By Duncan A. Kennedy

QUINCY – Despite soaring temperatures and two years of hiatus dulling hype at county fairs nationwide, the Plumas-Sierra County Fair returned to Quincy in the final days of July to much fanfare and stunning numerical success. The last such county fair was held August 7th through 11th, 2019.
Even after (or perhaps because of) the two years of delay, the fair saw attendance not only meet pre-pandemic levels, but in fact exceed them. According to Fair Manager John Steffanic, attendance was up from 2019 on every day except Saturday, averaging around 4,000 people per day. Crunching and aggregating the attendance numbers across all four days and accounting for people who attended on multiple days, paid fair attendance was around 9,000 people. Including unpaid attendees who came on Free Admission Day (Thursday), total fair attendance was in the vicinity of 12,000 – 13,000 people – not bad, given that only twenty-two thousand live in Plumas and Sierra Counties.
Steffanic and other fair staff members also noted another area where the Plumas-Sierra County Fair exceeded relative to others – entries. Many county and even state fairs suffered badly in this category due to the pandemic, with most fairs seeing barely half their pre-pandemic entry numbers. Here, however, entries were down by only 35 percent – a full 15 percent better than the average. Entries were most noticeably diminished in the livestock and floriculture categories, while visual arts stayed roughly static and home arts increased slightly. Already, the fair’s staff and board members are mulling over ways to increase competition in next year’s fair, sure to be a topic at the next board meeting.
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