Fair fun and good weather brings nearly 8,000 to the Hancock County Fair

The 2023 Hancock County Fair was another huge hit this year. Vice President of the Hancock County Fair Board, Scott Basham, said the turnout was between 7,700 to 8,000 people over the 3-day event. That isn’t an exact figure, as they are still processing all of the numbers. Before covid, there were over 9,000 people attending.

Greg Wettstain, President of the Hancock County Fair Board, extends a big thank you to all of the volunteers. “A special thanks to all of the people that helped us – a whole lot of people – different companies and individuals,” he said. “Without that, it wouldn’t have went-off anything like it did. It took a lot of team effort. Thanks to everybody that helped and was involved – it’s hard to name them all off, because there were so many. We don’t want to leave anyone out. It’s hard to thank everybody enough.

Presleigh Reece Smeathers was crowned Hancock County Fair Queen on Thursday night. Smeathers is the 16-year-old daughter of Alex and Courtney Smeathers of Philpot. Pictured from left: Hayden Emmick (1st runner-up), daughter of Dan and PJ Emmick, Peyton Bozarth (last year’s queen), Smeathers, Abby Hayden (2nd run- ner-up), daughter of Beth and Keith Hayden and Kylie Taylor (2nd runner-up), daughter of Jimbo and Anne Taylor.

I think we made some good improvements. The new gravel around the rides, and the ride arrangement – the way that was placed-out differently and throughout the fair. A special thanks to the Hancock County Road Department on that part, and the judge and magistrates. The woodchips that we put on the bank [went well]. We had a lot of good food this year. Everything was good and I’m looking forward to keeping it going.

We had a wonderful horse turnout – from the ponies, all the mules and Haflingers to the cattle sorting (Ranch Sorting) Saturday night. We had a very good Demo Derby again. I’m just very tickled that everything went-off like it did and the weather held-up for us.

The Pony Express (pony cart barrel racing event) went really well. It was another added feature that I never had seen before. We had a good time and I got to participate in it, and I’ll be planning on doing it again. It was a good time.”

Sheriff Dale Bozarth took a turn during the Pony Cart Racing event on Thursday at the fair.

“It was a great fair,” Scott said. “The weather held-off. The Ranch Sorting event on Saturday night wasn’t over until almost 1 a.m. on Sunday morning. We had 100 different teams there.

A big thanks to county employees who come to the fairgrounds every day asking what they can help with. Although Greg is the president of the fair board, he is also an excavator and donated a lot of his time preparing the derby track as well as working on other projects. The list goes on and on [of those who pitched-in to help].

With all that gravel that was brought out there and the work that was done by all the individuals – the contracting companies, excavating companies and the county road department – the fairgrounds looked like a million dollars. It looked really good.

Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, we had a pretty good rain and an event for Thursday night was cancelled. That call was made by us. We needed to go ahead and start getting the track ready Thursday night for the Go-Cart Races on Friday. It was a huge event and we needed to make sure it was ready to go.”

Owen Decker holds his goat, Wednesday, during the Live- stock show at the fair.

Parking

“We have a parking issue and everybody in this county and anybody that came to the fair on Saturday night knows we have a parking issue,” Scott said.  “Greg and I

Isaiah Howell holding his sheep, Poppie, during the Livestock show at the fair.

will take that on our shoulders. We need to do a better job trying to plan that. On 1389, we’re limited to 2 lanes – one in and one out. And, then you’ve got to think about emergency vehicles getting in and out too, in case of emergencies.

I promise the community that we’re going to do a better job next year with shuttling people from other locations – from the library, farm store, etc., because we just can’t have people backed-up all the way to Bills IGA or down to Town Hill waiting to get into the fair.”

Rides

“The Sensory Ride Time (arranged by Hancock County Autism Advocates) was a big hit,” Scott said. “That was new this year. I feel like it went great and we had a good turnout.”

Ride Height Requirement

“Some people were kind of upset about their children not being able to ride some of the rides,” Scott added, “but the ride height is not mandated by the county fair board or the ride company, it’s mandated by the state.”

Sweet Corn Giveaway

“Tanner Stroup brought a large trailer full of sweet corn,” Scott said. “They didn’t have any use for it and asked us if we could use it. We said to just park it by the front gate, and we put a sign on it saying it was ‘FREE.’ By the end of Saturday night it was pretty much all gone. That’s a new added attraction that we feel like we’re going to try to commit to every year. We’ve got those guys (Stroup Farms) on board too.”

Holden Simpson, 4, was a big hit at the fair when he and MC Hannah Wheatley McCoy sang “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys during the talent show.

Survey

“We encourage people to go online to our Facebook Page – Hancock County KY Fairgrounds,” Scott said. “There is a survey on there. We want people to fill-out the survey. We want the good, the bad and the ugly – that’s the only way that we are going to make it better.”

Go-Kart Racing

Daniel Poyner was in charge of the Go-Kart Racing Event on Friday night. “For the weather we had on Thursday,” he said, “and the track being really swampy on Thursday evening, Gary Nugent with GN Excavating was able to get out really early on Thursday afternoon and start working the track, and made it one of the best racing surfaces in the area, according to a lot of drivers.

With a few big go-kart shows going on this past weekend, we had a lower car count, but it was still a good turnout for being a fair race. It was a really good track and really good racing all-around. We had a lot of standing water on the track Thursday, and if it wasn’t for canceling the Metal Mania Event we probably wouldn’t have been able to have the go-kart racing on Friday. The cars on Thursday would’ve torn up the track and there was no way we could have gotten in and made it a perfect racing surface for the go-karts.”

Callie Pate holds onto her hat while she and Ella Knasel enjoy a ride on the Scram- bler at the fair.

Daniel was also in charge of the Metal Mania Event that was planned for Thursday evening, and he and fair board members made the decision to cancel it. “I knew that Thursday night isn’t always our biggest night,” he said, “so I knew it wouldn’t affect the outcome of the fair that much. The last couple of years we’ve only had anywhere from 6-8 cars show up for Metal Mania, when I had 30 or so go-karts show up on Friday night. I’d rather have 30 or 40 show up on Friday, than I would the 6 or 8 to show up on Thursday. At first, we had talked about rescheduling Metal Mania for 4 p.m. on Saturday, but it wasn’t going to work out.”

By Jennifer Wimmer