‘They still like the fair’
The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum’s open-air car prepares to take people Saturday to the Washington County Agricultural Fair.
Heather Robison of Cecil Township escorts her pig, Loki, to the market livestock sale Saturday at Washington County Agricultural Fair.
The Washington County Agricultural Fair came to a close Saturday following a week of robust crowds at its events ranging from a school bus demolition derby to a market livestock sale.
Nearly 70,000 people passed through the fair gates this summer, nearly identical to the number of tickets sold last year, said Wayne Hunnell, fair board secretary.
“They still like the fair,” Hunnell said Saturday when the fair competed for attendance with the first Corks & Kegs festival at The Meadows and a performance by rocker Joe Grushecky at the Monongahela Aquatorium.
The fair began Saturday with a brief scare after a suspicious small black suitcase was found in a trash receptacle at the fair entrance. The Pennsylvania’s Trolley Museum’s trolleys shuttling people to and from the fair came to a halt while police and the Washington County Department of Public Safety investigated the discovery, Hunnell said.
“It turned out to be nothing,” he said later in the day.
A large crowd still gathered for the daylong livestock sale where young farmers such as Heather Robison of Cecil Township brought their animals to be sold at auction.
Heather, 16, sold her 247-pound pig Loki for $3 per pound, accepting the fact that the animal would be taken to a slaughterhouse, said her mother, Betty.
“It’s a male and she knows he’s a terminal project,” Betty Robison said.
The younger Robison planned to donate 90 percent of the money she earned from the sale of her lamb to leukemia research as a tribute to her cousin, Abbey Frohnapfel, a 16-year-old West Virginia girl who recently died from the disease, Betty Robison said.
Thousands of people flocked to the 4-H dairy bar at the fair to purchase milkshakes, with chocolate being the overwhelming choice among customers, said Lacey Simpson of Eldersville, while she worked the booth Saturday.
“Everybody wants milkshakes this year,” Simpson said.
The trolleys shuttled about 1,600 people from its museum across the street in Chartiers Township a short distance to the fair gate and back, an operator said.
The fair was expecting to see 12,000 people at the fair Saturday because the demolition derby that day is always a popular event, Hunnell said.