This Labor Day Weekend Experience the Intermountain Fair in Rural McArthur, California

If you've been to one fair, you've been to them all, right? Wrong! The Intermountain Fair on Labor Day weekend is definitely a fair to remember. Of course, I might be prejudiced, having lived in McArthur and graduated from the local Fall River High School. The fair worked its way permanently into my heart the summer we moved to Day Road, a few miles outside of McArthur.

I was a teenager and we left southern California, 600 miles away to live on a piece of property that was all trees. While our house was built, my family and I lived in a big tent for six weeks. Our nearest neighbor, was somewhere out there in the woods, too far to see or hear. No friends, no electricity, no plumbing... nothing but trees. The highlight of the week was a trip to town, which included a visit to Boss's General Store, a stop at the post office to pick up the mail, and hours spent doing all the family laundry at the Laundromat. After that, we'd fill up our huge water cans and head home to the woods. So at the end of that long, hot summer, it was no wonder my sisters and I were thrilled when the fair came to town on Labor Day weekend.

That year, in 1971, the Intermountain Fair became entrenched in our hearts forever. Thirty-five years later, my sister and I still often celebrate Labor Day by taking our kids to the fair, though now we live in a city 75 miles away. That's how special it is. If you want your kids to remember an event forever, this is the one. You'll take away the knowledge that this fair is a true community effort. The McArthur area is growing, but remains small, and a large number of the residents are deeply invested in the fair that has been part of their lives since birth.

So what is there to do this Labor Day weekend at the Intermountain Fair? Just as you might expect, there's a midway full of the usual games. And there are rides for little kids as well as kids for all ages. But there's so much more, like a great deal of local competition. Students from the local schools raise livestock and bring them to the fair where they are ranked by judges. On Labor Day, the last day of the fair, there is a livestock auction.