McLean County North Dakota Fair Festival
Underwood is not the county seat of McLean County, and that is the first thing to get right about this fair. Washburn holds the courthouse, while Underwood, a smaller town in the centre of the county, holds the fair. Its fairgrounds fill each June with livestock shows, youth exhibits, barrel racing, a ranch rodeo, speedway racing, a carnival and a petting zoo, run by a volunteer board whose president has led it for twenty years, for eleven communities.
About the Fair
The fair’s published name is the McLean County Fair, held at the McLean County Fairgrounds in Underwood. It is an annual June event, documented in Underwood from 2019 through 2026, with the most recent year carried in two listings that disagree on the opening day. Youth work sits at its centre: 4-H, FFA and Junior Points Livestock students showing animals and static exhibits for premiums and ribbons.
Quick Facts
| Item | Documented record |
| Event name | McLean County Fair |
| Fair town | Underwood, McLean County |
| County seat | Washburn, which does not host the fair |
| Grounds | McLean County Fairgrounds, Underwood |
| Grounds street address | None published in any fair-side layer |
| Fair mailing address | Post Office Box 103, Underwood |
| Season | June, annual |
| Operating body | McLean County Fair Board, all volunteers |
| Board president in 2025 | Diane Schell |
| Gate admission | No price published in any layer fetched |
Who Runs the Fair
The McLean County Fair Board runs the fair. Its president in both 2025 testimony layers, and the state grant contact, is Diane Schell, who told a Senate committee in March 2025 that she had been president for twenty years. The board is a volunteer body drawn from across the county, funded by one mill of the county budget, with the rest raised through sponsorships, fees and grants. No separate fair association name form appears in any layer fetched, and none is used here.
The board’s own account is the fullest description the record offers: livestock, horse, rabbit and poultry shows, barrel racing, a ranch rodeo and a petting zoo, with 4-H, FFA and Junior Points Livestock students earning premiums and ribbons, and individuals and schools also receiving premiums for static work. Around that core, the board’s letters list a carnival, car racing, music, magic and circus acts, kiddie tractor pulls, pig racing, birds of prey, and Native American dancers from White Shield and New Town over several years, not one year’s bill.
McLean County Speedway, the Max Rodeo Club, Extension and the county keep their own roles and never run the fair.
For a useful comparison, see the McKenzie County North Dakota Fair Festival for another county festival.
A Fair Described in Its Own Testimony
The only founding-era claim published for this fair is the board’s own billing, in a House testimony letter dated January 30, 2025: the McLean County Fair was established sixty-nine years ago in Underwood. Recorded exactly as billed, it yields no founding year, no first fair, and no edition number or anniversary billing. Later anchors: the fair ran in June 2019, June 2024, June 2025 and June 2026, and received a state infrastructure grant in July 2025. No continuous run back to the sixty-nine-year billing is constructed from them.
On July 10, 2025, the state’s county-fair resiliency award list named the fair for forty thousand six hundred eighteen dollars to upgrade facilities, with Diane Schell as the contact. The board had already itemised its grounds needs in January 2025 testimony: bleachers for track and arena, a food-booth suppression system, restroom updates, a fence on the east side beside US Highway 83, and a larger all-seasons barn with a show ring, office space and restrooms to replace a barn, an open-air pole barn and two beef tie-outs. That barn remains a plan in the January 2025 layer, and the needs list records things sought, never works completed.
What to Expect
Livestock, Horses and Youth Exhibits
The exhibit side is the fair’s backbone: livestock, horse, rabbit and poultry shows, with 4-H, FFA and Junior Points Livestock students showing animals and static exhibits for premiums and ribbons. The testimony layers describe the fairground as used numerous times throughout the year.
The Ranch Rodeo
The ranch rodeo is the fair’s signature arena event, best documented in the fair’s own 2025 sponsorship sheet. In 2025 it took place on Sunday, June 15 at two in the afternoon in the fairgrounds arena, organised in that layer by Jeremiah Reiser of Washburn, a programme-element organiser in that sheet only and never the fair’s president or general contact. Eight to twelve four-person teams contested Steer Mugging, Range Branding, Wild Cow Milking, Trailer Loading and Trailer Relay Race, with Mutton Busting for children. The sheet recalls the previous year: more than three hundred in attendance, nine teams, more than twenty children sheep riding, and one thousand two hundred dollars in Father’s Day prizes, a 2024 recollection inside a 2025 sheet. Sponsorship tiers ran at one thousand two hundred fifty dollars, seven hundred fifty dollars, three hundred dollars and one hundred fifty dollars, sponsorships in their layer and never visitor prices.
