The Sedgwick County Fair is making a comeback in 2021

Among the first summer 2020 events to be called off last year in a deluge of cancellations was the Sedgwick County Fair.

The plug was pulled in mid-May for the mid-July event, prompting concerns from the public that organizers were being overly cautious.

“We were one of the first big events to cancel last year and we caught a lot of grief for it,” fair board vice president Marti Johnson said. “Turns out it was the right decision.”

After taking a year off, the fair returns to Cheney from Wednesday through Saturday.

Johnson said the fair board was feeling the effects of the coronavirus pandemic financially, but that it shouldn’t make much of an impact on fairgoers.

“We’re kind of running on a shoestring,” she said. “We obviously didn’t have any income last year, but we still had expenses associated with the fairgrounds.”

The biggest difference, Johnson said, would be among the commercial vendors where numbers are “way, way down” from 2019 and earlier. That’s for two reasons: Many of the commercial vendors are retirees who opted not to get back on the fair circuit; others cannot get product to sell because their supply chains are down.

“We’ve had a lot of them say they want a spot next year but (this year) we don’t have merchandise,” she said.

The Pride of Texas Carnival, which has been at the Sedgwick County Fair for three pre-pandemic years, will return from 6 p.m. to midnight each day. There will be two nights of demolition derby, at 7 p.m. next Friday and Saturday, and a ranch rodeo on Thursday night.

Johnson said she’s proud that the open-air stage at the fairgrounds will have free entertainment each night: Molly Neeley Trio, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday; Adam Capps Band, 8:30 p.m. Thursday; Whitnie Means Band, 7 p.m. Friday, July 9; and Mountain Deer Revival, 9 p.m. Saturday, July 10.

She said she was uncertain of the number of livestock entries, but “we don’t have any reason to think it’ll be down appreciably.”

There will be no mask requirements, Johnson said, but extra precautions are being taken because of the youngest livestock entrants.

“We’re an outside event so infection rates aren’t a huge deal. However, a lot of 4-H participants are too young to be vaccinated,” she said. “We’re not going to require masks anywhere. We’re going to amp up the hand washing, hand sanitizer, that whole thing.”

If the weather stays fair-worthy – no precipitation, not too hot – Johnson thinks the Sedgwick County Fair will be ready to make a comeback.

“I think people are really ready to get back out, to interact face to face and meet their neighbors and shoot the breeze a little bit and eat some church pie and call it a day,” she said.

More information is available at ourcountyfair.com.

This story was originally published July 2, 2021 at 3:51 AM.