‘A long pull, a strong pull, and all pull together’

Fun and games were a rare commodity in the hardscrabble Pacific Northwest in 1868.

“In those days, entertainment was a seldom thing in this area, so a fair was really an important part of the community’s affairs,” researcher and writer Don Chandler stated a century later.

Chandler was a longtime reporter for this newspaper — which didn’t exist in 1868, the inaugural year of the Clark County Fair. But the weekly Vancouver Register was on the scene then, watching the run-up to the fair as well as its aftermath, so Chandler had a good eyewitness source for his centennial retrospective, which appeared in the 1968 issue of the Clark County Historical Society’s annual journal.

When The Vancouver Register started spreading the word about the first-ever county fair, Chandler reported a century later, there was desperation in its plea for the community to get involved and ensure the new project’s success.

“The executive committee wish all those that have fine pictures, flags, etc., to forward them to adorn the pavilion. They (the committee) have done all they can to make the fair a success, it now depends whether it shall be so or not, on the farmers and inhabitants generally. A long pull, a strong pull, and all pull together. The outcome of this matter is in your hands.”

Sounds like a barn raising or maybe a war effort, doesn’t it? It was only the launch of a county agricultural fair, yet some people treated it like a mission. When it came to fruition, it even drew our greatest local living legend of the day — a settler, judge, orator and politician who lived in a mansion north of Ridgefield.

“Hon. Columbia Lancaster is in town to attend the fair, the first ever held in Clarke County. … The city is full of people. Everyone thinks the fair will be a success. It shows that the people are alive. Throngs of good looking men and beautiful ladies are seen on every hand,” The Register reported.

Like today’s fair, the 1868 one appears to have been a huge mash-up of the fanciful and the practical — or “the beautiful as well as the useful,” as The Register put it. Explore today’s community exhibits in the main hall — the quilts, artworks, flower arrangements, Lego creations — and it shouldn’t take you much imagination to picture the displays of 150 years ago: “Sofa cushions, hair wreaths, combinations of moss, shells, bugs, etc. Feather-wreath by a child 9 years old. Decalcomania works of various kinds, a lampmat of great beauty by Miss Ella Stoughton, aged 12 years. Rugs, bedquilts, shell frames, wrought-skirts, slippers, workboxes, pictures, jellies, cakes, common and frosted, bread, etc., etc.,” the Register gushed.

“J.H. Timmons is one of the sweetest men on this coast. Why? He has brought a wagonload of honey to the fair, luscious enough to sweeten a disappointed office-seeker.”

With video screens far in the future and not even many musical instruments in this part of the world yet, the rising performance art of the day was oratory. The putative founder of the fair, Lewis Van Vleet, delivered such a long tribute to the glories of local agriculture — apples, pears, plum cherries, berries, flowers and cheeses — it took up the entire front page of the Register.

Clarke County was “the garden of the world,” Van Vleet declared. “This is one of the healthiest counties west of the Rocky Mountains. … The only thing our county lacks is a sufficient amount of population.” Ironic to read that today, isn’t it?

The whole thing sounds like a hoot, and there was even the playing of a newfangled game called baseball — but the sponsoring Agricultural and Mechanical Society was strict about anything unseemly: “No license … shall be granted by the society on the fairgrounds for any dance house or gambling or other improper entertainment.” Furthermore, since the main recreation at the first fair was horse racing, the judges warned that they would cancel any award if “there has been jockeying, bargaining or private arrangements among the parties.”

The price of admission for all four days of the 1868 fair? $1.50 for men, half price for women and children.

Starting, stopping, moving

That inaugural 1868 fair was held in the “public square” that became Esther Short Park. Perhaps it was the roaring success described, but records of subsequent fairs across the next few decades are spotty — suggesting that fairs were a “seldom thing” indeed. There were apparently fairs in 1869, 1872, 1875 and 1881 — which is when a second-generation Agricultural and Mechanical Society formed at Vancouver City Hall, pooled their money and bought 28 acres on Harney Hill. They even built a racetrack there. Yet the fair apparently failed to thrive, and it was a decade before another event was hosted, in 1891, by the Clarke County Grange.

In 1910, a Harvest Show featuring such excitement as a stump-burning demonstration and a baby show was back in Esther Short Park. In 1911, for the first time, a bona fide Clarke County Fair Association was formed, and held an October fair in what’s now Bagley Park. The featured orator was railroad magnate James J. Hill, and the event was reachable by streetcar on the Orchards-Sifton line.

This was the start of modern-day county fairs, Chandler writes: “The fair was such a big attraction that on Sept. 11, 1913, every business in Vancouver, including the saloons, closed at noon in honor of the fair.”

Vancouver was already getting pretty darned aged — 90 years old — in 1914 when a “Columbia River Interstate Fair” was held in conjunction with the town’s anniversary celebration, and a whopping 10,000 people showed up for opening day. That was followed in 1915 by a Clarke County Fair and Dahlia Show. After that, B.J. Bagley bought the land and kept racing horses there — but discontinued the fair.

There wasn’t another fair until 1928 — by which time the erroneous “E” had been finally, legally deleted from the end of the name of this county. The Clark County Fair at last! It was held in Battle Ground. KGW radio was on the scene to broadcast speeches by political candidates. There was horseshoe pitching, music and even dancing, which apparently had become OK during the Jazz Age. Still, the fair struggled with debt, and plans for a 1930 event were abruptly canceled in July because of competition from the Pacific Livestock Exhibition in Portland and the big county potato show in spuddery Ridgefield.

Horses and Clarkettes

“Victory Fairs” were held at the McLoughlin Heights Community Center, the focus of life for shipyard workers, during World War II. There was no admission charge. In 1947, the fair moved back to Battle Ground. But in the early 1950s, as fair programming was growing increasingly equine — including the Clarkettes, a girls’ mounted drill team — dark warnings about racing and gambling arose, too. The fair board pursued a plan to build a 40-acre fairgrounds and racetrack east of Vancouver, but reversed the decision after numerous local granges protested betting on horse races.

In 1955, the fair moved onto its new, 20-acre home north of Vancouver. Its four-day run in late August “was the biggest tent show ever held at that time, with more than 10 tents raised to house all the exhibits,” Chandler writes, and the permanent real estate brought the fair “its first real stability in the all-important area of finance.”

In 1957 a huge new livestock building went up on the fairgrounds — backed by everyone from Alcoa Aluminum to local dairy associations to individuals who dipped into their stock portfolios and piggybanks. Construction was accomplished largely with volunteer labor. Since then, the fair has grown by leaps and bounds.

Clearly, the community beseeched by The Vancouver Register 150 years ago came together. It was a strong pull and certainly a long one. But in 1958, while noting the rising property value of the fairgrounds, this newspaper also commented on the love underlying the dollars.

“Somewhere along the way,” The Columbian wrote, “something a lot more important than money has happened to the Clark County Fair. This is the widespread support it has won.”