More people came, participated in and watched the grandstand events this year than last at the Park County Fair, which looks to have been twice as profitable as last year.

“Overall, I think the fair went really good,” Park County Events Manager Billy Wood said as he sifted through final numbers a couple weeks after the fair’s end. 

Attendance was up roughly 500 over last year, with gate numbers at 13,611, up from 13,125. 

Those numbers don’t count the attendees from the free day Tuesday and the free mornings.  

There was also more involvement in the fair this year, as 15 more exhibitors entered more than 1,100 more exhibitions (including showing and static exhibits). 

Wood credited the fair advisory board approving a limited print run of the fair booklet with contributing to the big rise in entries, as people were able to flip through the book and find a greater variety of categories in which to enter. 

The board approved a 250-copy print run and then an extra 90, with Wood only having about 10 left over. The fair book had been printed each year until more recently, when it was made into an online PDF to save on costs. 

“Having a hard copy right there definitely helps, because you can go through it, read it, highlight, write in it,” he said, adding that with the additional exhibits this year, there are actually a couple of open class exhibitors heading down to the state fair, which he said was an unusual occurrence. 

Every grandstand event also saw a rise in attendance, except of course the perennial sold out demolition derby Saturday, which sold the max 1,874 tickets yet again. 

The figure 8 races once again pulled in the second most people at 1,154 (up from 1,110), 1,125 people (up from 1,108) watched pig wrestling in the third year of it being a paid event to watch, truck pulls saw 948 (882) and the concert drew 578 (463). 

While not all grandstand events made money, taken together the grandstand made a profit, he said.

For the fair as a whole, profit more than doubled from under $7,000 to just over $14,000. Wood, a numbers guy, said with increased profit comes the ability to do more things in future fairs. 

While coming in last, the concert turned out more people than the two previous years, and also cost a good bit less than last year’s concert. Tyler Rich cost $20,000 plus $4,000 for the opening act, on top of the standard $9,000 cost for the stage. 

That Arena Rock Show cost $17,500 and, Wood said, he’s only heard good things about the show, even though it was later than originally scheduled. 

The Park County Fair Advisory Board will meet for the first time since the fair on Sept. 9, where they will begin the work of deciding what the next fair will look like.