Hocking County Ohio Fair Festival
For six days each September, Logan stops being only the county seat and becomes a fair town in the fullest sense. The Hocking County Fair fills the Hocking County Fairgrounds with livestock rings, exhibit halls and a loud motor programme, run by a local agricultural society whose documented roots reach back to the middle of the nineteenth century. Its record also refuses to say some things: no edition number is billed anywhere, no gate price appears on the fair’s own pages, and the fairgrounds’ street address shifts between listings, so an honest account works with the layers exactly as they stand.
About the Fair at Logan
The organiser, in every fair-side and state layer, is the Hocking County Agricultural Society. The state audit record describes that Society as a body corporate and politic, a county agricultural society corporation formed under Chapter 1711 of the Ohio Revised Code, governed by a board of twenty-one directors serving staggered three-year terms. Those directors are elected from a membership of Hocking County residents paying an annual fee.
Working names sit beneath the Society without displacing it. Extension and local-press layers style the working body the Hocking County Fair Board, or simply the Fair Board, and the Society’s own 2026 sponsorship form names Annika Thomas as Fair Secretary and Missy Nelson as Fair Manager for that year’s fair. The Junior Fair Board brings together representatives of 4-H, FFA, Boy Scout, Girl Scout and Farm Bureau Youth organisations and answers for the Junior Fair Division, while a Junior Livestock Sale Committee handles the sale side. Neither component runs the fair; both serve the Society that does.
Partners fill bounded roles around that core. The county’s Extension service works the 4-H machinery that feeds the junior fair, yet remains a partner rather than the organiser. The midway names in the bureau layer, Bates Bros. Amusements on rides and Sterling Fundways on games, are contractors in that layer, and the county commissioners appear in the audit record as insurers of the fairgrounds buildings, a county function rather than a fair credit.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Event | Hocking County Fair |
| Host town | Logan, Ohio, which is also the county seat of Hocking County |
| Organiser | Hocking County Agricultural Society |
| Grounds | Hocking County Fairgrounds in Logan |
| Season | September, six days running Monday to Saturday |
| 2026 dates | September 14 to September 19, 2026 |
| Society record | Chapter 1711 society whose founding the state audit record gives as 1853 |
| Board | Twenty-one directors on staggered three-year terms |
| Admission | No price published on the fair’s own record |
| Livestock core | Market beef, dairy feeders, hogs, lambs, goats, rabbits, broilers and turkeys |
A History Written as a Society Record
This fair’s history, as the surviving record tells it, belongs to its society rather than to a numbered run of editions. The Ohio Auditor of State’s reports state that the Hocking County Agricultural Society was founded in 1853 to operate an annual agricultural fair. This article prints that as exactly what it is: a fact about the institution, not a founding date for any particular fair and not the seed of an edition count.
For a useful comparison, see the Highland County Ohio Fair Festival for another county festival.
The edition record is an absence. No ordinal for this fair appears in the fair’s own site text, its 2026 sponsorship form, the audit layers, the state schedules or the Extension documents behind this article. Arithmetic could manufacture a number from 1853, but no source states one, so none is claimed here and no continuous run is asserted in either direction.
One disruption-era layer does survive, fenced to its own year. In 2020, press coverage recorded the fair board voting to hold a close to normal fair under the state’s fair restrictions of that season, with the grandstand then closed for repair. That is a 2020 story about 2020 conditions, never a description of the present grounds and never evidence about any other year’s holding.
What to Expect
Thunder on the Track
The grandstand and track side of this fair leans hard into machinery. The documented programme frame names a demolition derby, moto-cross, tractor and truck pulls, a garden tractor pull, ToughTruck competition, a mud bog and auto-cross. That frame is not a dated schedule, so no day assignments are printed here.
The Junior Fair and Its Livestock Rings
Youth showing is the fair’s centre of gravity; local reporting has framed the week as the culmination of a yearlong journey for the county’s 4-H members. The Extension service’s 2026 junior fair livestock chart sets out the species system: market beef, dairy feeders, market hogs, market lambs, market goats, market rabbits, meat broiler chickens shown as a pen of two, and market turkeys, with weight minimums printed in that chart for the beef and turkey classes. Club booths are set up and judged at the Youth Center in the Extension calendar’s layer.
