Skowhegan is the county seat of Somerset County, Maine. As of the 2010 census, the town population was 8,589. Every August, Skowhegan hosts the annual Skowhegan State Fair, the oldest continuously-held state fair in the United States. Skowhegan was originally inhabited by the indigenous Abenaki people who named the area Skowhegan, meaning "watching place [for fish]," and were mostly dispersed by the end of the 4th Anglo-Abenaki War.