The Franklin County Fair

The Franklin County Fair fills the fairgrounds on East Main Street in Malone for nine days in August, with livestock barns, 4-H shows, a midway and a grandstand show every day. The Franklin County Agricultural Society, formed in 1851, has held it since 1852; it draws more than 70,000 visitors a year, and it is the county fair of Farmer Boy. The 2026 fair ran August 8 to 16, and the grounds are about ten road miles from the cabins, roughly twenty minutes by car.

How the fair began

Franklin County had an agricultural society before this one. Formed in 1820, with Joseph Plumb of Bangor as president, it paid premiums for animals, crops and a few manufactured goods, and even for the best fields and the best-run farms, which its committees visited to judge. The first year's prizes came to $106.50, and the state paid $87 of it. The society printed a premium list in 1826, but there is no report of a fair that year or after, and it seems to have ended then.

The society that runs the fair today began on August 26, 1851. A call signed by about a hundred farmers and others brought a county meeting together that day, and the members wrote into their constitution that the society would start its work "from this 26th day of August, A. D., 1851." Sidney Lawrence of Moira was chosen president. It was too late in the season for a fair, so the first one was held on October 6 and 7, 1852, on a grain field on a plain half a mile east of the village. William Andrus lent the ground free for five years, asking only that the society fence it and clear the stones. That first fair offered $467 in premiums but paid out only $263, $44 of it for crops, and many winners took home a diploma instead of cash; admissions brought in $437.31, memberships $250 and the state $50. The judges gave 81 awards for farm animals, 33 for manufactured goods, 32 for bread, fruit and household goods, 16 for dairy goods, 8 for poultry, 8 for farm tools and 3 at a plowing match.

It caught on. The second fair drew an estimated five to six thousand people over two days of bad weather. By 1853 there was a race track a third of a mile around, a $20 purse for trotters, and advertised Indian foot races and a game of lacrosse, and the railroad carried livestock and exhibits to the fair free, at the owners' risk. In 1854 came music, a riding competition for women and two trotting races; two more races the day after the fair were announced as no part of it, and all betting on the grounds was banned. Not everyone approved anyway, and some local pulpits condemned the fairs as sinful amusements. The grounds started at seven acres, grew to ten around 1856, when the society agreed to buy them for $1,000, and covered about 25 acres by 1918.

The fair's own numbering runs ahead of that record. It marked a 175th anniversary in 2025 and billed 2026 as its 176th fair, numbers that point back to 1850 or 1851. Counting from the first fair in 1852 and leaving out 1862, when the Civil War stopped it, the 2026 fair was at most the 174th.

The fair in Farmer Boy

The county fair in chapter 21 of Farmer Boy is this one. The book is set around 1866, which makes it the fifteenth fair by the society's count, and in the book Almanzo's milk-fed pumpkin wins first prize. The record is less generous. The Malone Palladium reported that the 1866 fair ran from October 2 to 4, and the $1 premium for the best pumpkin went to George W. Child; no newspaper from the Wilders' years in the county shows a Wilder winning a first prize of any kind.

The dates are the other surprise. In 1866 the fair ran three days in early October; today it runs nine days in August. The book keeps the old order, with County Fair coming after the chapters Early Harvest and Late Harvest and before Fall of the Year. The county historical society's marker at East Main and Raymond streets gives both facts in a line: held here since 1852, and described by Laura Ingalls Wilder in Farmer Boy.

Another Farmer Boy ran at an early fair. A few years after the first fairs, a horse of that name, owned by William Lowe, raced a Black Hawk stallion called Flying Cloud, owned by Gardner A. Child, in a time of about 2:50, thought wonderfully fast at the time. Flying Cloud won.

The farm where the book's pumpkin grew, now the Almanzo Wilder Farm, is about four road miles east of the fairgrounds. In August it gives tours Wednesday to Sunday, so the farm and the fair fit into one day.