One special programme earns its own mention. A Day in the Ring pairs young people with special needs alongside 4-H mentors in the show ring, and the local-press layer behind it counted 125 participants. The Extension calendar for 2026 also places a 4-H Graduation, the Fair Royalty Contest and a Youth Board Hay Bale Toss at the Show Arena on Sunday, September 13 of that year, an opening-eve layer standing unmerged with the Monday-to-Saturday run.
Inside the Art Hall
The Art Hall carries the fair’s domestic and creative side. Its documented entry classes cover food, clothing, crafts, photography and flowers, made by people of Hocking County and surrounding areas, and daily shows for kids run beside the hall through the week. Commercial booths spread beyond it, filling the space under the Grandstand and spots throughout the grounds.
Evenings at the Shelter House
Night changes the fair’s register. The Shelter House hosts nightly entertainment in the documented programme frame, giving visitors a seated end to days spent on their feet. Closing shape comes from a 2023 Extension newsletter: in that year’s layer the livestock sales closed the week, a Small Animal Sale on Friday covering rabbits, broilers, geese and turkeys, then a Large Animal Sale on Saturday for beef, goat, sheep and swine. That order is printed as 2023’s, not as a timeless closing schedule.
Planning Your Visit
Finding the Fairgrounds Without a Settled Address
Aim for the Hocking County Fairgrounds in Logan and follow the fair’s own directions once in town, because the published address layers disagree. One tourism listing’s body text and its own event box print different Homer street addresses for the grounds, one naming an avenue and the other a road, with different house numbers attached, so no single street address is asserted as settled here. The fair’s mailing address, Post Office Box 142, Logan, Ohio 43138, reaches the Society by post, but a mail box is not the fairgrounds gate.
What Entry Will Cost: The Honest Answer
No gate, season-pass, parking or ride price is published in any layer the fair itself issued, so no figure in this article is the fair’s own price. One regional tourism listing’s event box does print its own wording, admission at eight dollars with rides extra at ten dollars; that box belongs to the listing, and its ten-dollar rides figure never resolves into a named wristband or ticket product. A separate 2014 layer priced that year’s fair at seven dollars including rides and described parking in that year as free, terms contradicting the listing’s rides wording and confined to 2014 here. The practical course is to ask the fair office before setting out; the fair’s own site carries contact numbers 740-603-2292 and 740-603-8333 on its contact layer.
Timing Your Arrival in Fair Week
The dated state layers give this fair a six-day Monday-to-Saturday shape in September: September 9 to September 14 in 2024, September 8 to September 13 in 2025, and September 14 to September 19 in 2026, the last agreeing across the fair’s own sponsorship form, the state-derived schedule and the tourism listing. Behind those dates sit standing frames in their own layers: a fair held each year beginning on the first Monday following Labor Day, and a weeklong September fair in the audit record’s wording. No daily gate hours appear in any fair-side layer behind this article.
A Day That Moves From Barns to Grandstand
Begin in the barns and show spaces, while the Junior Fair livestock shows give the morning its rhythm. Drift to the Youth Center side of the grounds late in the morning for club booth work and judging. Spend the early afternoon inside the Art Hall among the food, clothing, crafts, photography and flower entries, then walk the commercial booths under the Grandstand as the pathways fill. Let the midway take an hour later on, before choosing the evening’s seat: the track side when the motor bill is running, or the Shelter House when its nightly entertainment suits a slower close. That shape follows the fair’s own geography from barns to grandstand, and needs no hour-by-hour timetable, which the record does not supply.
Two Ways to Spend the Same Grounds
A show-ring follower and a track follower can attend this fair on the same days and barely cross paths. The first plans around species classes, watches market beef and lambs move through the ring, and treats the closing sales as the week’s real finale. The second arrives for the machinery, measuring the fair in derby crashes, pull distances and mud, with the grandstand as home base. Neither reading is the lesser one: the Art Hall, the concessions and the midway form the shared middle where the two fairs inside this fair keep meeting, and sampling both is the better plan.
