COUNTYWIDE / O.C. FAIR : Event Ages Well as It Hits Century Mark

The exact date escapes her, but 102-year-old Clara Syfers remembers going to the Orange County Fair as a youngster. There was the Ferris wheel with its ring of lights and the cows corralled in a pen and homemade apple pies.

“Oh yes, I liked it,” said Syfers, whose face lights up when asked. “I liked the animals.”

For Syfers, a resident of a Seal Beach convalescent home, and many other Orange County residents, the fair evokes fond childhood memories, no matter how long ago they happened. Like Little League games or ballet lessons, it is a part of growing up as familiar as tossing a ring and winning a stuffed bear.

As they grew up, so did the fair. And this year, as the Orange County Fair--which begins Friday--marks it 100th anniversary, fair officials, historians and just plain folks are reflecting on the changes.

“I think the fair has aged very well,” said Norbert Bartosik, general manager of the Orange County Fairgrounds. “It has been a lot of work,” he added, discussing the last year spent preparing for the centennial, “but a lot of fun.”

The first ever Orange County Fair wasn’t even a fair. It was a horse race, sponsored by the Orange County Fair Corp. and conducted at the racetrack in Santa Ana at Bristol Street and Edinger Avenue in 1890. Silkwood, the favorite, brought home the $1,500 purse.

The next race included some livestock, grandstands and stables, setting the stage for future fairs. For the next several decades, the fair was a series of small community carnivals that jumped around Orange County from Santa Ana to Anaheim and Huntington Beach.

Local libraries and historical societies have helped piece together its patchwork past, hampered by lost records but coming up with enough detail to learn that a bovine epidemic of hoof and mouth disease derailed the fair in 1924.

Mildred Mitchell, 85, of Fullerton, whose family was one of the first settlers of Orange County, remembers going to some of the early fairs to see the livestock and sample home-grown produce. In those days, a trip to Anaheim from their home in Buena Park was an adventure.

“When I was a child . . . it was a day’s journey to go to Anaheim,” Mitchell said. “I always enjoyed the flowers, never cared much for the attractions. We were country kids.”

It wasn’t until 1939 that an event officially known as the Orange County Fair was first staged. And it wasn’t until a decade later that it moved to its current home at the former Santa Ana Army Air Base in Costa Mesa.

Charles Beecher, president of the Costa Mesa Historical Society, credits the fair with helping to give the area exposure.

“The fair helped draw” crowds, Beecher said. “In 1949 is when it first came on the base, so it has been operating there and growing with the community since.”

Indeed, the last 40 years has seen many changes as the fair has grown to keep pace with the changing community. What was once a family get-together of ranchers has slowly grown into a multimillion-dollar operation. The yearly contests have changed from farm-related affairs to competitions for everything from best aquariums to the latest electronics gadgets.