War years on the fairgrounds

The Civil War reached the fairgrounds before it stopped the fair. While Franklin County raised its seven companies of the 98th New York Volunteers, in 1861 and early 1862, the men were quartered as they enlisted in barracks built on the grounds, named Camp Franklin, with the officers' offices in the old floral hall. An order from the adjutant general allowed 30 cents a day per man for food, and sutlers sold supplies on the grounds, which the men paid for themselves. The regiment was mustered in on February 4, 1862, and left Malone for the South on February 21. That year the fair was skipped, the only year without one between 1852 and 1918. The barracks stayed in use. In 1865 a cavalry company raised in Malone for border defense spent part of its three months in town on the fairgrounds, and a company of veterans from Vermont or Massachusetts, men no longer fit for the front, lived in the barracks there. When the fair came back after its one missed year, the society numbered the 1863 fair as if one had been held in 1862, so its count ran one ahead of the true number.

A year after the war the grounds held a different army. In the first days of June 1866, the year Farmer Boy is set, two thousand or more Fenians, Irish nationalists planning to invade Canada, came into Malone by train and camped together on the fairgrounds. In May 1870, after the Fenians were routed near Trout River, the men who came back camped on the grounds again. The marker on East Main Street names the fairgrounds as a marshalling site for both raids, and Malone's history tells the whole story.

From trotting races to tractor pulls

Racing grew with the fair. By 1918 the society had built one of the best half-mile tracks in the state, a grandstand, cattle sheds, barns and exhibition halls. It paid $10,500 a year in purses for speed contests and three to four thousand dollars in premiums for exhibits, and the four days of the 1917 fair took in $28,352.82. In the best years as many as 25,000 people were on the grounds in a single day, and former residents came home for it every year, which made fair week something of an old-home week. The society kept no profits for anyone; everything went back into buildings, grounds, premiums and attractions.

Trotting mattered because this was horse country. The county was known for fine driving horses, Morgans for a long time and later the Hambletonian and Phil Sheridan lines, and in the 1870s and 1880s buyers from New England and New York City came every summer to pay $500 to $1,500 for a matched pair. Local horses made names for themselves. Lady Franklin, from Fort Covington, raced with great success in 1864 and 1865, with a best record of 2:31, and three or four years later A. R. Flanagan's Dutch Girl, with a record of about 2:30, sold to the governor of Rhode Island for $10,000. The Morgans are the horses the Wilders drove to town in Farmer Boy.

Harness racing still comes to the track. The New York Sire Stakes, the state's racing series for two- and three-year-old trotters and pacers sired by New York stallions, runs a circuit of county-fair race days each summer, and in 2026 its Malone date was Monday, August 3, at 1 p.m., the week before the fair opened. The motor sports came later. The fair held its first tractor pull in 1964, and by 1987 the demolition derby was one of its most popular events. In each of the last three years the derby has opened the fair on its first Saturday.

The barns and the livestock shows

The barns are still the center of the fair. The fair book runs from saddle horses, beef and dairy cattle, sheep, goats and poultry to farm produce, baked and canned goods, Grange and Home Bureau booths and domestic arts, and the society still works by departments, each with its own head, from cattle, goats, poultry, sheep, race horses and saddle horses to the Vegetable Hall, the demolition derby and the truck and tractor pulls. Animals come in at the start of the week and stay until the closing Sunday; in 2026 beef cattle had to be in place by Sunday noon and dairy cattle by Tuesday noon. Most of the judging happens in the second half of the week, and the 2026 schedule shows the pattern:

• Thursday, August 13: the open beef cattle show at 10 a.m.
• Friday, August 14: 4-H youth beef showmanship and conformation at 10 a.m., and 4-H youth dairy classes for all breeds at 1 p.m.
• Saturday, August 15: the open dairy show for all breeds at 9 a.m., and the open sheep show, also at 9.
• Wednesday to Friday: the open English and Western horse shows, after the 4-H horse show earlier in the week, with barrel races, figure-eight stake races and a pony egg-and-spoon race among the classes.

