The first fairs in Butte County were held in the summer at Newell and Vale before being moved to Belle Fourche.

[3] Earl Wilson was hired to construct the buildings and improve the land, for which the county allocated $7,500.

[4] On September 1, 1927, President Calvin Coolidge and his First Lady Grace attended the Butte County Fair.

On this visit he was gifted a pair of lambs, and in a speech later that day, he remarked he had been "promised a 160-acre farm in this fertile valley if I would return to live here".

[4] The fairgrounds sit about 0.5 miles (0.80 km) southwest of Nisland, South Dakota, near the border of Butte and Lawrence Counties on a floodplain of the Belle Fourche River.

Small, square-shaped windows front every wall, including the octagonal cupola at the top of the building; these upper floors are accessed by a cast-iron interior stairway.