Heat kept many away from Kane Co. Fair

The 2011 installment of the Kane County Fair broke a record, and it’s a mark fair organizers will sweat about until next year’s edition.

Slightly cooler temperatures during the weekend didn’t provide quite enough rebound for the Kane County Fair. The fair drew about 90,000 people this year. That’s down by 10 percent from 2010. Kane County Fair Board President Larry Breon blamed the blistering heat for a particularly poor first two days of the fair.

“Wednesday and Thursday were just brutal,” Breon said. “When you start with attendance that bad it’s hard to make it up.”

The heat index surpassed 100 degrees for much of the daylight portions of the fair. Organizers said attendance on the first two days of the fair was less than 50 percent of historical numbers. Breon said patrons still showed high interest in the fair at night and over the weekend when temperatures dropped a bit. But they didn’t drop enough to give the fair it’s normal one or two mild-weathered days that really packs the ticket stalls.

“We gave it a little crack when people came out with the cooler weather,” Breon said. “But I think we reached an all-time high in terms of bad weather. We’ve never had five days in a row that were terrible before. We did this year. From start to finish it was just one of those deals. We can’t control Mother Nature.”