CORNISH — The Cornish Fair opens Friday with a farm horse competition, youth agricultural quiz, and Midway rides, among other attractions.
Started in 1950, its focus has been on agriculture, and a new livestock pavilion is expected to be one of the highlights of this year’s fair.
Admission was free for the first few years, but attendees were asked to contribute to a fund to build a new school in town, according to the History of the Town of Cornish, New Hampshire, by Barbara Eastman Rawson.
There was a pie-eating contest, bean dinner, and a greased pig chase, among other events.
And in 1951, a “Miss Cornish Fair” contest was added, which continues in some form to this day (this year there is a Cornish Fair Queen contest, and crowning of a fair prince and princess).
Having fun at the fair has also been a hallmark, as generations of Sullivan County residents, and fairgoers from farther afield as well, can attest.
For Emily Bourne, a 22-year-old University of New Hampshire graduate now working in Boston, attending the fair was “something you would look forward to,” especially when she was in elementary school.
“It was sort of the last summer hurrah to get together with your friends,” said Bourne, who grew up in Cornish.
She was interested in the rides — a Valley News photographer captured Bourne on the Scrambler ride in 2013, along with Cornish friends Sophie Hammond and Lily Hier. But she also enjoyed the food, like street corn, and the farm exhibits and art show.
“I submitted art a couple of times,” she said. “It was fun to browse and see what other people in town had created that year.”
Cornish resident Lea LaClair, now 64, has seen at least four generations of her family enjoy the events.
LaClair, then the 16-year-old Lea Jewell, participated in the 1973 Queen of the Fair competition along with several classmates at Stevens High School.
She remembers being sponsored by the Cornish fire department, and that the contest included a talent show. Hers was sewing, and LaClair, who had been in 4-H, also modeled one of the outfits she had created.
“It was the fun time,” she said of the fair. “That’s what you looked forward to in summer because you didn’t see some of your friends then, but everybody is going to be at the fair.”
LaClair still goes every year, taking her granddaughters.
But LaClair isn’t the veteran fairgoer in the family. Her mother, Josephine (Tewksbury) Jewell, grew up in Cornish and is now 89.
“I don’t think she has missed one,” LaClair said.
John P. Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com.