Our Office: 4100 32nd Ave. S. Fargo, ND 58104
The Community's Fair
Image
"We don’t just close the gates and reopen next summer—this is year-round magic."
-Cashman
Image
It’s coming – the fast rides, the fried foods, the frenetic energy of families from all over the region. The Red River Valley Fair will open its gates July 4-13 for 10 packed days of summer excellence. As much as you can’t wait to hit the West Fargo fairgrounds, there’s one person who’s likely even more impatient. And that’s Red River Valley Fair Association CEO Cody Cashman.
“I'm still a little kid when it comes to the fair. I grew up in the fair business. My dad runs a fair. When the rides showed up, you’d start rubbing your hands together,” Cashman said, palm to palm. “Running my own fair has always been a goal. And so now that I have my own, it's just so exciting to see the carnival show up.”
This will be Cashman’s fifth summer at the Red River Valley Fairgrounds, and he and his team pride themselves on making each Red River Valley Fair more extraordinary than the last. This summer, the fair will feature its signature top-notch lineup of Grandstand acts like Kane Brown, The All-American Rejects and Boyz II Men. However, the fair has added a “dirt series” touting a first-ever combine demolition derby on opening day, July 4, followed by a fireworks show.
The best part? Opening day events will be completely free for visitors, and daily gate admission for the rest of the fair has dropped from $15 to just $10 in 2025.
“We just want to give back to the community. We want this to be their fair,” Cashman said. “We're someone's Disney World, you know, and we have to make sure that every single day we show up with the same mindset.”
Visitors to this year’s Red River Valley Fair will have access to their favorite carnival rides, games, and food on a stick, but also special experiences in the fairgrounds’ outer buildings. There will be an air-conditioned facility for the sweltering afternoons, a Kid Zone with 17,000 square feet of free activities like mini golf and face painting, a Sip ND building for local beer and wine connoisseurs, and a Renaissance Fair building to offer visitors a preview of Red River Valley Fair’s popular summer event.
But there are a couple of buildings that are especially close to Cashman’s heart, facilities that house the fair’s Livestock Enrichment Program for area students and the newly developed Ag Education Center.
“We feel that the fair's responsibility, in our position, is to teach the general public about where their food comes from and how important agriculture is,” Cashman said. “So that's what we focus on in this building.”
The Ag Education Center is a reimagining of the Ag Center that has been a part of the fairgrounds for 15 years. With the help of local commodity organizations like the North Dakota Soybean Council and Corn Council, the fair team revitalized the building into an interactive learning space. Visitors can experience 3-D crop displays, see live bees working in a hive, milk a life-size replica of a dairy cow, and drop into agriculture careers in an immersive reality room.
The new Ag Education Center opened a year ago as a year-round destination for school field trips and family outings, with 60-70 visitors per day. Cashman says they plan to have 50,000-60,000 go through the building during this year’s fair.
“As you see, we have a corn floor, the only one in the world,” he said, pointing to the epoxied kernels under his feet. “We had a farmer find out that the floor was going to be made of corn. He calls me up and says, ‘Cody, I'm the only one that's going to have corn in that floor. I'm donating whatever you need.’”
Image
"Whether you’re 1 or 101, there’s something for you here."
- Cashman
Image
Image
The support of the community is the key ingredient that keeps the fair gates open year after year. When Cashman and his family moved here mid-pandemic from Maryland in May 2020, he was dropped into a
“We needed sponsorship dollars and we had none coming in. Cass County Electric knew this. They reached out to us and I met a lady named Jocelyn,” Cashman said, referring to Cass County Electric Cooperative (CCEC) Communications Manager Jocelyn Hovland. “She calls us up and says, ‘Hey, we want to suapport you and be the presenting sponsor of the drive-in movie series.’ And it was a huge bump. It kept us going.”
“Teaming up with the fair for the drive-in movie series during COVID gave us a chance to bring safe, nostalgic joy to families during a tough time,” Hovland said. “But more than that, it was about showing up for one of our longtime member nonprofits when it mattered most. It demonstrated the power of creative partnerships – and the importance of being there for our members when they need it.”
Since that collaboration, CCEC has continued to partner with the Red River Valley Fair, sponsoring special events like Kids Day and Holiday Lights. Recently, the co-op’s board of directors voted to donate a bucket truck to help the fair staff maintain its 400-acre property.
Image
Image
“Our partnership reflects a shared commitment to the region and a mutual focus on education, engagement and agriculture,” Hovland added. “It's a relationship built on trust, aligned values and a genuine love for this area.”
As Cashman counts down the days until the gates open on July 4, he’s eager to see his own kids enjoy the fair. He wants them to find the same bliss he experienced when he was young, that he hopes to experience for the next several decades. As he says it, their dad has the coolest job in the world.
“I really do think the future's bright. I think that we're only going to grow from here,” he said. “If the community's behind us, we can't fail.”
Watch these two exclusive videos to learn more!
Image
Image
Image
