Grant County Fairgrounds looks to horses for its future

EPHRATA — New Grant County Fairgrounds Director Jim McKiernan thinks equestrian events could eventually help the fairgrounds pay for themselves.

“Horse events could be huge,” McKiernan told Grant County commissioners on Tuesday.

McKiernan, who was hired as the interim fairgrounds manager just a few weeks before the start of the Grant County Fair last August, was then hired as full-time fair director following the resignation of fairgrounds director Mickey Webb in May.

According to the website Clark County Today, Webb has taken the job of director of the Clark County Fair.

“We have 300 days of sunshine, 300 horse stalls, and we’re two and a half hours from two major cities,” McKiernan said.

“We’re centrally located, we have great camping, and we’re affordable,” added Commissioner Cindy Carter.

McKiernan said he was looking into hosting more junior rodeos and high school rodeos at the fairgrounds, and maybe even a championship rodeo or two, as a way to both capitalize on the fairgrounds’ current assets and eventually make the fairgrounds self-sustaining.

“I like the idea of high school and junior rodeo. That’s pretty exciting,” said Commissioner Tom Taylor, who added that when he was in the Army serving in West Berlin in 1983, he was a rider and bronco buster with the Army’s Berlin Rodeo Team.

McKiernan said the fair was also looking at the possibility of a joint fair-rodeo ticket. Currently, the fair and the rodeo, as separate entities, use different scheduling and ticket retailing systems, making it difficult to create a single ticket for both events.

At the very least, McKiernan said that rodeo tickets should be on sale in the fairgrounds office.

McKiernan also told commissioners that fairgrounds staff are currently creating a precise map of the number of RV and trailer camping spaces with the hope of eventually having the fairgrounds’ camping reservation system online.

“Our goal is total online booking,” McKiernan said. “We’re not getting all the revenue that we should (from camping).”

The fairgrounds director also told commissioners that he is reviewing security at the fairgrounds. He said he recently saw people on the roof of one of the barns, and fairgrounds security needs to be “more cognizant of what goes on outside and not just inside” the buildings.

“We don’t want anybody getting hurt,” McKiernan said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.