2025 marked the 125th Anniversary of the Washington State Fair held annually in Puyallup, Washington. For the big milestone, several big changes were made to the fairgrounds and surrounding infrastructure. In this post, we’ll share some photos and our thoughts on each.
In the spirit of being fully transparent here: one of us lives literally within walking distance of the Washington State Fairgrounds. Even though we consider Silverwood our “home park”, the Puyallup Fair definitely holds a special place in our hearts. It’s only open for 3 weeks a year, but it’s a place we have visited almost annually for a very long time. In retrospect, it’s near criminal that we haven’t yet done a post on this place, considering it’s a stones throw from our house. With everything new for 2025 and a major milestone anniversary to boot, this seemed like a perfect time to “break the silence”, so to speak!
We’ll start out with some of the exterior changes that gave the fairgrounds a nice facelift. The first major improvement most will have undoubtedly notice is the grand entrance facade. This now boasts a beautiful archway and signage, in place of the former gold gate, and a water feature as guests enter the grounds.
It really looks fantastic, and after nearly two years of construction, it’s great to see it finally all come together.
Nearby, the State Fair organization partnered with the city of Puyallup to convert the entire stretch of 9th Ave SE that borders the north side of the fairgrounds. It is now a “festival street” with no curb, and a wider sidewalk. This street is always closed to vehicle traffic during the fair, but is now much more accessible and welcoming for pedestrians. It can be re-opened to vehicles during other times of the year, but during the fair and other major events, this is a great improvement. And it looks really nice too!
Moving inside the fair, two buildings have been demolished and replaced with new areas. First, the old “M barn” which housed a lot of cows and other animals, has been replaced with the new “Fair Park Stage”. The old M barn was really showing its age in recent years. We don’t know exactly how old it was, but it was desperately in need of a facelift. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who noticed that. That said, replacing it with another stage seemed like an odd choice to us. All the animals are now over on the south end of the fair in the livestock buildings, which is fine. But adding another stage to the grounds was interesting, given how many other stages there already are.
That said, the new Fair Park and Stage do look nice, and we love the massive “Do the Puyallup” sign that sits at the back of the park.
Finally, our favorite new addition is the 1900 Food Hall and Rooftop Bar. This brand new facility replaces the old food hall that, much like the M barn, was showing its age and desperately needed some TLC. The new food hall has six brand new vendors with all new food offerings, and a bar up top for those over 21.
One of our biggest complaints about the fair in the past has been the lack of interesting or decent food choices – it’s mostly onion burgers, hot dogs, corn dogs, etc. But here at the new 1900 Food Hall, we found some fantastic things to try. Here’s everything we sampled:
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom from Big Mouth Sandos
Pizza from Upper Crust
BBQ Pork Bao Buns from Fat Panda
Pork Belly Steam Bun with Potstickers from Fat Panda
Katsu Chicken Rice Bowl from Fat Panda
Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich from D’Oh
All of these were great, and we’d go so far as to say that cookie sandwich might just be our new favorite treat at the fair. You can get it with or without ice cream – we got one without so we could take the cookies home with us.
Overall we were pleasantly surprised with all of these upgrades and additions to the fairgrounds. It really felt like they sunk some decent money into the event for this anniversary, and we hope to see more of these improvements in future years.
Did you "Do the Puyallup" this year? What did you think of the new additions for the 125th anniversary? Let us know in the comments below!
The official Silverwood Theme Park website can be found at: www.silverwoodthemepark.com. All business-related questions should be directed to this site.