Barrel Racing and Speedway Racing
Barrel racing and car racing give the fair its timed, competitive edge. The cooperative calendar’s rodeo preview for 2026 fixes a Barrel Race on June 13, exhibition at ten in the morning and racing at noon, and a Ranch Rodeo on June 14 at two in the afternoon, also celebrating Flag Day and the United States’ two hundred fiftieth anniversary that year. Stock-car racing at McLean County Speedway headlines the fair’s doubleheader weekend in the racing body’s report, which calls its June 13, 2026 feature, the Tony Kniffen Memorial, the race that headlined that weekend, a fair-weekend element in its wording, never a fair-published schedule.
Carnival, Music and Family Attractions
The lighter side comes from one fully itemised year. In 2019, under the slogan Rain or Shine, it is Fair Time, the fair-tab listing carried the Mighty Thomas Carnival, speedway racing, the Rocky Top Petting Zoo, a Kiddie Tractor Pull, Fun Bingo, a Run and Walk, Daryl’s Racing Pigs, the Magic of Keith Raymond, music by Jesse Veeder, County Road 7 and Sound Exchange, and the Barrel Bash sponsored by the Max Rodeo Club. Every item there belongs to 2019 and to no other year. An undated magazine preview adds a powwow, a ranch rodeo and a parade from the fairgrounds through downtown, but names no year and is never used as any year’s schedule.
Planning Your Visit
Getting to the Grounds
The fairgrounds stand in Underwood, centrally located in McLean County. No fair-side layer publishes a street address for the grounds, so none is printed here. Two postal boxes must not be confused with a grounds address or with each other: Post Office Box 103 is the fair’s mailing address on its testimony letterhead, while Post Office Box 772 is the payment box on the camping form alone. Washburn holds the courthouse, not the fair, and Garrison, the county’s largest city, likewise never hosts the fair in any fair-side layer.
Dates and Timing
June is the fair’s season, and only June should be treated as settled. The dated layers are: June 14, 15 and 16 in 2019; June 14 to 16 in 2024 in a post-fair photo caption; June 13 to 15 in 2025 in the cooperative calendar; and, for 2026, two layers left unmerged, June 11 to 14 in an entry-system listing against June 12 to 14 in the cooperative calendar. No layer reconciles the eleventh of June. The fair’s website schedule page currently shows no schedule and proves no date. Confirm the current year’s dates in its own listing.
Admission and Other Costs
No gate admission price for this fair is published in any North Dakota layer fetched, so this article prints no gate figure and never calls the fair free. What the testimony documents is that a gate exists and is growing: the House letter of January 2025 states that gate admission and exhibit numbers keep increasing. The money documented around the fair belongs to other purposes: ranch rodeo sponsorship tiers, the state grant of forty thousand six hundred eighteen dollars, and board mill-levy and sponsorship funding are budgets, grants and sponsorships, never visitor prices. Parking prices are likewise unpublished in every North Dakota layer fetched.
Camping at the Fairgrounds
Camping is the one visitor matter on which this fair publishes its own terms, from its own camping registration form. The form is undated in the fetched layer, so its terms are recorded as the fair’s current published form, not any named year’s price list. It sets the amount due at twenty-five dollars per night, and it covers tents, pop-up campers, fifth-wheel and travel trailers, motor homes and pickups. Only one vehicle per camper is allowed on site, fitting within the assigned spot, with additional vehicles parked outside the fairgrounds. Checkout is at one in the afternoon, with a Sunday exception until nine in the evening, after which another night must be paid for. Spots are not reserved until payment is received, and payment may be made by PayPal, with a three percent fee applying to PayPal transactions, or by check or cash sent to the form’s payment box. No hookup, water, sewer or electric terms, no site count and no season are stated on the form, and none are supplied here; the form never says camping is limited to fair week, so it is described neither as a fair-week-only offer nor as a year-round one. Area campgrounds filling during the fair is a separate remark, not a fair offer.
