The 2024 Clark County Fair had almost 268,000 visitors in its 10-day run, up nearly 11,000 fairgoers from last year, Fair Manager John Morrison said.
Morrison said he felt the 2024 fair was a safe, quality event that filled all of the expectations he and his staff had. He said the visitor total is a continued success from the “return to normalcy” in the post-pandemic world.
“The year after COVID, the 2022 fair, we had a really big bump in attendance from the years prior, and I think that had to do with the fact that we were shut down for two years,” Morrison said. “I think people were ready to get out and have a good time and maybe not take a vacation out of the area. So, 2024 looks pretty similar to what we saw in ‘23 and ‘22. I wouldn’t say that the post-COVID bump is going to be the new average, but it’s certainly going to be bigger than what we had in the averages of the years prior.”
The 7,500-person capacity grandstands that are free for all events, including concerts, had to cut off attendance early during three events due to reaching maximum capacity, Morrison said.
“The grandstand has become so popular, especially on the last three days, that we literally had to close access to it because of capacity on at least three different occasions, once during tuff trucks and twice during monster trucks,” he said. “I don’t see that changing as the population in the county increases … So I’m going to be meeting with several people to talk about how we can increase the capacity of people’s ability to see grandstand entertainment without overburdening or putting the grandstands so full that it becomes a safety issue.”
With the increase in visitation to the Clark County Fairgrounds, Morrison said he will be looking into traffic improvements as the parking for the fair is essentially a one-way in and out situation.
“We are severely limited here by the number of entry and exit points, you know. You basically enter this fairgrounds at one spot right up there at what we call the West Precinct up on 179th,” Morrison said. “And it’s pure mathematics. If I need to get 26,000 people onto the grounds in a day all through the same spot, or 38,000 if you’re in that last weekend, there’s going to be backups. We worked hard to keep those backups off of the interstate and off of the intersections, but it’s becoming more and more difficult every year.”
He said possible solutions could be moving the payment station further into the fairgrounds and providing prepaid parking options, among other solutions.
Looking at events individually, Morrison said each featured event and grandstand entertainment was a success. He added they may look at switching up some side events for next year, but the Washington State Fiddle Championships and Pirate’s Parrot Show have already expressed interest in returning to the Clark County Fair.
“I do need to be sensitive to keeping the offerings out here fresh when we change an entertainer or a specific thing that we offer,” Morrison said.
If an event were to be removed from the lineup for next year, Morrison said it would be done to give the public a fresher variety of things to see at the fair that they might not have seen in the past, as opposed to any dissatisfaction with how something performed.
A new aspect of the way fairgoers can find their way around and check scheduling was popular, Morrison said. The Clark County Fair app provided visitors with a mobile map and schedule to make their fair exploration easier. Prior to the start of the fair on Aug. 2, the app had between 400 and 500 downloads. It racked up another 3,100 downloads from just the fairgrounds in the 10-day fair run.
