By Jessica Edwards
The Southeast Alaska State Fair started 40 years ago around the
fireplace in Charlotte Olerud’s living room during a meeting of the Chilkat Valley
Homemakers, a cooperative extension service group.
Four decades later, some of those founding members look with wonder at
what the fair has become. "Every now and then we think, ‘Wow, we started all
this,’" said founding board member Frankie Perry.
What began as a one-day showcase of local vegetables and handicrafts is
now a four-day, entertainment-centered event with a bustling food court.
Perry said Allie Cordes first suggested the homemakers’ group
should organize a fair while brainstorming about community service activities. "Half
the people there had never seen a fair."
Regardless, the group pushed ahead with plans, drawing on the knowledge
of those with fair experience. Perry had worked state fairs with the cooperative extension
service in her home state of Kentucky and became the local "expert" on
organizing and running a fair. Olerud, too, had grown up exhibiting through 4-H
cooperative extension service at the Minnesota State Fair.
The Chilkat Valley Homemakers held the first Chilkat Valley Fair Aug.
30, 1969 upstairs in the American Legion Hall.
"There were 600 visitors and 806 entries," said Perry. She
said the fair served an educational function, providing entrants constructive criticism on
their work.
Exhibit categories in the first fair included varieties of handwork
(crochet, knitting, embroidery), clothing, vegetables, flowers, baked goods and preserves,
hobbies and crafts, photography and fine arts.
"It was a success," said Bonnie Sharnbroich, who was part of
the homemakers’ group. A fall 1969 Chilkat Valley News story went further, calling
the fair a "smashing success."
The next year, the one-day fair expanded to fill two floors in the
American Legion Hall, and by year four, Perry remembers tents were erected outside in the
lot where the Captain’s Choice Motel is now.
"By our third year, there was regional interest," Perry said.
"We decided to shoot the moon and made it a state fair, open to entries from Canada
as well as from Southeast."
In 1970, the fair incorporated, and in 1972, the board purchased 21
acres just west of town – the site of the current fairgrounds – from the
Presbyterian Mission with funding from the state of Alaska. That year, the display
building, now called Harriet Hall, was constructed, as was a horse show arena.
In 1973, the fair was relocated to the new fairgrounds. By that time,
the fair had become a regional event, renamed the Southeast Alaska State Fair,
representing the communities of Haines, Juneau, Skagway, Sitka, Ketchikan, Petersburg,
Wrangell, Hoonah, and outlying villages.
In 1974, the fair added the 7,200 square-foot agricultural and 4-H
building now bearing the name McPherson barn in honor of former cooperative extension
service director Walt McPherson. Ten locking concession booths were added, as was the
announcers’ stand and officials’ building at the horse arena.
Fair records from 1975, the year a stage went in to host entertainers,
estimated fair attendance at 7,000 people. Lynden Transport donated a container to ship
entries from other communities. Dignitaries in attendance in 1975 included Alaska Gov. Jay
Hammond and local legend Hjalmar Rutzebeck.
"We really never thought it would be so big," Olerud said.
While exhibit categories remained mostly the same, special events began
to flourish in the mid-1970s and included a grand parade, a cultural arts and crafts
exchange, lectures on the history of quilting, a table-setting contest, motorcycle races,
a style show, farmers’ market, and regional musical acts such as Juneau’s Sweet
Adelines and Sitka jazz and bluegrass bands.
The horse show had become one of the fair’s biggest attractions,
drawing contestants region-wide and from Canada. Fair records show more than 50 entrants
in the horse show in the 1970s.
Dalton City, constructed from the set of the Disney Movie "White
Fang," was donated to the fair in 1993, a value of $500,000. State and federal grants
and community donations made the former set a viable setting for business at the fair.
The shift towards entertainment continued in the 1980s, when the fair,
in concert with new radio station KHNS, began signing big-name music acts. Former KHNS
director Dan Henry said the transition was not without friction.
"It was a big deal to convince the board to bring in large scale
entertainment," he said. "(Many) felt it was just a distraction from the
fair."
In the early 1980s, Fred Shields, then development director for KHNS,
looked farther afield booking entertainment for the fair, and equipped the stage with
sound equipment and lighting.
Shields brought the popular group "Cowboy Jazz" to the fair,
as well as musicians from Whitehorse and the Yukon. "It was a step up," he said.
"We transitioned to better acts."
From 1988 to 1999, KHNS, steered by Henry, partnered with the fair to
bring four or five big-name acts each year to the Alaska Bald Eagle Music Festival.
"Those were record years," said Henry. "We brought in incredible
crowds."
Acts in those years included the Chambers Brothers, Taj Mahal, Don
Hicks and the Hot Licks, Hot Rise, Tuck and Patti, Commander Cody, Leo Kotke, Carla
Bonhoff and others.
Bringing the big names cost big bucks, and was often a loss leader.
"It was a lot of money and a lot of energy that brought the massive gate
receipts," Henry said.
He said there had been less state funding for the fair in the past
decade. There was no longer a full-time person dedicated to entertainment fundraising.
Ultimately, the decision not to pursue big-name acts was due "to political choices
over time," he said.
"It was my position that everyone in the community was benefiting
more if 10,000 people came to town."
For Olerud, the move away from hand-made exhibits towards entertainment
and vending was a sign of the times, but one that might be reversed in the future.
"We go to the fair for entertainment, not to display (our) creativity," said
Olerud.
Buying ready-made food and clothing became cheaper and easier than
making one’s own, she said, and freezers had taken the place of canning fruit, moose,
fish, and rabbit. Fewer people have gardens in their yards. Keeping animals had become
cost-prohibitive.
"We might not always have these groceries sent in," Olerud
said. "If times get tough, we may need those skills again."
"The key thing is that a fair isn’t fixed," said Perry.
"It’s always changing and adapting to the people in the Chilkat Valley. If we
tried to keep it like it was in 1969, it wouldn’t have survived."
