Grant County North Dakota Fair Festival
Carson is a small county seat town, and in mid-August it carries a fair larger than its size suggests. The Grant County Fair and 4-H Achievement Days fills four days with judging rings, a livestock sale, a Main Street parade, a car show, rodeos and a street dance, centred on the county fairgrounds and the town centre. It is a working agricultural fair first: young exhibitors, exhibit halls and barns give the weekend its shape, while grandstand events and evening music give it its noise.
About the Fair
The fair’s published name is Grant County Fair and 4-H Achievement Days, and it runs as a single four-day event in Carson. The 2026 edition ran Thursday, August 13 to Sunday, August 16, 2026, with every time given in Mountain Time. The 2025 edition ran August 14 to 17, 2025, and the 2024 edition August 15 to 18, 2024. Each edition follows the same skeleton across its four days.
Quick Facts
| Item | Documented record |
| Event name | Grant County Fair and 4-H Achievement Days |
| Fair town | Carson, the county seat |
| Grounds | Grant County Fairgrounds, Carson |
| Grounds address | 310 South Main Street, Carson |
| Season | Mid-August, Thursday to Sunday |
| 2026 edition | August 13 to 16, 2026 |
| Operating body | Grant County Fair Association |
| Programme core | 4-H and FFA livestock, exhibits, rodeos, parade |
| General admission | Unpublished in every fair book |
| Rodeo gate | Ten dollars, five dollars, preschoolers free |
Who Runs the Fair
The Grant County Fair Association runs the fair, and its officers are named at the head of the fair books. The 2026 book names Trampis Brenner as president, Dylan Fuchs as vice president and Donna VandenBurg as secretary and treasurer. The association receives the fair’s bingo proceeds and a community foundation grant of thirteen thousand dollars in 2025 for tables and chairs for the fair building. The books also use the schedule wording Grant County Fairboard for the same board.
NDSU Extension for Grant County publishes the fair books and works alongside the association through the 4-H programme. Its agents in the 2026 book are Tessa Osterbauer for agriculture and natural resources and Amanda Dahners for family and community wellness. The Grant County 4-H Council and 4-H leaders sponsor events such as the pork barbecue. Other schedule names are venue hosts or sponsors, never organisers.
History of the Fair
No founding year, first fair or edition number for this fair is published anywhere in the fair books, and none is claimed here. Grant County itself was created and organised in 1916 with Carson as its seat, but that is a county date, never the fair’s founding, and no age for the fair is built from it. The fair’s own continuity evidence is narrower: three consecutive full fair books, for 2024, 2025 and 2026, carrying the same title, the same town, the same association in substance and the same programme skeleton. That proves a running annual fair in those years.
For a useful comparison, see the Grand Forks County North Dakota Greater Grand Forks Fair Festival for another county festival.
The ordinals inside the fair belong to individual events, not to the fair. The Rods N Rock Car Show is billed as the sixteenth annual show in the 2026 book, and the same sixteenth annual billing appears in a layer of the 2025 book, against a fifteenth annual billing in 2024. That sequence does not reconcile, and it is left exactly as printed, never resolved by arithmetic and never used to date either the car show or the fair. Grant County does not appear in the state resiliency grant award list for July 2025, which proves nothing against the fair books.
What to Expect
Thursday: Judging and the Horse Show
Thursday opens the fair in the exhibit halls and on the rodeo grounds. In 2026, interview judging of static projects and open class and FFA exhibit entry took place in the fair building, livestock weigh-in happened at the fairgrounds, and the Grant County 4-H Horse Show ran at one in the afternoon on the rodeo grounds. Small animal entry followed at half past four in the small animal building, with judging at five. Thursday evening closed at Hammer Down with the third annual bingo, offering cash and gun prizes and a meat raffle of more than seven hundred dollars in meat, with all proceeds going to the Grant County Fair Association.
Friday: Livestock, Market and Ranch Rodeo
Friday is the fair’s agricultural centre. In 2026, livestock judging for 4-H and FFA exhibitors began at half past eight in the morning in the show ring, and a farmers market ran from nine until noon between the small animal building and the fair building. A chili cook-off took place at half past two in the fair building. The ranch rodeo began at three in the afternoon on the rodeo grounds, and its admission was free. In the evening, kids turtle races ran at seven in the show ring, with a one dollar registration fee and a rule against snapping turtles, and live music by Prodigal Road followed at nine at Hammer Down.
