Oneida County Idaho Renaissance Faire Festival
The documented record for this event covers two editions and no more. Local layers describe the Malad Valley Renaissance Faire, held at Malad Valley Heritage Square in Samaria in 2022 and again in 2023, with an intention voiced in 2022 to make it annual if possible. That intention is not a continuing run. No edition for 2024, 2025 or 2026 was found in any layer; searches for those years returned only the 2022 and 2023 material and unrelated faires elsewhere. Its return remains undocumented rather than assumed.
About the Malad Valley Renaissance Faire
The published names stay unmerged here. The full form, printed in a local news invitation in April 2023 and a heritage-news layer in April 2022, is Malad Valley Renaissance Faire and Baby Animal Spring Festival. The short form, Malad Valley Renaissance Faire, appears in a 2023 destination listing and in community-report minutes from that year. A post-event headline from 2023 uses Renaissance Fair and Baby Animal Festival, and the 2023 invitation body once writes that the Renaissance Fair is proud to introduce a new attraction, so Fair and Faire both appear as printed. The word Festival in the sheet title appears in no layer as part of a standalone Renaissance Faire Festival name. In the full published name, Festival belongs to the paired Baby Animal Spring Festival component.
Samaria, the venue community, lies in Oneida County southwest of Malad City, and Samaria is not the county seat, since Malad City holds that role. News layers place the event in Samaria or at Samaria’s Heritage Square, while the destination listing prints the venue’s postal locality as Malad City. The layers never resolve the difference between those forms.
Quick Facts
| Item | Documented record |
| Published short name | Malad Valley Renaissance Faire |
| Published full name | Malad Valley Renaissance Faire and Baby Animal Spring Festival |
| Venue | Malad Valley Heritage Square in Samaria |
| Community and county | Samaria, in Oneida County, southwest of Malad City |
| Documented editions | 2022 and 2023 only |
| 2022 dates | 29 to 30 April 2022 |
| 2023 dates | Friday 5 May and Saturday 6 May 2023 |
| Host named for 2022 | Luke Waldron |
| Counted attendance | No counted figure published in either year |
History of the Faire at Heritage Square
Two printed descriptions make 2022 the first edition. A local news report published in May 2022 calls it the valley’s first Renaissance Faire, and a heritage-news layer from April 2022 calls the weekend of 29 to 30 April 2022 the square’s first major event. The 2023 edition was billed, in the April 2023 invitation headline, as second annual. No founding organisation or founding-year statement exists beyond that record, and the square’s 2018 start, reported in a 2022 heritage-trust layer, belongs to the square alone, never to the faire.
Luke Waldron had initially planned a smaller-scale spring animal fair at Heritage Square, and hosted the event. The renaissance half came from local high school students in Donna Whipple’s Shakespeare and his Times class, who proposed the renaissance elements, essentially developed and arranged the renaissance components, helped design the weekend, and served as the faire’s royalty. Post-event reporting described a weekend busy and bigger than anyone had intended, with no counted attendance figure.
For a useful comparison, see the Oneida County Idaho Malad Valley Welsh Festival for another county festival.
No organisation is named as the faire’s organiser in any news layer. The 2023 invitation’s fundraiser sentence is not an organiser credit: it says this Faire and other special events are fundraisers for the Heritage Square Foundation and Malad Valley Renaissance Faire, and that proceeds will be used to pay for professional entertainers. A separate layer describes the square as a nonprofit owned by the Samaria Community Foundation and overseen by Waldron. Ownership, oversight and organisation are different claims, and the layers support only the first two. Long sponsor lists were printed for both years, but sponsors are not organisers.
The square’s street address presents a direct conflict, recorded here without using any street form at all. One layer’s form looks transposed against another’s, with different road designations in a different order. The venue is therefore identified only as Malad Valley Heritage Square in Samaria.
What to Expect From the Documented Editions
For 2022, the pre-event layer promised music, magic and a medieval fighting performance, alongside baby farm animals: chicks, lambs, calves and a pony foal visitors could name. The post-event report then describes the held weekend: an archery range and an archery contest in three categories, beginner, intermediate and advanced; a battle arena; pony rides; musical and dramatic performances; kite making, candle dipping, bracelet making, storytelling, face painting, period-specific games such as Liar’s Dice, a dragon stories reading room, caricatures, sword demonstrations and baby animals. The student king and queen were the two highest-ranked students in the class. A Quest band system let guests join events including the battle arena and the archery contest.