A Sample Day at the Fair
Take a fair Saturday as the fullest shape the record supports. Arrive in the morning for the livestock and youth exhibits, where the barns and show areas carry the work the county’s young exhibitors have prepared. Spend the middle of the day among the static exhibits and the vendor and craft areas. Keep the afternoon for the arena, where barrel racing or the ranch rodeo, in their year, gives the day its centre, and stay into the evening for speedway racing and the carnival lights. The sample day is a shape, not a schedule.
How This Fair Compares
Most fairs publish a gate ladder, a founding story or a fairgrounds street address, and this fair publishes none of the three. Its gate price is unpublished in every layer, its founding claim is a single sentence of board billing that must not be turned into a year, and its grounds carry a name and a town but no street address. What it publishes instead is unusually direct: a volunteer board testifying in person for its own fair, a state grant tied to grounds improvements the board itself itemised, and a camping form with its terms stated plainly.
Visitor Checklist
- Aim for Underwood, not Washburn, which is the county seat and not the fair town
- Treat June as the season and confirm the current year’s dates in its own listing
- Expect no published gate price, and never assume the fair is free
- Navigate by the fairgrounds name and town, since no street address is published
- Keep the two postal boxes apart: one is the fair’s mailing address, the other the camping form’s payment box only
- For camping, follow the form’s own terms: twenty-five dollars per night, one vehicle per camper, checkout at one in the afternoon with the Sunday exception
- Check the current year’s rodeo and racing bills, since dated items belong to their own years
- Remember the fair is run by volunteers, and that its youth exhibits are its centre
Beyond the Festival Grounds
Underwood itself is part of the visit: a smaller town becoming a fair town for a weekend, drawing all eleven of the county’s communities to fairgrounds that sit centrally in the county. The town’s streets and gathering places absorb the fair crowd. The fairgrounds, not the courthouse town, are the centre of the weekend.
Why This Fair Matters
This fair matters because it is run by the people of the county it serves. A volunteer board, led for twenty years by the same president, brings eleven communities together each June, gives young exhibitors a place to earn premiums and ribbons, and then goes before the legislature to argue for its own grounds. The state answered with a grant for facility upgrades. That exchange is the fair’s real story: a small county fair documented in testimony, forms and sheets, keeping its gaps visible alongside its strengths.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the fair in Washburn or Underwood?
The fair is in Underwood, at the McLean County Fairgrounds. Washburn is the county seat but does not host the fair; neither does Garrison, the largest city.
What does it cost to get into the fair?
No gate admission price is published in any North Dakota layer fetched, for any year, so no gate figure can honestly be given here. The testimony states only that gate admission and exhibit numbers keep increasing, and the fair is never described as free.
When is the fair held?
The fair is an annual June event in Underwood. The layers give June 14 to 16 in 2019 and 2024, June 13 to 15 in 2025, and two conflicting layers for 2026, June 11 to 14 and June 12 to 14.
Can visitors camp at the fairgrounds?
Yes, on the fair’s camping form: twenty-five dollars per night, one vehicle per camper, payment before reservation, checkout at one in the afternoon, with a nine in the evening Sunday exception. The form states no hookup terms, no site count and no season, and none are added here.
What to Expect From the Next McLean County North Dakota Fair Festival
How often is McLean County North Dakota Fair Festival held?
The fair is an annual event, held once a year in June in Underwood. The record shows it in June 2019, June 2024, June 2025 and June 2026.
When is the next McLean County North Dakota Fair Festival?
The firmest guide is the pattern of a June fair in Underwood, with the most recent year’s listings in conflict on the opening day. Confirm the next edition’s dates in its own listing, since the two 2026 layers were never reconciled.
Will the dates change?
Individual dates shift between editions within June. The layers fall on June 14 to 16 in 2019 and 2024, June 13 to 15 in 2025, and a disputed June 11 to 14 or June 12 to 14 in 2026, so June is the stable fact and the individual dates need verifying each year.
Closing
The McLean County Fair is best understood as a fair that speaks for itself through its board: a volunteer-run June weekend in Underwood, youth exhibits and livestock at its centre, a ranch rodeo and barrel racing in its arena, speedway racing and a carnival, and camping terms stated plainly on its own form. It prints no gate price, claims no founding year beyond its board’s billing, and publishes no street address for its grounds. A visitor who comes to Underwood in June, after confirming the current year’s dates, will find a county fair run by its own communities, with its gaps in plain view.