Saturday: Parade, Cars, Sale and Rodeo
Saturday is the fair’s biggest day, starting on Main Street. In 2026, the parade stepped off at half past nine in the morning, with a kiddies parade alongside it, lining up north of the courthouse on Morton Street and Fourth Avenue. The sixteenth annual Rods N Rock Car Show ran from nine to three on Railroad Avenue, with a ten dollar entry per vehicle, a burnout contest at noon and awards at two. Rodeo slack ran at ten, and the 4-H pork barbecue ran from eleven to one in the fair building for five dollars. The 4-H and FFA livestock sale began at half past one. The Bruce Zingg Memorial Rodeo began at half past four on the rodeo grounds and a street dance ran from nine to one on Main Street at The Seat.
Sunday: Breakfast, Church and Youth Rodeo
Sunday closes the fair quietly. In 2026, the pancake and sausage breakfast ran from eight to half past twelve in the fair building. A cowboy church service followed at eleven on the rodeo grounds, and the youth rodeo began at noon on the rodeo grounds. The exhibit programme running through all four days covers livestock divisions for beef, dairy, goats, sheep, swine and horsemanship, small animals including pets, cats, dogs, poultry and rabbits, open class rabbits and poultry, and a wide static programme spanning animal science, expressive arts, family and consumer science, foods, plant science, science and technology and Cloverbuds, judged under Danish system ribbon definitions.
Planning Your Visit
Getting to the Grounds
The fairgrounds stand in Carson, and the state listing address for them is 310 South Main Street, Carson, North Dakota. The fair books themselves publish no street address and locate every event by building or ground name, so visitors should navigate by those names: the fair building for static and open class exhibits, interview judging, the silent auction, the chili cook-off, the pork barbecue and the Sunday breakfast; the small animal building; and the rodeo grounds for the horse show, the ranch rodeo, the rodeo slack, the memorial rodeo, the youth rodeo and Cowboy Church. Beyond the fence, the parade lines up north of the courthouse and runs on Main Street, and the car show sits on Railroad Avenue. One address must not be mistaken for the grounds: 106 Second Avenue Northeast is the Extension office in the courthouse.
Dates and Timing
The fair is a mid-August, four-day, Thursday-to-Sunday event, and all times in the fair books are Mountain Time. The 2026 edition ran August 13 to 16, the 2025 edition August 14 to 17, and the 2024 edition August 15 to 18. Older farm press schedules place the fair in Carson in August in 2021 and 2022 layers. No fifth day may be added to the fair’s run from any listing, and a wrong August 20 to 24, 2025 range that circulates in an AI-generated article about this fair contradicts the fair’s own 2025 book and is never used here.
Admission and Other Costs
General admission to the fair is unpublished in every fair book, and this article therefore prints no general gate price and never calls the fair free as a whole. The priced and free gates the books do publish belong to the rodeo grounds alone. The rodeo slack and the Bruce Zingg Memorial Rodeo each carry a gate of ten dollars for ages thirteen and older, five dollars for ages twelve and under, and free entry for preschoolers. The ranch rodeo, by contrast, carries an admission-free line in the 2026 book and in the 2024 and 2025 books. That free line is that event’s only. Other money inside the books is activity money, never admission: the pork barbecue at five dollars, turtle race registration at one dollar, the cornhole tournament at twenty dollars per team with full payback, the car show entry at ten dollars per vehicle, a five percent commission on market animals sold toward fairgrounds improvements, and a seventy-five dollar barn cleanout fine in the exhibitor rules. Parking prices are unpublished in every layer checked.
Staying Over
No camping, recreational vehicle or overnight stay offer for fair visitors or exhibitors appears anywhere in the 2024, 2025 or 2026 fair books, and none is described here as a fair offer. The books’ only camping content is a 4-H outdoor education project class covering camping, hiking and other outdoor adventures as an exhibit category, which is a class to be judged, not a place to sleep. Visitors who need a place to stay should arrange ordinary lodging in Carson or nearby towns on their own, and should not treat any state inventory listing or nearby recreation area as a fairgrounds camping offer.
