From livestock to Weird Al videos

When the Orange County Fair started, after World War II, it had been a long time in coming. Los Angeles Times articles as early as the late 1930s talk about the county trying to get the state to use taxes on horse racing — then a much bigger pastime than it is now — to purchase some land and construct a building for a fair.

County board supervisors and Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce members wanted to bring a fair back to the area — the last fair they had was long defunct.

It wasn’t until 1948 that they got their wish. Then, in 1949, the fair took over the old Santa Ana Army Air Base, where it now resides, with the help of $65,000 in state funds to purchase it from the War Assets Administration.

At the time the fair was only four days, and an original pamphlet listing the activities and contests (almost exclusively agricultural) states the mission:

“The primary purpose of the California fair program is to further improve agricultural and livestock production through competitive showing at the 77 fairs which receive financial support from the State.”

Many of the first prizes awarded for prime specimens of vegetables, chickens, rabbits and a number of other crops and animals are listed as $3, which wouldn’t even pay for fair admission today.

The number of distinct contests and classes is staggering — hundreds if not thousands.

For its 60th anniversary in the same location the fair hoped to unveil a new main exhibition hall designed to look like an airplane hangar to commemorate the fair’s aviation roots, but construction was halted because of delays that would have made it impossible to finish by mid-July, fair officials said.

The building will resume construction and a fall opening is expected.

Livestock wasn’t going to be the main attraction in the building, though. It was supposed to host Al’s Brain, a video starring “Weird Al” Yankovic that is going to be one of the centerpieces of this year’s fair.