Come in the morning, when most of the shows start. Exhibitors in the saddle horse barns also compete for the best-decorated stalls, so the barns are worth a walk even between classes. The prize money is still modest: in the 2026 sheep show first place paid $15, second $10 and third $5, with ribbons down to fifth, and the whole horse department offered $6,536 in premiums.

Exhibit halls, the 4-H building and the midway

The Vegetable Hall opens daily from about 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., except while judges are at work, and holds the prize produce, canned goods and baked goods. Farm produce is judged before the gates open, on the Thursday before the fair in 2026, so the winners are already marked on opening day; the baked and canned goods are judged in rounds over the first five days, and everything stays on display until the Monday after the fair. The Grange building fills with booths by Granges, Home Bureau units and special-interest groups. Cornell Cooperative Extension's 4-H Youth Building has the 4-H club exhibits and, in 2026, daily hands-on activities for children, among them a Lego table, a moon sand table and a build-a-tower pit.

The midway brings carnival rides and games from midday into the night; in 2024 the rides ran from noon to 11 p.m. Ride tickets and food are paid for separately from gate admission. In 2026 the fair also set off fireworks on its opening Saturday night, just outside the grounds.

The grandstand

Every day of the fair has a show at the Coors Light Grandstand, in front of the track. The order shifts a little from year to year, but in 2025 and 2026 the shape held: the demolition derby on the opening Saturday, truck and tractor pulls on the first Monday and the closing Sunday, the Miss Franklin County pageant and a talent show on Tuesday, and the big concerts Thursday through Saturday. The 2025 headliners were Sawyer Brown, Cooper Alan, and Blue Öyster Cult with Foghat. The 2026 lineup and adult grandstand prices:

The rodeo came from the Painted Pony Championship Rodeo, which runs a summer-long rodeo with bull riding at Lake Luzerne, near Lake George, and the Black Cat Hell Drivers brought a stunt-driving show of jumps, tricks and precision driving. The Monday pull ran with the Northern New York pullers in eight classes, among them street gas, two-wheel drive, hot farm, street diesel and super stock. In 2024 the concerts were Jackson Dean, 38 Special, and Lonestar with Diamond Rio, and that week also had wrestling and monster trucks.

Children 5 to 12 paid $5 to $10 for the derby, the rodeo, the pulls and the thrill show, and children under 5 got in free with an adult. For the 2026 concerts the gates opened at 5:30 p.m., grandstand seats were first come, first served, the track was standing room only, and alcohol was not allowed in the grandstand for the Dylan Marlowe show. Grandstand tickets are not refundable. Concert tickets bought online in 2026 included gate admission to the fair; bought at the fair on the day of the show, they did not. The same online page sold combination tickets that bundled gate admission with the derby, the rodeo, the pulls or the thrill show.

Gate admission and parking

The fair charges gate admission by the day and has sold a pass for the week. Its 2026 gate price was not posted on the fair's website, but the online combination tickets, gate plus a grandstand show, cost $10 more than the show alone. In 2024 a day's gate admission was $8 and a week pass $50, the grounds opened at 8 a.m., and the gates were free on the Friday before the fair and on Tuesday, senior citizens' day. Parking was free that year. Rides, food and grandstand shows cost extra, and prices change every year, so check the fair's ticket page before you go.

The fair with children

For a family, the cost is mostly rides, food and the grandstand. In 2025 and 2026 children 12 and under got through the gate free all week. In 2024 Monday and Wednesday were children's days, and in 2025 some children's days brought reduced ride prices. The Tuesday pageant and talent show were free for everyone in 2026. Some years bring a show for small children: in 2025 the Wednesday grandstand act was Blippi. The demolition derby, the thrill show and the pulls are loud, so bring ear protection for children. The 4-H Youth Building is the place for a break, with its hands-on tables and its own food stand.

