Record-Setting Fair Draws to Close : Amusement: This year’s attendance to the 17-day festival was the highest in the event’s 100-year history.

The Orange County Fair closed Sunday night after racking up record attendance figures that prompted fair officials to proclaim this year’s centennial event the most successful ever.

“It was probably the best success we’ve had in all categories,” Norb Bartosik, the fair’s general manager, said of the event, which began July 10. “We’re real pleased the way this came together.”

By Sunday evening, fair officials said, 682,379 people had attended the 17-day event--about 45,000 more than attended last year’s fair, which ran only 12 days. This year’s attendance, officials said, was the highest in the fair’s 100-year history.

In addition to the crowd being bigger, Bartosik said, it spent 10 to 15 cents more per person. And this year’s fair, he said, averaged only two arrests per day, compared to nearly seven per day last year.

Bartosik attributed the fewer arrests to the fair’s extended run, which he said thinned out the daily crowds somewhat and created a calmer atmosphere. As for the higher spending, he said, it reflects the tendency of people during hard times to gravitate toward more grass-roots entertainment closer to home.

“This represents that kind of value,” he said of the fair, which charged admission of $5 for adults and $2 for children ages 6 to 12.

The fair’s closing day was marked, among other things, by the burial of a time capsule to be reopened in the year 2092. During the afternoon ceremony, sponsored by the Los Angeles Times’ Orange County Edition, various dignitaries shared their visions of the future.

“Life for us in 1992 will seem as primitive to you as covered wagons and kerosene lamps seem to us,” Larry M. Arnold, president of the fair’s board of directors, said to the imagined denizens of the future. “So we can say with all honesty that our conception of life in your time will seem laughable.”

Among the items buried in the capsule were a California lima bean sack, an Orange County Fair button collection and a T-shirt signed by Gov. Pete Wilson.

The event was interrupted briefly by about 40 members of an Orange County animal rights group who held a noisy demonstration protesting what they called the mistreatment of animals.

“The fair is home to lots of animal abuse,” said Ava Park, founder of Orange County People for Animals. As an example, she cited the calf roping event at the fair’s rodeo.

“It’s terribly painful, and calves die that way,” Park said. “We don’t believe this is any way to treat animals or raise our children.”

Fair officials denied that animals are abused at the fair.

The fair’s last day was also marred by a confrontation between fair officials and the county Democratic Party when Bartosik issued a letter ordering party members to remove abortion rights posters and other material from the party’s booth.

Fair officials said the letter was prompted by complaints from fair-goers and was based on the fact that the party’s contract with the fair didn’t specify that the organization would be distributing abortion rights material.

Democratic Party members complied with the order but said they believed it to be an infringement of their First Amendment rights.

“They are censoring what we’re doing,” Marti Schrank, vice chairman of the county’s Democratic Central Committee, said of the fair manager’s action. “This is part of the Democratic platform.”

Schrank said local Democrats would be meeting soon to discuss whether to take any action on the matter.

Out across the fairgrounds, meanwhile, such conflicts seemed only a distant breeze.

“We’re having a great time,” said Dave Schultz, a civil engineer from Newport Beach visiting the fair with relatives from Northern California.

His only complaint?

“They need more pigs,” he said.