The Best Summer County Fairs In Wisconsin
Pig races and goat races draw a crowd in Oshkosh every summer. Mauston runs a cattle-dressing contest that goes exactly how it sounds. Fond du Lac lets you watch a calf get born up close. This is what a Wisconsin county fair does best. The midway glows past dark and the cheese curds keep frying. Five of the best fill the eastern half of the state each summer. Here is what sets each one apart.
Brown County Fair
Here is the deal at Brown County: one ticket, around $15, gets you almost everything inside the gate. The price folds in the carnival rides, the live entertainment, and parking, so once you clear the turnstile the only things still asking for your wallet are the food stands and the games. The fair runs five days in mid-to-late August at the Brown County Fairgrounds in De Pere, right on the bank of the Fox River just south of Green Bay. That all-in pricing has turned into a real draw for families who would otherwise be rationing ride tickets all night.
The grandstand is where the week earns its keep. A PRCA-sanctioned rodeo, run with stock from Three Hills Rodeo, brings bull riding, barrel racing, and roping across its two nights, and the rest of the schedule stacks up a demolition derby, a horse pull, and truck and tractor pulls. Wander away from the grandstand and the 4-H barns take over, full of the rabbits, poultry, and cattle that kids spent the whole year raising. A petting zoo hands city kids their first nose-to-nose meeting with a farm animal. And for the over-21 crowd, a homemade wine and beer competition kicks the fair off on opening evening.
Columbia County Fair
Not many fairs in the country can count their history in centuries, and this one can. Columbia County held its first fair in 1852, the year after the local agricultural society wrote its constitution, and it has been at it ever since. The fair takes over Veterans Memorial Field in Portage the last week of July, with free admission and free parking. The carnival, run by Badgerland Midway, sells ride tickets one at a time instead of bundling them, so you can make an evening here as cheap or as loaded as you want.
The grandstand schedule is the backbone of the week: a rodeo, the Ultimate Impact demolition derby, a tuff truck competition, and the South Central Wisconsin truck and tractor pull, with single-event tickets generally landing somewhere around $10 to $25. Everything else circles the stuff that has held this fair together for generations. The barns fill up with chickens, rabbits, horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats. Food wagons line the grounds with funnel cakes and the usual fair-stand lineup. An adults-only beer-and-wine garden runs next to a car show and the children's entertainment.
The demolition derby and the rodeo are the hot tickets, and in recent years both have sold out fast once the grandstand gates open. The fair board added seating to push capacity higher, but the organizers' standing advice has not changed: show up early or plan on watching from the back.
Juneau County Fair
Mauston has run this fair for around 160 years, long enough that the 1913 headliner, a flying machine, crashed on the grounds while swerving to miss the crowd. The current version runs most of a week in mid-August and leans hard on its grandstand: a 3 Hills PRCA rodeo, an auto and truck demolition derby, ATV races, and the Juneau County Fair Parade. Carnival rides come with admission, and a draft-horse pull, car shows, and 4-H competitions fill out the rest of the days.
The kids' programming is the thing Mauston really nails. Children can sign up for a kiddie tractor pull or a pedal pull, hang around the petting zoo, or enter junior-division shows for chickens, rabbits, dogs, and cats. Farmer Games run near the horse arena, and there is a cattle-dressing contest that goes about how you would picture it. The livestock shows themselves work through the Ganther Show Pavilion across the week.
Fond du Lac County Fair
A big country headliner takes the Saturday grandstand at Fond du Lac, the top billing in a music lineup that usually books a few touring acts across the five-day run in mid-July. The concerts split the schedule with professional bull riding, barrel racing, a demolition derby, and tractor and truck pulls, which gives the grandstand a fresh reason to show up nearly every night.
Two things set this fair apart from its neighbors. The Fondy Fair 5K runs people through the grounds before the gates get crowded, and a fireworks display caps off one of the nights. The MooTernity Ward and Education Center is the other signature, an interactive space built around live calf births and hands-on activities, which is about as direct as an agricultural lesson gets at a fair. The 4-H barns add llamas, goats, and draft horses to the usual cattle, sheep, and poultry, and a livestock auction lets local farmers restock.
Past the agricultural exhibits, the schedule makes room for car shows, drill-team performances, and the championship rodeo. The food more than earns its place on the trip: cheese curds, corn dogs, and cotton candy turn up everywhere, and there is plenty of shade to eat them in before an evening show.
Winnebago County Fair
Oshkosh has run this fair since 1855, and it lands at the Sunnyview Expo Center off County Road Y. Buy admission in advance, around $12, and unlimited carnival rides come with it, which keeps the midway humming from afternoon straight into the night. Six barns of animals, an Expo Building packed with youth exhibits and vendors, and a trout pond fill the daylight hours before the grandstand takes over.
The grandstand runs a demolition derby, a tractor pull, and the CC Bucking Bulls rodeo across the week. The children's slate goes unusually deep here, with Nick's Kids Show and Barnyard Adventure, face painting by Whimbubble Studio, a portable planetarium, pig and goat races, and the Rock-N-Circus thrill show all turning up on recent schedules. Mr. Ed's Magical Midway supplies the rides and games.
The food runs the full fair spread, cheese curds and corn dogs giving way to mini donuts, kettle corn, and fresh-squeezed lemonade. The nights wind down with live local bands in the music village, the beer tents holding on until midnight as the last of the grandstand crowd drifts over.
What Keeps These Fairs Going
What ties these five together is not the rides. It is the people who pull them off. A run of more than a century and a half in Portage, and one nearly as long in Oshkosh, does not happen without volunteer boards, 4-H families, and the agricultural societies that lit the match. The mix changes at each stop, all-in pricing in De Pere and free admission in Portage, a country headliner in Fond du Lac and a deep kids' lineup in Oshkosh. The backbone holds steady though, the same one Wisconsin set down in the 1850s: pull the county together for a week around what it grows and raises.