Fair food

Expect the usual fair food: fried dough, cotton candy, corn dogs and barbecue. In past years the stands have also sold poutine and Michigans, the region's own style of hot dog, and the 4-H Youth Building runs its own stand, Clover Corner Eats. For a sit-down meal before a night show, Malone's restaurants on Main Street and Route 11 are a few minutes' drive from the gate; see where to eat.

Other events at the fairgrounds

• Auto show and craft fair. The Agricultural Society's 10th annual auto show and craft fair filled the grounds on June 6 and 7, 2026, with free admission for all ages.
• Harness racing. The Sire Stakes race day on the track the week before the fair, August 3 in 2026.
• The fair office. The society's office at the fairgrounds, 606 East Main Street, keeps weekday hours from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.; call (518) 483-0720 or email info@frcofair.com.

Planning a fair day from the cabins

The fairgrounds are close enough that you do not have to see the whole fair at once. A day that works:

1. Morning. Later in the week, get there for the livestock and horse shows, which start between 8 and 10 a.m., and walk the barns, then the Vegetable Hall, which opens around 10, and the 4-H Youth Building.
2. Midday. Lunch on the grounds. From Wednesday to Sunday, the Wilder farm's 2 p.m. tour is about four road miles away.
3. Afternoon. Back to the cabin for a rest and the hot tub, about twenty minutes away. On a hot day, stop instead at Malone Memorial Recreation Park on Duane Street, around Rotary Lake, which has picnic tables, a paved loop trail of about a mile and a swimming pool completed in 2025; check the pool's hours before you count on a swim.
4. Evening. Return for the grandstand show and the midway after dark. In 2026 the weeknight shows started between 6 and 7 p.m., and the concert gates opened at 5:30.

Bring a warm layer for the grandstand. Malone's average August high is 75°F and its average low 55°F, so an evening in the stands can turn cool. Dogs were not allowed on the fairgrounds during fair week in 2026, so plan for the dog to stay at the cabin; all three cabins take pets for a fee, and bringing your dog has the rest. After a late show the drive back is short and the hot tub is waiting; see stargazing from the hot tub for the sky overhead.

Each cabin sleeps four, and two families with children 10 and up can take The Modern Pine and The Aviator, which share one property. Book fair week early; see family trips and the three cabins compared.

Getting there

The fairgrounds are at 606 East Main Street, at the east end of the village on the south side of the street. From the cabins the shortest way is County Route 25 north for about four and a half miles, then right on River Road, which becomes Andrus Street and ends at East Main Street beside the grounds, about 9.7 road miles in all. Going through the village center on Duane Street and Main Street is about a mile longer and passes the shops. Allow about twenty minutes, and leave extra time on concert nights. If you have dinner downtown first, the fairgrounds are a little over half a mile east of the Main Street bridge along East Main Street; the Malone town guide covers the village.

Practical notes

• Stewart's Shops, the convenience-store and gas chain, has a store at 554 East Main Street, just west of the fairgrounds.
• Kinney Drugs, with a pharmacy, is at 485 East Main Street, for sunscreen or anything left at the cabin.
• The nearest emergency department is at UVM Health's Alice Hyde Medical Center, 133 Park Street in Malone, open around the clock.
• Wash hands after the animal barns, children especially, before anyone eats.
• Groceries for the cabin are in Malone too; see groceries and supplies.

Dates ahead

The fair is usually in August. In each of the last three years it ran nine days, from a Saturday to the second Sunday after it: August 3 to 11 in 2024, August 2 to 10 in 2025 and August 8 to 16 in 2026. The 2027 dates had not been posted in early October 2026, when the fair's website listed no upcoming events, so check the fair's website or the events calendar before you book. Summer at the cabins has the rest of the season, and Farmer Boy country pairs the fair with the farm and the village for a family day.

Questions

Sources

Facts on this page were checked against these sources in October 2026. Hours, fees and schedules change; confirm before you go.

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