Fairgrounds spruce up for County Fair

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Visitors to this year’s Jefferson County Fair should find the fairgrounds spruced up in time for their arrival, but the needed renovations for the facilities remain ongoing. Sue McIntire, manager of the fairgrounds and treasurer on the fair board, noted the fair has finally finished siding the south side of the Oscar Erickson building, in addition to refurbishing and adding to its number of goat pens. “We’ve installed new windows, done a lot of painting, and invested a lot of time and effort on increasing the facilities’ curb appeal,” McIntire said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture aided the Jefferson County Fair in its efforts with a matching grant for $5,000 to complete the siding on the Erickson building. “We’ll be applying for more grants this fall, to re-roof the old commercial building and the brick restrooms,” McIntire said. “And we weren’t able to do it in time for this year’s fair, but by next year, we’re working on getting a grant to make the sidewalks wider and more ADA-accessible. Our projects next year will be bigger.” McIntire noted the ages of many of the fairgrounds’ buildings, including the aptly named “Yesteryear” building (1951), the old commercial building (1952), the cattle barn (1955) and the horse barn (1959). “We try to keep everything looking nice, even though some of these buildings were old when I was a kid, and that’s been a couple of days,” McIntire laughed. “We’ve got one building left to re-side, and some of the re-sided buildings just need a finishing coat of paint.”