A Sample Day at the Fair
Take Saturday as the fair’s fullest day, and plan around its published 2026 shape while checking the current year’s book first. Arrive for the half past nine parade on Main Street, then walk to Railroad Avenue for the car show, where the burnout contest at noon gives the morning a loud centre. Return to the fair building for the pork barbecue and the livestock sale in the early afternoon. Keep the late afternoon for the memorial rodeo at half past four on the rodeo grounds.
How This Fair Compares
This fair is documented book by book across three consecutive years, which makes its shape unusually checkable. Where other fairs in the series publish a general gate price, this fair publishes none, and where other fairs carry a founding year or an edition number, this fair carries none at all. Its distinction is a complete, year-by-year programme, published by the county Extension office and the association together, in which every event has a time, a building and a price or an explicit free line of its own. What Carson offers instead is the full agricultural fair in miniature, all inside one small county seat.
Visitor Checklist
- Confirm the current year’s fair book; every time is Mountain Time
- Aim for Carson, the county seat, not Elgin, the county’s largest city
- Navigate the grounds by building names, since the books locate events that way
- Treat the rodeo gate as a rodeo gate only, never as a general fair admission price
- Treat the ranch rodeo’s free admission as that event’s term only, never as a free fair
- Carry money for activity prices such as the barbecue, the car show entry and the cornhole tournament
- Check the Saturday parade line-up north of the courthouse
- Arrange lodging separately, since no fair camping offer is published
Beyond the Festival Grounds
Carson itself is part of the visit. The parade’s line-up north of the courthouse and its Main Street route put the town centre at the heart of Saturday morning, and the evening venues, Hammer Down and The Seat, keep the fair’s social life on Main Street after the grounds quieten.
Why This Fair Matters
This fair shows what a county fair is when it is run as a youth programme first. The 4-H and FFA exhibitors are not a side attraction here: their interview judging opens the fair, their livestock judging fills Friday morning, their sale closes the agricultural business of Saturday, and their static exhibits fill the fair building from Thursday to Saturday.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the fair in Elgin or Carson?
The fair is in Carson, the county seat of Grant County. Elgin is the county’s largest city, and it appears in the fair record only as a sponsor town and as the home of separately listed events.
What does it cost to get into the fair?
No general admission price is published in any fair book, so no general gate figure can honestly be given. The books publish a rodeo gate of ten dollars for ages thirteen and older, five dollars for ages twelve and under and free entry for preschoolers and a free admission line for the ranch rodeo only. Neither figure is the fair’s general admission.
When is the fair held?
The fair is a mid-August, four-day, Thursday-to-Sunday event in Carson. The 2026 edition ran August 13 to 16, the 2025 edition August 14 to 17, and the 2024 edition August 15 to 18, with all times in Mountain Time.
Can visitors camp at the fairgrounds?
No camping offer for fair visitors or exhibitors is documented in any fair book, and none should be assumed. Arrange lodging separately from the fair.
What to Expect From the Next Grant County North Dakota Fair Festival
How often is Grant County North Dakota Fair Festival held?
The fair is an annual event, held once a year in mid-August in Carson. Three consecutive fair books document it in 2024, 2025 and 2026, each time as a four-day, Thursday-to-Sunday fair.
When is the next Grant County North Dakota Fair Festival?
The firmest guide is the most recent documented edition, August 13 to 16, 2026, with the pattern of a mid-August Thursday-to-Sunday fair behind it. Confirm the next edition’s dates in its own fair book.
Will the dates change?
The exact days do move from year to year within mid-August. The documented editions fall on August 15 to 18 in 2024, August 14 to 17 in 2025 and August 13 to 16 in 2026, so the Thursday-to-Sunday shape holds while the calendar dates shift. Treat mid-August as the stable fact and the individual dates as something to verify each year.
Closing
The Grant County Fair and 4-H Achievement Days is best understood as a fair that publishes itself completely and invents nothing about itself. It gives its visitors a full programme and a full set of event prices, leaving a general admission price and a founding year plainly blank. A visitor who comes to Carson in mid-August will find judging, a parade, a car show, a memorial rodeo, a street dance and a pancake breakfast, run by a county association and a county Extension office.
