After a year without rides, games and grandstand entertainment due to the pandemic, the Johnson County Fair returns with all its traditional elements this weekend.
There will still be COVID-19 precautions, since community spread is still occurring in the state. The fair is asking anyone who is not fully vaccinated to wear a mask, spacing between booths has been increased, ventilation in buildings has been improved and some events normally held indoors will be moved outside.
The four-day fair kicks off in full on Sunday, but there will be a performance by country music artist Casey Muessigmann in its Variety Tent on Saturday night at 7 p.m. Muessigmann, who is from the northwest Iowa town of Spencer, was a contestant on The Voice in 2012, and performed at the Johnson County Fair in 2019.
On Sunday all the rides will be in motion and all the booths open, and after featured ag displays and chainsaw carving, the day concludes with a concert by another country singer with Iowa roots, Jason Brown. The Pella-born Brown will take the stage at the grandstand at 7 p.m.
Monday is Senior Day at the fair, and finishes up with a steel cage wrestling match, featuring wrestlers from Impact Pro Wrestling, a family-owned wrestling promotion company in Algona, Iowa. The wrestling starts at 7 p.m. at the grandstand.
Tuesday is Kid’s Day and features, among other events, the hog-calling contest in the Variety Tent at 5 p.m., and the aerial acrobatics on four-wheelers of the ATV Big Air Tour at 7 p.m. at the grandstand.
Tuesday will also be the last time the Bill Riley Talent Search will be at the Johnson County Fair. Or at least, the last time with a host named Bill Riley.
The Talent Search, which has 100 qualifying events around the state each year, has been a mainstay of the Iowa State Fair since 1960, when Bill Riley, Sr. hosted it. Bill Riley, Jr., took over from his father in 1996, but the 63-year-old Riley told the Des Moines Register in October that 2021 would be his last year.
“I promised myself that I’m not going to be on stage in my 70s,” Riley said. “The voice starts to go. My knees are already going. I mean, it’s time. This is a celebration.”
Riley told the Register the future of the Talent Search had not yet been determined, but hoped the Iowa State Fair kept it going with a new host.
Wednesday, the fair’s final day, will feature such events as a butterfly release at 5 p.m. at the Butterfly House, and a chicken wing eating contest starting half an hour later on the concourse. The evening’s big event will be the Family Rodeo that starts at 6 p.m. at the grandstand. The fair will conclude in its traditional manner, with a fireworks display that begins at 9:30 p.m.
A full list of events is available online.
Of course, at its heart, the fair still remains “a genuine livestock show,” as the Evening Gazette and Republican called it in 1929 when the current version of the fair was launched.
The first Johnson County Fair was actually held in 1853, and it was an annual event until 1917. That year the Iowa City Republican reported the fair was having financial problems. The fair’s organizers, the Johnson County Agricultural and Horticultural Society, decided to discontinue it.
In 1929, the recently organized Johnson County 4-H revived the fair tradition with its first Johnson County 4-H Fair. Twenty years later, the newly formed Johnson County Agricultural Association took over management of the fair.
The current fair doesn’t have the financial woes the early 20th century version did, in large part because of steady support from the Johnson County Board of Supervisors. The fair receives more than $100,000 in support from the county.
Not everyone in Johnson County approves of tax dollars being used to support the fair. In recent years, there have been regular objections that the fair — especially the Family Rodeo — exploits animals.
Johnson County Supervisor Rod Sullivan told Little Village before the last full fair in 2019 that he understands those objections.
“Certainly nobody on the [Board of Supervisors] endorses animal abuse,” Sullivan said. “It’s important to note that the rodeo that they do is not really associated with the fair. We don’t give money for that rodeo. We give money to keep the fair free.”
Admission to the Johnson County Fair will be free once again this year. Parking for the event at the Johnson County Fairgrounds is also free.
This is the first Johnson County Fair since the county certified a new eponym. Last month, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to name the county for Lulu Merle Johnson, a trailblazing University of Iowa graduate from a farming family, dropping Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson, a slaveowner with no known connections to the area.
With additional reporting by Lauren De Young
