We’ll see you at the fair

It’s back! After 52 weeks of waiting — and craving our favorite fair foods — the Alaska State Fair is back Thursday and celebrating its 75th year.

A lot has changed since July 1936 when the Matanuska Valley Agricultural and Industrial Fair Association was formed to organize a four-day celebration on school grounds.

Back then, adult tickets cost $1, children under 8 got in free and a season pass cost $2. Today, a weekday ticket for youth and seniors costs $5 and a weekend ticket costs $6, and adult admission costs $9 during the week and $11 on the weekend.

The fair moved to its current 300-acre location in 1967 and has added an array of venues and amenities since then. These days, many of the state fair’s venues host public events year-round, such as horse shows, dog shows, facility rentals, concerts, trade shows and winter RV and boat storage.

And while the Alaska State Fair has grown beyond its first-year slate of events, which included the crowning of a fair queen, a baby show, boxing matches, horse races, dances, a rodeo and baseball games. A lot about the fair remains the same — you’ll still find hundreds of exhibits showing off the quality of locally grown cabbages, grain, carrots, onions, celery and peas, as well as livestock from horses and cows to pigs and chickens.

That first fair coincided with the opening of the Knik River Bridge, which linked the Mat-Su Valley to Anchorage by road for the first time and allowed people from all over the territory to attend.

It’s still that way. People come from as far away as Fairbanks and Homer to attend the Alaska State Fair.

Husky Burger founder Joe Lentz says he has customers who’ve become friends who live in Fairbanks and on the Kenai Peninsula, and the only time he sees them is once a year when they stop by his booth at the fair. Husky Burger, the fair’s oldest vendor, celebrates its 50th anniversary at the fair this year.

Although the price for a Husky Burger has increased from $1.25 when the hamburger stand opened in 1962 to $5 at this year’s fair, the menu mostly hasn’t changed.

Except now they offer bacon on the burgers, Lentz said.

The most famous feature of the fair — the giant cabbage contest — got its start at the fair in 1941 when Alaska Railroad manager Col. Ohlson offered a $25 prize for the largest cabbage. That year, Max Sherrod took the prize with a 23-pound cabbage. These days that cabbage would laughed out of the competition. Steven Hubacek holds the current colossal cabbage record with a 127-pound monster he grew in 2009.

Carnival rides were added in 1950, and that year the fair board petitioned the Alaska Legislature for official designation as the Alaska State Fair.

John F. Kennedy was among guests at the fair in 1960 — a few months before he was elected president — when attendance reached 30,000.

The Colony Village — which includes the former St. John Lutheran Church, Hesse-Smith House, Mac Neven House, Wineck Barn and Evan Jones House — preserves some of the historic buildings from Palmer’s early days and was added to the fairgrounds in 1975.

More recently in 2004, the fair added the Green Gate and Railroad Depot to accommodate trains, buses, shuttle vans, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians.

And like every year since 1947 when the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman got its start — we’ll see you at the fair!