SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — The South Dakota Fair was once in Sioux Falls. It was also in Yankton, Mitchell and Aberdeen before Huron secured for keeps in 1905.
The state fair started on Wednesday and continues through Monday, Labor Day. It will be a change to six days this year, but the fair is used to changes.
The cities bid on the fair in those early years and, according to the Miner County Historical Society, there was suspicion about those early contracts in the late 1800s. Huron was the site of the first state fair in 1885. It returned in 1886 but would be more than a decade before the state fair found its permanent home in Huron.
Sioux Falls agreed to pay $1,500 for the first year of the fair in 1895 and $1,000 for each year after. The state fair had $10,700 in revenue after the 1895 fair ended. But according to Miner County Historical Society, when the state fair board learned it only had $1,500 left after operating expenses and still had to pay $4,500 in prize money, Sioux Falls lost its six-year contract soon after.
Yankton got the fair in 1896 but within two years, the fair board was in debt. It was a lawmaker and a railroad company that helped Huron secure the fair from 1904 on.
Beadle County Sen. Fred M. Wilcox introduced the bill to move the fair permanently to Huron in 1903. The then Chicago & Northwestern Railway offer to deed 85 acres for the fairgrounds in Huron. The land was valued at $50,000.
The Legislature also agreed to provide $10,000 to build state fair buildings in Huron, according to an April 12, 2006, news release from Matthew T. Reitzel of the South Dakota State Historical Society.
Labor Day has not always been part of the fair schedule. The first fair in 1885 ran from rom Sept. 29 to Oct. 2. In the past 20 years, the dates have shifted from running the end of July through early August to the end of August through early September.
The fair ran from July 31 to Aug. 6 in 2000. The seven-day run ended in 2004 when it increased to eight days for 2004 and 2005. The dates also changed in 2004 to run from Sept. 4 to Sept. 11.
The Department of Agriculture Secretary Larry Gabriel cited declining attendance as a main reason to change the far said.
“The State Fair is so important to our state, and it is imperative that we do all we can to help it succeed. After studying the declining numbers from the past few years, it was apparent that a change had to be made,” Gabriel said in a Sept. 11, 2003 news release.
State fair attendance grew by nearly 100,000 from 2003 to 2004. The attendance was 114,000 in 2003 and 210,000 in 2004.
Fair attendance was 111,000 in 2002.
But the eight-day schedule didn’t last long. It was cut to five days in 2006. State officials said revenues were down in 2006 and cited rain as a factor. Revenues had also been down in 2005. KELOLAND News searched for attendance numbers for 2005 and 2006 in state news archives but only found news releases related to the declining revenue.
From 2007 to 2013, attendance never reached 200,000. But, it grew from 150,993 in 2007, to 183,005 in 2013. The five-day format did result in attendance topping 200,000 for six straight years from 2014 to 2019.
Attendance dipped during the COVID-19 pandemic to 107,992 in 2020. Fair officials also cited a rain-out on Labor Day that year.
The next year had another rain-out which negatively impacted attendance. Extreme heat hampered the fair in 2023, officials said, but the fair still drew 178,390 attendees.