The Teton Skye group came from Idaho Falls, Andrew Wonder appeared under the billing the Time Traveling Curator of Antiquities and Oddities, and the improv group Antics came from Logan, Utah. The report also carried a teaser for a coming Midsummer Night’s Dream performance. Vendors named for 2022 were Geek Granny’s Gifts, The Wobbly Goblet Pottery, Brave Boar Leather, Celtic Gardens, Seadragon Cove, Enchanted Hollow Alpacas, Reclaimed Repurposed Bows and Arrows, and Ganache.
The 2023 programme kept a Royal Court of a king and queen, princesses, nobles and jesters, and added two attractions presented as new that year. Princess Parties were a tea party with princesses including Snow White, Beauty, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, with a souvenir pendant necklace, snack, drink, photographs and a skit. The Royal Banquet was a dinner show with the Royal Court and the jousting Knights of Mayhem, including a fire breathing show. The Knights headlined, billed in the post-event report as World Class Jousting Champions and fronted by Captain Charlie “Sir Charles” Andrews, billed as a twelve-time reigning World Champion. Those championship descriptions are performer billings, recorded as billings.
A Royal Dance ran on Saturday from eight to ten in the evening, DJ’d by CV Light and Sound, with dance instruction beforehand at quarter past seven. The fire breathing show was given by Pyro Paris and a partner whose name is printed two ways, as Mather Reeves in the 2023 invitation and as Matthew Reeves in the post-event report; both forms are kept as their layers give them. The Banjara Dancers gave dancing exhibitions, and Brigham’s Half-Axed and the Axeman Outpost ran axe throwing competitions. The grounds also held sword demonstrations, a Lazer Tag arena spelled Lazer in the report, Falconer-Rest Falcon Demos as printed, magic shows by Andrew Wonder, and quilting and spinning demonstrations, plus a kids castle, pony rides, a battle arena and an archery booth. The baby animals in 2023 were described as puppies, piglets, chicks, goats and other animals, a different printed list from 2022.
The 2023 report says only that hundreds of people streamed through the gates, a news description, never a counted figure.
Planning Your Visit
A reader looking at this faire today faces a verification task first, because no current edition is documented. The 2022 hope, expressed by Waldron and those involved, was to make the event an annual one if possible, and the second annual billing shows that hope carried into 2023. Nothing extends the sequence into 2024, 2025 or 2026. The honest first step is establishing whether the faire has returned at all.
The two admission years are fenced separately and never harmonised into one policy. For 2022, a pre-event layer published before the event states that the event, like all others planned for the square, will be free, and square admission generally was to be free. The 2022 post-event report publishes no admission price, so the free statement remains a pre-event statement and nothing stronger. For 2023, the invitation published twelve dollars for adults, eight dollars for youth twelve and under, and free entry for kids three and under.
Two 2023 component tickets need careful labelling, because neither is the general admission price. Princess Parties cost twenty-five dollars per seat, a price that itself includes admission to the general faire, with a five-dollar early-bird discount bringing it to twenty dollars for tickets bought before 15 April. The Royal Banquet cost thirty dollars each, and those tickets include entry into the faire. Adding either component price to a separate admission charge would double-count the entry it already carried.
A Sample Itinerary Based on the 2023 Shape
This itinerary is historical, built only on the documented shape of the second edition, and is not a schedule for any future weekend. On Friday 5 May 2023 the faire ran from two to eight in the evening, A family could have divided those hours between the archery booth, the battle arena and the baby animals, with the Royal Banquet, a dinner show held with the Royal Court, as a ticketed centrepiece. On Saturday 6 May 2023 the faire ran from ten in the morning to eight in the evening, A Saturday shaped by the record could begin with quilting and spinning demonstrations and the kids castle, move to sword demonstrations and the falcon demos as printed, pause for a Princess Party bought as a component ticket, and end with dance instruction at quarter past seven before the Royal Dance itself.
