labor Day (tourism listing; the head of the fair’s own lanyard page); September 6 to 12, 2026 (state fair guide, fair-week reporting, the fair’s own lanyard heading). Pre-rename listings under the Cambria County Fair name describe this same fair, and their spans belong to their own years only: the 2015 September span is a 2015 fact and nothing more.
The Ten-Dollar Ticket and What It Covers
No gate price is published on the fair’s own site. For 2026, fair-week reporting quoting the fair manager put admission at ten dollars, a one-price ticket including parking, rides, grandstand shows, livestock, and agriculture events and exhibitions. Tourism listings gave the same ten dollars for 2025 and 2024, and the fair’s own places-layer description gave ten dollars for 2022. Parking appears only inside that ticket, never as a separate documented fee, and no child, senior or military ladder is documented for any modern year. Premium money is unpublished too: no scale was extracted from any fair-side layer.
Lanyards Belong to Exhibitors, Not the Gate
A second credential must never be confused with a ticket. On the fair’s own lanyard page as indexed for 2025, exhibitor lanyards cost ten dollars, family and camper lanyards twenty dollars and guest camper lanyards twenty-five dollars, with siblings of exhibitors aged two to four free. In the page’s current 2026 form the lanyards serve exhibitors and their families only: late entries after August 1, 2026 drew an extra twenty dollars per lanyard with no exceptions, siblings aged four and under were free, and pick-up ran at the Fair Office on August 22 and August 24 to 28. The 2026 form states no base prices, so those 2025 figures cannot be carried into 2026, the differing free-sibling ages stand as printed in each form, and the ten-dollar exhibitor lanyard remains a separate fact from the ten-dollar gate.
Finding the Fairgrounds
Aim for the Cambria County Fairgrounds on North Julian Street, about a mile north of Ebensburg (old United States Route 219, in a 2026 fair-week article’s description). Do not trust any single listing for a street number: printed numbers differ by one digit between sources, and the fair’s own site publishes no street address in the layers gathered. No other Ebensburg address (the borough office, the Legion post home, Duman Lake County Park) is the fairgrounds.
Camping Runs on Credentials
Camping exists at this fair only inside an exhibitor and family credential system, proven for 2025 by the camper lanyards and continued in 2026. No public per-night rate, site count, hookup term or reservation rule appears in any fair-side layer gathered, so public camping terms are unverified. Directories crediting the fairgrounds with full-hookup sites publish no fair-side term, rate or source; area campgrounds are separate businesses.
A Sample Day During the 2026 Edition
Start in the livestock barns with the 4-H and FFA exhibitors, then walk the judged exhibits that came through the earlier check-in days. Give midday to the midway, where the Wall of Death stunt shows and Jurassic Kingdom shared the grounds with rides and food vendors in 2026. Keep the evening for the grandstand, because the 2026 bill put a different headline event on every night, from bull riding on the opening Sunday to the monster trucks on the closing Saturday.
Not This Fair: Neighbours and Namesakes
The standing confusion in Ebensburg is the Cambria County Arts and Heritage Festival, a different event in the same borough, run by a historical village organisation at a county park whose ground is not the fairgrounds. Ebensburg’s downtown street events, including a potato festival and a homecoming shutdown, keep dates of their own that are never fair dates. Johnstown, the county’s largest city, holds festivals of its own, among them an ethnic festival in its Cambria City neighbourhood, and is neither the county seat nor this fair’s host. Other bookings use the fairgrounds outside fair week (a rodeo there in July 2025; a veterans’ gathering in September reporting), and no date or price from them belongs to the fair.
Checklist
- Check the current year’s span before travelling; the fair shifts with the Labor Day weekend.
- Budget ten dollars a person for admission on the terms documented for 2024 to 2026.
- Do not count on a child, senior or military discount; none is documented.
- Exhibitors, note the check-in days that fall before opening.
- Exhibitors entering late in 2026 faced an extra twenty dollars per lanyard after August 1.
- Navigate to North Julian Street, north of Ebensburg; listings disagree on the street number.
- Campers, plan around the exhibitor credential system; public camping terms are unpublished.
Beyond the Fairgrounds
The borough sits on a plateau in the geographic centre of the county and is the seat of Cambria County government, a courthouse town in character rather than a city on Johnstown’s scale.
Why This Fair Matters
Few county fairs carry a rescue story this documented: an 1891 beginning, a 1924 rebuilding, bankruptcy, a tax seizure, a wartime shutdown and two serious fires, answered by a veterans’ organisation that bought the mortgage, rebuilt in steel and still runs the fair decades after taking full control. Its one-price habit, bundling parking, rides and grandstand shows into one ten-dollar ticket in the recent documented years, keeps a fair day’s arithmetic simple.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is this fair called today?
Since 2017 it has been the American Legion County Fair, the name used by the fair’s own site and the state fair guide. Cambria County Fair is the former name of the same fair, not a rival event, and Ebensburg Fair is the name the fair’s own history gives the 1891 original.
How much does admission cost?
Ten dollars one price on the terms documented for 2024, 2025 and 2026, the 2026 figure coming from fair-week reporting that quotes the fair manager’s one-price description of the ticket. The fair’s own site publishes no gate price, and no child, senior or military ladder is documented for any modern year.
Where exactly are the fairgrounds?
The grounds are the Cambria County Fairgrounds on North Julian Street in Ebensburg, about a mile north of the borough. No settled street number can be given, because the numbers printed in listings differ by one digit and the fair’s own site publishes no street address.
Can the public camp at the fairgrounds?
Camping is documented only through the exhibitor and family lanyard system: exhibitor families and guests held camper credentials in 2025 at twenty and twenty-five dollars. No public per-night rate, site count, hookup term or reservation rule is published in any fair-side layer gathered, so public camping cannot be confirmed from the fair’s own record.
What to Expect From the Next Cambria County Pennsylvania Fair Festival
How often is Cambria County Pennsylvania Fair Festival held?
It is held once a year, in the week that opens over Labor Day weekend in early September, with documented editions in 2024, 2025 and 2026.
When is the next Cambria County Pennsylvania Fair Festival?
The most recent edition in the record ran September 6 to 12, 2026, so the next would fall in the same Labor Day week slot in early September 2027; no 2027 span is documented in the material gathered, and the exact dates await the year’s listings.
Will the dates change?
The numbered dates move because the anchor is a holiday weekend rather than a fixed calendar span: September 1 to 7 in 2024, August 31 to September 6 in 2025 and September 6 to 12 in 2026. The season has been tied to Labor Day since the history layer’s own slogan, Always open Labor Day, so expect the week to stay put while the dates shift around it.
For a fair that has been bankrupted, seized for taxes, shut by war and twice burned, simply opening over Labor Day weekend is the achievement. The Legion that rescued it in 1946 still runs the show.
