More Than Fair
HOMETOWN PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
There is a particular kind of place that holds a community together, not through headlines or grand gestures, but through steady presence and the accumulation of shared memories. In Texarkana, the Four States Fairgrounds is that place.
The fairgrounds have been part of the fabric of this region since 1945, when a group of civic-minded citizens chartered an organization with a purpose as straightforward as it was ambitious: to encourage agriculture, education, and community through public fairs and expositions. More than eighty years later, that mission has not wavered. What has grown is everything around it.
At the center of it all is Lisa Garner, the director who has shepherded the fairgrounds through growth, change, and the kind of careful stewardship that a beloved institution demands. Under her leadership, the Four States Fairgrounds has evolved into one of the most active and versatile event venues in the entire region, a place where the calendar is never quite empty and the doors are rarely closed.
Ask most about the fairgrounds, and they will tell you about the fair. And they should. It is one of the most anticipated events of the year. But the fairgrounds are not a seasonal operation. It runs year-round, hosting an extraordinary range of events that speak to the breadth of this community's interests and identity.
Throughout the year, the grounds come alive with barrel races, roping and cutting competitions, rodeos and bull riding, livestock shows, motorsports events, expos, auctions, community gatherings, and private parties. It is a calendar that reflects who Texarkana is, a region with deep agricultural roots, a love of competition and entertainment, and a genuine appetite for coming together.
The main venue, the Entertainment Center, is built for exactly that kind of range. At 70,000 square feet, with an arena floor stretching 108 by 300 feet and nearly 4,800 permanent seats, it is a serious facility capable of hosting everything from championship rodeos to large-scale concerts, with capacity stretching to 6,500 for the right show. The building is supported by a full suite of services, including staging, security, box office operations, and dressing rooms, so that every event that comes through the doors has what it needs to succeed. The Fine Arts Building adds yet another dimension, providing space for the creative and cultural expressions that are just as much a part of fair tradition as the midway.
One of the quieter but more meaningful things Garner and her team oversee is the Agricultural Learning Center, a program that opened in 2006 as the first of its kind in Arkansas and across the four-state region. Its mission is simple and important: help young people understand where their food comes from and why agriculture matters.
Open year-round, the Ag Learning Center welcomes school groups, 4-H clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, home schools, church youth groups, and day cares for hands-on programs built around the beef industry, dairy, crops, and the broader story of how farms feed families. In a time when fewer and fewer children grow up with any direct connection to the land, the Ag Learning Center fills a gap that few other institutions in this region can. It is education that sticks, the kind that comes from touching, seeing, and doing rather than reading from a page. For Garner, it represents a continuation of the fairground's founding promise: that this place exists not just for entertainment, but for the betterment of the community it serves.
And then there is the fair itself.
The 81st Annual Four States Fair returns April 3 through April 12, 2026, ten days that transform the fairgrounds into something that has to be experienced to be fully understood. Presented by Farmers Bank and Trust and Texarkana Emergency Center and Hospital, this year's fair arrives with something genuinely new alongside all the traditions that have made it a regional institution.
For 2026, the fair has partnered with North American Midway Entertainment, one of the largest and most recognized traveling amusement companies in North America. The partnership brings a fresh lineup of modern thrill rides to the midway alongside the classic kiddie rides and carnival games that families have come to love, a next chapter for the midway experience that longtime fairgoers and first-timers alike will feel from the moment they walk through the gates.
Beyond the midway, the fan favorites return. The Demolition Derby takes place Friday, April 4, inside the Four States Arena, and tickets historically go fast. The Classic Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram Gregg Orr Auto 4 States Rodeo, produced by Wing Rodeo Company, brings some of the region's best cowboys and cowgirls together for bronc riding, bull riding, and the full sweep of rodeo competition. Kid's Day and Mutton Bustin' round out a lineup built for every age and every kind of fair lover. Presale tickets and VIP packages are already on sale, and rodeo tickets include fair admission.
What Lisa Garner leads is not simply an event facility. It is a living piece of Texarkana's identity, a place where children learn about the land their grandparents farmed, where families make memories year after year, and where the broader four-state region comes together in the way that only a great fair can make happen.
The Four States Fairgrounds has been here since 1945. Under the care it receives today, it will be here long after 2026.
Four States Fairgrounds
3700 East 50th Street
Texarkana, Arkansas
870-773-2941
fourstatesfair.com
