Plans revealed for 174th Tuscarawas County Fair
DOVER (WJER) (Aug. 22, 2024) – The ‘best seven days in September’ are less than a month away.
The 174th installment of the Tuscarawas County Fair begins three weeks from Monday, closing the following Sunday with the always popular demolition derby. Agricultural Society President Reb Billman says it’s starting a couple of hours earlier than in the past, at 5 pm.
“We’ll only be having two days of harness racing this year. It will be Friday and Saturday – no Sunday harness racing – and the draft horse hitch show will be Sunday morning. We’ll get that done and over and out of the way, and we’ll be able to get the demo derby started a little earlier so that second and third-graders aren’t here to watch their dad run still at 11 o’clock at night.”
The Rafter M. Rodeo returns to the grandstands for opening night, and on Tuesday it’s the Band-O-Rama marching band showcase. Tickets aren’t required for that or Thursday’s grandstand feature: a family event called Truck ‘N Treat.
“We’ll have a bunch of big trucks and pieces of equipment for kids to come see and they’re going to get a goodie back from area sponsors.”
Organizers revealed the lineup to the media Tuesday evening. They also talked about what’s been happening at the fairgrounds in preparation for the occasion.
“We ended up getting into something that we really didn’t plan on getting into. We believe that we were struck by lightning on one of our transformers, and we have done a lot of work starting clear over at the horse arena all the way back through here [at the cafe] replacing transformers, a lot of underground conduits, and a bunch of wire.”
OSU Extension 4-H Educator Chris Kendle highlighted some of the changes on the junior fair side including moving the 4-H booths and rabbit area.
“Another exciting change that we have this year is we are doing sale order by placement, so wherever people place in their class will determine where they fall in the sale. We haven’t done that for a number of years, and we’re going back to that, so we did have to move the Steer Show. The Steer Show is going to be on Tuesday this year instead of Wednesday.”
She’s expecting over a thousand livestock entries including around 310 hogs and 100 broilers.
“We are pretty consistent with our previous years. We did have a jump in Market Ducks, kind of interestingly. [It’s] not a huge jump but it’s one of our projects that went up most significantly. Last year, we had a really big jump in goats.”
For the complete schedule, senior fair entry forms, ticket information, and more, visit TuscCountyFairgrounds.com.