How This Faire Compares With Other Idaho Events
The Idaho Renaissance Faire in the Boise and Meridian area is a different event altogether, organised by Idaho Renaissance Faire, Incorporated, and held as a fall event in Meridian with its own themes and its own nonprofit. None of its dates, themes, organisers or ticket information belongs to the Samaria faire. The Mystic Realms Fantasy Fair, at the Bannock County Fairgrounds in Pocatello, is likewise separate. The Samaria faire is documented only as an April and May event at a community heritage square.
A Checklist Drawn From the Two Editions
- Confirm first whether any edition after 2023 has been announced, since none is documented here.
- Use the full published name, including the Baby Animal Spring Festival component.
- Keep the 2022 free-admission statement and the 2023 published prices in their separate years.
- Treat Princess Parties and the Royal Banquet prices as 2023 component tickets that already included faire entry.
- Remember that Samaria is the venue community and Malad City is the Oneida County seat.
- Leave the square’s street address unstated, because its printed forms conflict.
- Keep the Knights of Mayhem championship wording labelled as performer billing.
- Count no attendance figure for either year, because neither report published one.
Beyond the Faire Grounds at Samaria
The square hosts more than this faire, and its neighbouring events stay separate here. Samaria Days, the Fall Heritage Harvest Festival and the Fairytale Feast, listed next to the faire in the 2023 destination calendar, are separate events at the same venue. The Malad Valley Welsh Festival needs the most care, because it shares the venue and a central person, Luke Waldron, with this faire, yet remains a distinct event with a distinct programme. Shared ground and a shared central figure do not merge a Welsh festival into a renaissance faire, and dates or activities from those other events must not be attached to this faire.
Why This Small Faire Matters in Oneida County
The faire’s significance lies in how openly its two strands remain visible. A spring animal gathering planned at a smaller scale became, through a Shakespeare class, a weekend with a student king and queen, a Quest band system, archery contests in three levels and a teaser for Midsummer Night’s Dream. The venue had only gotten its start in 2018, and its first major event was this faire’s April 2022 edition. The 2023 additions, a banquet built around jousting knights and tea parties built around named storybook princesses, show a second edition reaching for professional entertainers, paid through fundraiser proceeds as the invitation described. Documented across two springs and then not documented again, that combination is Oneida County’s compact record of a community experiment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Malad Valley faire an event that still takes place each spring?
No later edition is documented. The faire was held in 2022 and billed as second annual in 2023. No edition for 2024, 2025 or 2026 was found, so continued spring editions cannot be confirmed from these layers.
Which name should a reader use for the Samaria event?
The short published form is Malad Valley Renaissance Faire, while the full form adds the paired component as Malad Valley Renaissance Faire and Baby Animal Spring Festival. Both spellings, Fair and Faire, appear in the 2023 material.
What did entry cost across the documented years at Heritage Square?
The answer stays divided by year. A pre-event layer for 2022 said the event would be free, and that year’s post-event report printed no price. The 2023 invitation instead published twelve dollars for adults, eight dollars for youth twelve and under, and free entry for kids three and under.
Who shaped the renaissance side of the first weekend in 2022?
Local high school students in Donna Whipple’s Shakespeare and his Times class proposed the renaissance elements, essentially developed and arranged those components, helped design the weekend and served as the faire’s royalty. Luke Waldron hosted the event, and no organisation is named as organiser in the news layers.
What to Expect From the Next Oneida County Idaho Renaissance Faire Festival
How often is Oneida County Idaho Renaissance Faire Festival held?
The record shows a first edition in 2022 and a second edition, billed as second annual, in 2023. A 2022 report recorded an intention to make the event an annual one if possible. No edition after 2023 is documented.
When is the next Oneida County Idaho Renaissance Faire Festival?
No next edition is confirmed. The latest documented edition ran on Friday 5 May and Saturday 6 May 2023 at Malad Valley Heritage Square in Samaria, and searches for 2024, 2025 and 2026 found no further edition.
Will the dates change?
There are no confirmed future dates that could either hold or change. The documented editions themselves used different spring weekends, 29 to 30 April in 2022 and 5 to 6 May in 2023.
Closing Note on a Two-Edition Record
The Malad Valley Renaissance Faire leaves a compact paper trail, complete with conflicting address forms, a partner’s name printed two ways, admission that changed between its two years and names that shift between Faire and Fair. Preserving those untidy details keeps the 2022 and 2023 weekends recognisable as they were actually reported. If the faire returns, its new record will begin with its own dates and prices.
