Tentative Dates For Putnam Fair At Current Fairgrounds Announced

All signs are pointing to the Putnam County Fair returning to the old fairgrounds one last time.

Board President John Allen said the 10-day program is complete with the fair scheduled for August 4th through the 13th.

“We’ll be back at the present fairgrounds this year,” Allen said. “At least we think we will. That’s the program we are planning. I pretty much have an agreement with Randy Porter that he will make a definite decision by the first of March.”

Allen said the 2022 fair will have two additional days for shows prior to that week. The walking horse show will likely be on July 16th. The draft horse and mule show and a new dairy goat show will be planned for July the 30th.

“Even though we have a date and a schedule, those two shows are subject to change once other shows get their dates picked,” Allen said. “Because, we try not to conflict with other shows in order to have the most participation, but we have a 10-day fair program planned.”

Allen said next year’s fair will be similar to this year’s with the exception of fireworks on Monday night. Allen said the board did not anticipate the fairgrounds sale to take this long, so the 2021 fair was planned as the final one at the site.

“We did that last year with a concert and fireworks and all of that,” Allen said. “We didn’t know when we planned last year’s fair that the identification of a buyer would take quite so long, so we planned last year as if it was the last fair and had tremendous attendance. We had 14,000 more people come this year to the fair than in 2019. A lot of that was people coming, because they thought it was the last fair.”

Allen said the final fair plan will be ready to share in draft form in February. Allen said the only item that still needs to be scheduled is entertainment in the main arena for Monday.

“We’re trying to get another concert and that’s the only question at this point,” Allen said. “All of our animal shows and everything has been scheduled.”