The Carnival of Casseroles and Salad Parade, Licorice Ice Cream Eating Contest, the Alaskan Racing Pigs, the Table Setting Contest and the Cannon Duel. Those contests and events, some a reflection of their time, others more short-lived, have come and gone from the Southeast Alaska State Fair since its inaugural event at the American Legion post in 1969. This year, the fair is celebrating its 50th anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, Fair assistant executive director Maddy Witek spent the last six months digging through old boxes of photos and slides, scouring fair board meeting minutes, reading old newspaper articles and interviewing long-time fairgoers and organizers to curate an exhibit that documents the history of the event that draws thousands to Haines every July.
“This is the thing that kept me up at night for six months,” Witek said last week as she unpacked the 25 panels she designed, which highlight the fair’s past five decades. As she sifted through hundreds of pages of meeting minutes, she found a 1991 fair management board mission statement that for her crystalized what she enjoyed most about researching and creating her exhibit.
“A Fair should provide a mirrored reflection of what is best in the community it serves,” the mission statement said. “Fair management and community support should strive to regularly clean and polish that mirror so the image remains clear and accurate.”
That cleaning and polishing has reflected an image of a fair that has seen plenty of changes as it has grown, yet remains familiar. The fair reflects what the community’s interested in and what it needs, Witek said.
The event grew out of what was the end of a Haines staple: The Strawberry Festival. The town was once known as the Strawberry Capital of Alaska after Charlie Anway grew the large, flavorful berries in the area for years. The festival was created in his honor, and parades, boat races, a mustache growing contest, strawberry waffles and the crowning of a Strawberry Queen were part of the festivities that lasted from 1952 to 1969. The crops produced smaller yields, however, and organizers “felt it wrong to continue to have a Strawberry Festival without strawberries,” according to Witek’s research.
The Chilkat Valley Homemakers’ Club organized a new festival, the Chilkat Valley Fair. The first fair was held in the American Legion, with the main feature being the exhibits. Twelve departments grew into 26 by the late 1980s. Today there are 20.
The most enjoyable part of her research into the fair’s history was seeing the eclectic mix of events that have ebbed and flowed, Witek said. “Looking at the departments and competitions that have come and gone over the years was very interesting to me,” Witek said. “My favorite was the table- setting competition. It was from 1973 to 1975. It was exactly what you imagine.”
Perhaps a reflection of the social standards of the time, the Logging Show featured a women’s category for throwing not axes, but rolling pins. “This was in the 70s before they started listing it in the fair programs,'” Witek said. “I only know about this because there were two slides that had women throwing rolling pins.”
Another obscure event that piqued Witek’s interest was the Cannon Duel. For fun, Dick Flegel, Carl Heinmiller and others fired a cannon at targets on the beach across from Flegel’s house. “[One year, Carl] said ‘Let’s do a cannon shoot down on your beach,” Flegel said. “I said, ‘Sounds good.'”
They set up beer cans and water balloons on a sheet of plywood, loaded the cannon and lit the fuse. If they missed their target, the slug would skip across the water. In 1979 the blasting became a raucous but short-lived fair event.
“There was one time we yelled ‘Fire in the hole!’ and a Labrador dog walked in front of the cannon,” Flegel said. “The dog got away just in time. That was the last year we did the cannon duel because it attracted a lot of attention and we could imagine a kid or somebody getting hurt. Those were the old and wild west days. We got more sophisticated.”
While she loves the traditions that bring people back to the fair, Witek said she’s also captivated by the one-offs. “You think ‘Why didn’t that stick?’ Well, I mean I know why the Cannon Duel didn’t stick.”
Haines Brewing Company owner Paul Wheeler attended his first fair in 1982 and remembers the square dances that drew hundreds of people on a Saturday evening when Ray Menaker called the dances.
The following year he brought a woman to the fair for their first date. “We camped in the bushes by the cemetery,” said Jeanne Kitayama, Wheeler’s wife.
The year after that, the pair set up a food booth with two friends and sold bread and steamed shrimp. They made a grand total of $64 and their best customer was Haines’ current Mayor Jan Hill, Kitayama said.
Other traditions such as the horseshoe competition, the parade and the exhibits have stuck. Music, now a main feature of the weekend’s festivities, was originally a separate festival, the Chilkat Bald Eagle Music Festival. That event was rolled into the fair in 2004 and was a scene that gave the event some growing pains. Witek found letters written to fair staff expressing frustration about the expansion of the music scene over the exhibits, she said.
“I think that if it had stayed the same the fair wouldn’t still be here because that’s not what Southeast Alaska wants,” Witek said. “People still love being able to send stuff in and show off what they’ve done and what they can do. It’s amazing, but that’s not what it’s all about anymore.”
The prevalence of the music scene is what has allowed the fair to become what it is today, drawing attendees from around Alaska and Canada, fair executive director Jessica Edwards said.
The Horse Show, a popular event for more than 30 years, was eventually scaled back due to the lack of horses in the valley, combined with the high cost of transporting them to town via ferry. In its heyday, riders competed in a fitting and showing class, an English equitation class, a Western equitation class and a bareback class. Winners received the Leah Kadush Trophy, named after a riding instructor from Juneau, for Outstanding 4-H Participants.
Described by a travel article at the time as “delightfully mouthwatering,” Witek said, others looked forward to the Carnival of Casseroles that was eventually shut down in 2006 due to health risks associated with the inability to keep the baked dishes at a steady and safe temperature. Fairgoers could spend 10 cents to sample the casseroles after they were judged at the popular “Dime a Dip” fundraiser.
Today the fair is more than just the event itself. Its success has transformed the once-a-year party into an event-planning organization that organizes and hosts festivities year-round including Beer Fest, Spring Fling, the Fishermen’s BBQ, Winter Fest and an annual film festival.
The vision for today’s fair was first expressed by Harriett Jurgeleit in 1981. Jurgeleit served as the fair’s treasurer and she’s the namesake for Harriett Hall-where exhibits are displayed. “We seem to have reached a turning point,” Jurgeleit said three decades ago. “We are no longer a little fair and not quite big, either. As I learned at the Western Fairs Association meeting, we are going to have to up our interim-make money all year round with our only assets, our buildings, if we are going to survive and grow.”
Edwards said when she took the job as executive director in 2013, the stage was already set for growth and part of her job has been to realize that growth. “It’s been a honing time and a stabilizing time,” Edwards said. “I think the future is going to be more of the same and trying to make what we do better and more important to the communities that we serve.”