SEVIER COUNTY, Tenn. (WATE) — The Sevier County Fair is set to begin on Tuesday, and this year marks a major milestone, celebrating nine decades with the theme “90 years of change & growth.” 6 News stopped by the fairgrounds to check on final preparations and has more on what changes and developments visitors can expect to see this year.
The Sevier County Fair has been preparing for a year, and for its 90th anniversary, visitors may notice some changes. As part of a long-term rebuilding plan, the cattle and poultry barns were taken down, replaced this year with temporary tents to house the livestock.
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“90-year celebration, but we lost two buildings in the mix of that. So, and it had to happen, it was history. This used to be the old Stokely Canning factory here. The barns had been here for a long time. Safety issues. So, they had to come down. So, our 90th year, you’re going to see a lot of changes,” explained Temmie Browning, the Sales and Marketing Director for the Sevier County Fair.This move opened space for relocations and new additions across the fairgrounds.“Immediately behind me, we have RC car races — new this year. This area was normally just livestock, so now we’ve got the fair tent here, our contest tents here. We’re going to have food vendors over here. So, it opened up real estate to be able to use in a lot of different ways,” added Browning.Ken King, who owns King Pure Water and runs the Animal Kingdom and Rodeo, has been a part of the fair for eight years, and he said he’s witnessed the event grow year after year.“We’re bringing more and more agricultural products to the fair every single year. Now, this year we got a rabbit show, and then this year we got the draft horse pull. So, it’s kind of neat to see this fair grow. And then, this year of not having the big red barn, we’ve got a lot of tents over there. The fair’s still going on; it’s bigger and better this year than it was last year. And that’s the way this fair’s working. It’s getting bigger and better every single year,” said King.Despite the changes, the fair continues to hold on to what makes it special.
“We’re small, we’re hometown. And we do feel that it still feels that way. I mean, we’re in Sevier County. We’re in tourist 24/7, attractions all the time. But we still feel that we have that hometown, county fair-feel here,” said Browning.
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The Sevier County Fair opens to the public on Tuesday, August 27th at 5 pm and runs through Labor Day, ending on September 1st…