It’s almost that time of year where the smell of popcorn and cotton candy, accompanied by the thrilling screams and laughter is back. The Jacktown Fair and Greene County Fair are coming up this summer. This will be the 159th year of the Jacktown Fair, starting all the way back in 1866, according to Visit Greene County PA. The Greene County fair will turn 156 years old, starting three years after the Jacktown fair in 1869, according to G. Wayne Smith, the county historian.

Greene County Commissioners Chairman Jared Edgreen provided information about the history of the Greene County Fair. When they first started this fair, they were actually located where the John F. Wiley football and soccer field is now located. Edgreen said the main draw was all the horse races that would take place on a half-mile track. Since these horse races were taking place, there would be reporters who actually covered these events. 

Unfortunately, there were years when the fair simply couldn’t run because of financial reasons. They couldn’t hold a fair in 1890-93 because of a financial crisis. Edgreen could not find out what caused this. In 1910, there was another financial crisis that actually led to the owners selling the fairground property. This also led to the purchase of where the fairground is today in 1910. They held the first fair in that location in 1911. 

The horse races didn’t seem to be the most entertaining part about the fair, as Edgreen explains some other entertainment the fair had.

“In 1869, during that year they featured a hot air balloon ascensionist, and his name was Professor Oscar Hunt. They called him ‘the daring astronaut,’” said Edgreen. “He would go into this hot air balloon, and there was no basket with it. So he must’ve been suspended in some way, and he went up in the air. There were about 7,000 people there on that Thursday to watch it.”

Today, the Greene County Fair is one of two county-owned fairs in the entire state of Pennsylvania. This means that the county government owns the property and runs the fair. Edgreen said the only other one is the Cambria County Fair. Edgreen is actually the vice president on the current fair board. Even though it is county-owned and run, it is still very community-driven. They have a lot of community members who will come in and prepare for the fair.

The fair has changed in the past 100 years, but the crowd stays somewhat the same. Parking is something that is always chaotic during the fair, asome nights, there are so many people who show up that they actually need shuttles to pick people up from off-site parking. It also used to be an agricultural fair where people would try to sell animals that they raised. There are still a lot of agricultural parts of the fair, but they have added rides like many other fairs. 

Bret Moore, the Greene County fair manager, talked about the planning process of a fair like this one.

“We have a fair committee. There are eleven people on the board, and I am the manager. We meet monthly starting a month after the fair is over, so we have eleven monthly meetings leading up to the fair,” said Moore. “Plus we have the PA fair convention, which takes place in January in Hershey. We go out there anywhere from three to five days. The first couple of meetings we have are to wrap up any business we have. We also evaluate things we can do better next year.”

He explained that it was hard to accommodate the many different entities that are there during the fair. They all have their ideas on what should be emphasized, but they have to come to a compromise to make all parties happy. 

The Jacktown Fair started out just like the Greene County Fair, with it being mostly just a horse racing event, according to Jacktownfair.org. Horse racing actually came to an end around 1946, and horse pulls took its place as the main event. There were 280 shares of stock that had to be sold to help the fair run. 

This is very much a community-driven fair. 

The website also says the first mention of rides in the Jacktown Fair was actually in 1886, which was actually before the very famous Ferris wheel was invented in 1893. The first rides that were mentioned in the Jacktown Fair were two very large swings. 

The Jacktown Fair has been in Greta Mooney’s family ever since the beginning. 

The Jacktown Fair is very special because of its very long history. One of the things that might be overlooked is that they have held a fair every single year since the opening in 1866, according to Mooney. Even through the most difficult times, like the Great Depression and COVID-19, the Jacktown Fair has been able to adapt and hold something small during difficult times.

During World War II, there were premiums paid to help fund a show and livestock fair to keep the tradition going. 

Just like the Greene County Fair, Mooney explained that someone stole the show way back in the day by doing another risky thing. 

“There was a tightrope walker at the Jacktown Fair, and the crowd was enormous,” said Mooney. “It would rival the numbers of today. When you think about what it would take people to get there, just the effort to get there.”

Mooney also claimed that the Jacktown Fair was one of the first fairs to ever have night events that is seen in most fairs today.

“We were one of the first to have night events because they harnessed the gas. We are blessed with a lot of natural gas and oil out our way. We had some really intelligent entrepreneurs in our area who figured out how to do things,” said Mooney. “They harnessed the gas and had lamps that they would burn so we could have night events. So they started that, which they were one of the first ones to do.”

There is a lot of history between these two fairs that have both been through some of the toughest times in our history. The Greene County Fair will be held on August 3-9, and the Jacktown Fair will be from July 15-19.