Exhibits ran the gamut from table-settings to fine art and photography, plants, flowers and arts and crafts. The Santa Paula California Oil Museum was a popular attraction, especially on Santa Paula Day at the Fair.“The fair was great this year,” Ginger Gherardi of Santa Paula, a Fair Director, said Tuesday. “I should be back to normal tomorrow!”The weather was “spectacular, there were no problems whatsoever and I tooled around just everywhere” behind the wheel of a golf cart, keeping an eye on things. “All I observed were people having fun,” Gherardi noted. “It was a lot of effort on everyone’s part, and after we get a week’s worth of sleep then we’ll start planning next year.”The Fair’s coffers will also be boosted by its cut of carnival revenue, including the tickets sold for the wide age-appropriate array of rides that offered thrills to the smallest toddler or the most jaded adult. With carnival sales producing a record $1.63 million the Fair will keep about $650,000, approximately 40 percent.
Twelve days, 308,000 people formula of success for VC County Fair
August 18, 2006
Santa Paula News
Twelve days, 308,000 people was the formula of success for the 131st Ventura County Fair, the fourth year in a row that the Fair drew more than 300,000 lovers of all that is country.
By Peggy KellySanta Paula TimesTwelve days, 308,000 people was the formula of success for the 131st Ventura County Fair, the fourth year in a row that the Fair drew more than 300,000 lovers of all that is country.Strong presale tickets, publicity and the lure of the beachside Fair - this year themed “The Heart of the Country” - at the tail end of a record three-week heat wave helped boost attendance to 308,158, beating last year’s attendance of 304,820. But it might have been spiraling gasoline prices and exhaustion from the heat wave that kept attendance below the record 308,630 set in 2003.The Fair, held at Seaside Park, offered something for everyone: a rodeo, top-flight musical entertainment, 4H and Future Farmers of America members showing and auctioning off their prize-winning animals, and the Commercial Building where anything worth owning - even the offbeat - was available for purchase.
