Great Northern Fair Board setting entertainment

Members of the Great Northern Fair Board voted unanimously at Tuesday night’s meeting to budget $4,000 for free entertainment at this year’s Great Northern Fair and $10,000 for a tractor or truck pull, with another $5,000 for the tractor or truck pull raised through sponsorships.

  Chelby Gooch, chair of the Board’s Events Committee that also includes Karla Vaughn and Scott Doney, said the committee met Monday night to discuss free entertainment at this year’s fair.

Gooch said she had talked with a Bozeman company about providing entertainment for the fair. He would bring three different pieces of entertainment that would possibly include a large obstacle course, a pool where people can get into balls and walk on water and a zipline.

She said the company said it would cost $4,000 to provide entertainment plus the cost of hotel rooms for a five person crew.

Doney said a truck or tractor pull will likely be the Saturday night entertainment at this year’s fair. No other ideas were presented at the meeting for Saturday entertainment, he said.

The proposed pull would be done by a professional crew and come at a cost of $15,000, Doney said. He added that he would find $5,000 in sponsorships to help cover the cost of the truck pull, if the board would budget $10,000 to cover the rest.

A motion was made and both tentative budget items were agreed to.

This year, the board is planning to have events during all five nights of this year’s fair. A junior rodeo will be held Wednesday night, a rodeo Thursday night and bull riding Friday night. The Jaycees Demolition Derby will be Sunday night rather than Saturday and the truck or tractor will be Saturday night.

In other business, the board approved a request by the Optimist Club to build a permanent retractable awning on the west side of their food booth.

Vaughn said she talked with the Optimists and they said former fairgrounds manager Bob Horne had given them permission to construct the 8-by-10 awning, however since Horne resigned last fall, they wanted to ask the board. The Optimists want to add the awning to provide shade, she said.  

Board member Tyler Smith said he doesn’t have a problem with the permanent awning as long as it doesn’t create a hazard by blowing off the booth.

Board Chair Paul McCann asked if it would interfere with other booths or with the flow of foot traffic.

Fairgrounds Manager Dave Brewer said, from what he saw, the awning would not be a problem as long as it could be pulled down for storage purposes.

Lon Waid, chair of the 4-H Chuckwagon Committee, said members of his committee members and other branches of the county 4-H Club have decided to move ahead with building the new Chuckwagon where the existing building stands as had been planned.

The board had suggested at a previous meeting that the Chuckwagon be built in a new location.

Waid said he, contractor Dave Clawson, 4-H leaders and the board’s grounds committee met April 27. The group discussed the proposal to build the new Chuckwagon next to the Bigger Better Barn and closer to Highway 2.

All present had a lengthy discussion and weighed the pros and the cons of the new site, but the committee voted unanimously to build the Chuckwagon where the existing structure stands, he said.

He added that the plan is to begin construction on the long-awaited project after this year’s fair in late July.

Brewer also said the Great Northern Fairgrounds now has a Facebook page, and content is being added to the new website at https://www.greatnorthernfair.net.

As of this morning the Facebook page had 118 likes, with the page’s first content posted May 12.

Brewer said he thinks the page will allow people to be more informed about what is happening at the fairgrounds.