Fairgoers gather for a variety of activities: entertainment, tractor and truck pulls, demolition derby and seeing animals. This year, the Butler County Fair will be short.
The Butler County Fair Board announced this year the Butler County Fair is shaping up to be a one-day event. The county was without a fair from the late 1970s, when the Jaycees stopped organizing the event, to the mid-1990s when a group of volunteers and business leaders revived the fair.
Jerrica Fox said, “Currently, I am serving as interim president until the board can find additional members to take over the lead.”
Wednesday night, the board discussed the event.
“The board has asked that we not state the fair is canceled,” Fox said. “They plan to begin asking for sponsors for a one-day event with the USA Pullers on Saturday, Oct. 1. This will be similar to the event that took place last weekend.”
Unfortunately, Fox stated, “Due to lack of community involvement there will not be a carnival, barrel racing, rodeo, or derby this year. The fair requires a lot of hands to make these events happen, and currently the board consists of six members.”
Agreeing with Fox, former fair board member Derek Boyers of Poplar Bluff said, volunteers are needed to make the fair work,
Boyers recalls as a youth the local Jaycees sponsored the fair, but then the fair did not take place for several years.
The last year the Jaycees held the fair was about 1979.
“I had grown up showing cattle, livestock, and I experienced the fair all my life,” Boyers said. “I wanted my children to experience the same thing.”
Marion West knew Boyers was interested in getting the fair started again in the 1990s.
“He called me about five o’clock in the morning and said, ‘Boyers, you want to have a fair, let’s get together and get started,’” Boyer said.
Prior to the group’s first meeting, Boyers recalls, “I ran an ad in the paper about an organizational meeting. The first meeting we had was at his (West’s) stables. Mark Richardson, he was a state representative at the time, and a lot of other community leaders showed up. There was 100 people there that night.”
Continuing, Boyers said, “I can’t remember exactly. It just filled the room up and there’s a lot of people there. He (West) wanted to see it happen. In 1996 is when we had our first meeting. I think our first fair was in 1997.”
Boyers emphasized, “It takes a lot of volunteers, and a lot of support from the community, the county and the city. I was on the board 17 years and there were some others that were originally on it a few years more.”
Boyers said in 2017 or 2018 he stopped volunteering with the fair because life and business were “getting busy.”
Fox was board vice president last year, but recently the board president Jack Altman resigned to move closer to family.
Currently, the fair board “encourages all community members to attend the monthly meetings so Butler County can have a full lineup in 2023,” Fox said. “It was a difficult decision to simply put on a one-day event this fall, but it was all that could be done with the lack of involvement. Please join us the third Wednesday of each month at 6:30 p.m. at the Historic Train Depot off Main Street. We want to bring back canning, animal showing, photography, live entertainment and several days of events in 2023. However, we need the help of the community to pull it off.”
If someone is interested in being a vendor or food vendor for the one-day event this October, Fox asks, “those interested to please send their information to the Facebook page (Missouri Butler County Fair) a message. Otherwise, we hope to see more attending the monthly meetings.”