Huntingdon County Fair

The Huntingdon County Fair runs August 9 through August 15, 2026, at the Huntingdon County Fairgrounds — a seven-day agricultural event in south-central Pennsylvania’s Juniata Valley that covers the full range of what a working county fair does well: livestock competition, agricultural exhibitions, carnival rides, live entertainment, and the community social functions that rural Pennsylvania has organized around its fairs since the 19th century. Admission for children under 10 is free; paid parking is available at the grounds. The fairgrounds sit within one of Pennsylvania’s most productive agricultural valleys, where the Juniata River cuts through the ridge-and-valley topography of the Appalachian foldbelt — a landscape that gives Huntingdon County its specific character as a place where farming and outdoor recreation coexist productively alongside one of the state’s most remarkable recreational lakes.

A Week of Programming

The Demolition Derby runs on both Monday and Saturday evenings — the fair’s highest-energy spectator events and the programming most reliably associated with the compressed excitement that no other agricultural entertainment format achieves. Tuesday evening features Echo Valley with bluegrass music in the tradition that Huntingdon County’s Appalachian mountain culture has sustained with consistency. Wednesday’s Talent Show provides the local community performance platform that county fairs have preserved better than any other American event format. Saturday night’s live music by Chris Woodward and Shindiggin closes the week’s entertainment arc. Throughout all seven days, the agricultural exhibition program covers the livestock judging, produce competition, and 4-H youth programming that represent the fair’s oldest and most institutionally serious programming track.

Raystown Lake: The Region’s Defining Water

Raystown Lake, 11 miles south of Huntingdon off US-22, covers 8,300 acres — the largest lake entirely within Pennsylvania and a Corps of Engineers impoundment whose 118 miles of shoreline through forested ridges gives it a physical quality that most Pennsylvania lakes cannot match. The lake’s striper bass fishery has developed into one of the most productive in the state since the fish were introduced in 1973, drawing serious anglers from across the mid-Atlantic region. Raystown Lake Family Resort and Downstream Campground, operated by the Army Corps of Engineers, provide accessible lake recreation infrastructure including boat launches, swimming areas, and camping at multiple points around the shoreline.

Where to Eat in Huntingdon and the Raystown Lake Region

The Mill Stone Family Restaurant (Huntingdon, open since 2008) is the most consistently reviewed full-service dining room in the immediate Huntingdon area, with a menu running the regional Pennsylvania comfort tradition — the house pot roast with house-made egg noodles, the slow-roasted turkey breast plate with house stuffing and cranberry, and the house apple dumpling with warm cinnamon cream sauce are the kitchen’s most specifically regional preparations and the dishes that most visitors cite on first-time accounts. For a lakeside dining experience, Smilin’ Bob’s (the restaurant operated within the Raystown Lake resort corridor) covers the marina casual format with lake perch sandwiches and hand-pressed burgers that serve the boating community through the summer season.

Points of Interest for Families

Raystown Lake’s Seven Points Recreation Area (7 Points Rd., Hesston, operated by the Army Corps of Engineers) provides the most complete family recreation infrastructure on the lake — a full-service marina, sandy swimming beach, boat rentals including pontoon boats and kayaks, hiking trails through the surrounding ridge forest, and a visitor center covering the lake’s construction history and the Raystown Branch of the Juniata River that it flooded. The scale of the lake’s ridge-enclosed geometry — long, narrow arms of water between forested Appalachian ridges — gives families an aerial-map-like visual experience from the overlook trails that contextualizes the landscape in a way that shoreline access alone cannot. The Slinky Factory Museum in Hollidaysburg (20 miles west of Huntingdon, open seasonally), documenting the invention of the Slinky toy by Huntingdon County native Richard James in 1943, is a compact and enthusiastically received family museum stop for children of any age.

Book Your Stay on the Lake

Raystown Lake’s shoreline supports the most complete vacation rental market within Huntingdon County, with lakefront properties suited for both the fair’s week-long run and the surrounding outdoor recreation calendar. Search Lake.com for properties on Raystown Lake to find homes and cottages within easy reach of the fairgrounds and the lake’s Seven Points recreation corridor.