Fair Week Checklist
- Ring the fair office on the fair’s own published contact numbers before travelling, since no gate price appears on the fair’s own record
- Work from the year’s own fair schedule for motor-event evenings, because the documented programme names the events without assigning their days
- Build one morning around the livestock barns and show spaces, where the junior fair’s year of work is easiest to read
- Leave time for the Art Hall’s food, clothing, crafts, photography and flower entries rather than treating it as a shortcut between rides
- Treat any street address printed for the grounds with care, as the listings give the Homer street address in conflicting forms
- Ask the fair office directly about overnight arrangements, for no camping terms appear in any fair-side layer available here
Beyond the Fairgrounds
Logan carries a double identity that week: it is both the county seat, home to the county courthouse, and the fair’s host town, and the fairgrounds sit within that same community rather than out in open country. The fair reads as the town’s own event rather than an import. Visitors drawn to the wider county for its scenery should keep the categories straight: the fair is a September week on one set of grounds in Logan, organised by the county’s agricultural society, standing on its own record rather than borrowing the landscape’s fame.
Why This Week Anchors the County’s Year
A fair like this one is where a rural county inspects its own skills in public. The junior programme turns a year of feeding, fitting and record-keeping into six days of judged results, and programmes such as A Day in the Ring widen that ring to young people whom a narrower fair might leave watching from the rail. Underneath it all sits the Society itself, an elected, member-owned institution still staging the week its founding purpose describes. The fair’s significance is not an edition number; it is that machinery, still turning, each September.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the fair publish its admission price?
No price issued by the fair itself was found in any layer behind this article, and the fair is not described as costing nothing either, because no layer says that. Figures in outside listings belong to those listings, in their own years and wording. The fair office, reached through the contact numbers on the fair’s own site, is the reliable place to confirm the current gate.
When is the fair held?
The fair is an annual September event in Logan with a six-day Monday-to-Saturday shape in its dated state layers. For 2026, the fair’s own sponsorship form and the state-derived schedule agree on September 14 to September 19. The Extension service’s 2026 calendar frames that week slightly differently, placing graduation, royalty and hay bale toss events at the Show Arena on Sunday, September 13, and that layer stands as its own frame rather than a correction of the run.
Who organises the fair?
The Hocking County Agricultural Society organises the fair, acting through its board of twenty-one directors elected from the resident membership. Its Junior Fair Board runs the Junior Fair Division as a component, and the county’s Extension service works alongside on the 4-H programme. Tourism promoters, midway contractors and county bodies appear in the record with narrower roles, and none of them is the organiser.
Can I camp at the fairgrounds during the fair?
No camping offer, rate, hookup term or reservation detail for this fair appears in any fair-side layer behind this article, so this article states neither that camping is available nor that it is not. Words in the state record about track and stall rental concern the grounds’ facility and livestock business, and a stall there is animal housing rather than a camper pitch. Ask the fair office what, if anything, is offered in a given year.
What to Expect From the Next Hocking County Ohio Fair Festival
How often is Hocking County Ohio Fair Festival held?
The fair is held once a year, in September, as the annual agricultural fair of the Hocking County Agricultural Society. Its dated layers show a six-day Monday-to-Saturday run in each of 2024, 2025 and 2026.
When is the next Hocking County Ohio Fair Festival?
The next fair follows the same September pattern, in the week opening on the first Monday following Labor Day, with its exact dates fixed when the Society and the state schedule publish them for that year. Later dates should be taken from the fair’s own announcements, not projected from the 2026 run.
Will the dates change?
September dates move a little from year to year: the 2024, 2025 and 2026 fairs each occupied a different September week while keeping the same Monday-to-Saturday shape. A particular year’s dates are settled only when that year’s schedule appears, so travellers should confirm them close to the fair rather than relying on a previous year’s week.
Closing
The Hocking County Fair rewards a visitor who takes its record as it comes: a society with an 1853 audit-record founding, a junior fair built species by species, a noisy motor bill, and honest gaps where prices, addresses and edition numbers would normally sit. Each September in Logan, the barns fill, the Art Hall tables load with entries, the Shelter House lights come on and the track takes its share of the noise, and the county gets the fair its society was founded to operate.
