TMCNet: Alameda County Fair at 100: from chariots, Clydesdales and gopher traps to horse racing, concerts and robots

[June 15, 2012]

Alameda County Fair at 100: from chariots, Clydesdales and gopher traps to horse racing, concerts and robots

PLEASANTON, Jun 15, 2012 (Contra Costa Times - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Chariots and motorcycles raced. Adults competed for prizes to create best gopher trap, parasol, manure spreader, and hand churned butter in the first Alameda County Fair a century ago.


Children competed in a penmanship contest with a $1.50 contest given to the best handwriting from a school with only one or two teachers.

Clydesdale horses were exhibited but not as stars looking for glory as in the modern day Budweiser beer commercials. They were true work horses -- one of 69 fair categories of horses in the 1912 fair.

Mules had their own category.

Welcome to the yesteryear of the Bay Area's largest county fair, an event that has transformed over the years as organizers try to balance a celebration of agrarian life, local culture, and "gee whiz' entertainment for the masses.

"The fair is a public display of what Alameda County can do," said Clark Redeker, a fair board member from 1955 to 2005. "Things have changed in some ways and not others. We have to keep up with the times." In this year's centennial fair that runs from Wednesday to July 8, the aroma of deep fried corn dogs and sweet funnel cakes and chocoalted covered xxxwill permeate the hot summer air -- as it has for decades.

Children will giggle and scream as they ride a roller coaster and water slides and they may wince if they watch adults locking lips in the kissing contest June 24 on the main ampitheatre stage before the Salt N Pepa concern.

A century ago, the fair had very few carnival rides but a greater variety of farm animals on display for the fairgoers who arrived on two trains each morning to the Pleasanton station.

Although a light rain fell on opening day in fall of 1912, the sun later came out to dry out the flags on display throughout Pleasanton and heated things up for a brass band concert. A harness race was the big draw of the day.

As some fair traditions endured, other exhibits and activities disappeared over the years.

Gone are motorcycle racing, shooting people out of cannons, donkey riding, harness racing, and an aerial tram.

To be sure, the fair no longer has the 1913-era competitions for best gopher trap, best jack for a farm vehicle.

The penmanship contest is gone. Now the robot competition is a hot draw.

The Alameda County fair maid contest lasted from 1949 to 1981 before it was swept away in a backlash against beauty contests, according to the official county fair history book.

The fair still has many entries for cattle, swine, sweep and goats, but there are far fewer animal categories overall.

The fair had competitions for many different breeds of working horses in the early fair years, but none today. Youths still compete in horse show competition.

Tiffany Burrow, a Livermore resident, said she was among the last people to compete in a buggy riding competition at the some 15 years ago at the Alameda County Fair.

"Not many people have the access to the equipment, horses and places to practice it today," said Burrow, now the fair exhibition supervisor. "We would bring it back if enough people wanted to do it." Harness racing debuted with the fair in 1912 as a way to show which animals were good at pulling buggies or carriage to transport people.

The fairgrounds used to have a second track for harness racing inside the regular mile-long track used for thoroughbred racing. Harness racing ended in 1968 and the inner track in 1974 was turned into a golf course, according to the fair's official history book.

Thoroughbred horse racing remains a big draw, but the Alameda County fair race tack crowds are not as consistently big as in the 1960s and 1970s when John Anderson was a youngster watching his parents train horses there.

"Now you have satellite racing where people can watch the fair races at a satellite facility without driving to Pleasanton," said John Anderson, a Pleasanton horse trainer. "You still get a lot of people coming to watch the horse races, but it's not the same as when you could hardly move in the grandstand most every day." The Alameda County owes its start to horse racing and the one-mile track that is the longest continuously operating one in America, fair officials said.

In 1859, Augustin Bernal built the race track in Pleasanton on a portion his family's large Mexican land grant.

Rodney MacKenzie, the son of a railroad tycoon, purchased the race track in 1911, added a grandstand and then joined with other civil leaders the following year to create a fair association.

The group sold $100 certificates to raise $10,000 to add other buildings and improvement to finance other buildings needed for the 1912 fair.

Phoebe Hearst, mother of famed publisher William Randolph Hearst, loaned some workers from her Pleasanton estate to help prepare the fairgrounds for the crowds that arrived in droves on two daily trains.

Hearst would get a payback of sorts the following year. According to an Oakland Tribune article, Hearst's ranch cleaned up as the 1913 fair's sweepstakes winner for the best and most varied exhibit of farm produce -- as well blue ribbon winner for tomatoes, squash, turnips, and best vegetables from a single garden.

Vegetables are still judged at the fair each year.

Contact Denis Cuff at 925-943-8267. Follow him at Twitter.com/deniscuff ___ (c)2012 the Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.) Visit the Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.) at www.contracostatimes.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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