To be fair: Logandale, Overton atwitter over Clark County Fair and Rodeo

By Kristen Peterson

Thursday, April 8, 2004 | 8:18 a.m.

The main road is a highway that weaves through town. In the houses scattered along the way, stay-at-home moms make crafts, jam and jelly. Residents eye their gardens and finish their artwork. Children wash their steers, walk their lambs and tame their butting goats.

In a quarter-acre garden that wraps most of his home, Sylvan Wittwer, a white-haired man in his 80s, pulls carrots from the earth, shakes them and says without pause, "These are the best carrots you'll ever taste."

Here in Moapa Valley, this is the season residents know best. Starting today more than 65,000 people are expected to flood Logandale and neighboring Overton for the 17th annual Clark County Fair and Rodeo.

The fair runs only four days, but residents have been preparing for months. More than 700 volunteers help put the event together and come from as far away as Boulder City. But mainly Moapa and Moapa Valley residents pitch in.

"No matter where you go, there's all this talk. People ask, 'OK, what are you going to do this year?' " said Rhonda Pulsipher, who is in charge of the fair's Country Store that sells baked goods, candy and homemade crafts.

"Everybody's got a job. My mother manages an RV park. All the vendors, exhibitors start pulling in. Just seeing everybody come in stirs enthusiasm."

To area residents the fair is a chance to meet up with friends on the midway, eat fair food, watch novelty acts and listen to live country music. But even more, the fair unites the locals who sell tickets, decorate the buildings and show off their quilting skills, agriculture and livestock.

"Most people here know each other, but if they don't it's a good place to get to know everyone," said Margaret Houston, standing under a 10-foot leafy tree made of twisted paper and wire in the fine arts building. Nearby were roughly a dozen young women decorating in the theme of Mr. McGregor's garden from "Peter Rabbit."

"We spent tons of hours just sitting and cutting leaves out," Houston said. "Leaves and apples. It's a lot of work. Hours and hours of work. But it's a lot of fun."

With a smile, Houston added, "Life stops and you do the fair."

Fair ground

According to the International Fair and Expo Association, there are more than 3,200 fairs held each year in the United States and Canada.

Though only 2 percent of the U.S. population is involved with agriculture, fairs are still prominent, said Max Willis, head of the association.

"This whole thing brings communities together, renews friendships, helps the local economy, gets people away from the hustle and bustle," Willis said, referring to small fairs such as Clark County's.

"Volunteer-operated fairs are very common and very traditional. Most of the time a city, county, community fair centers around harvest time."

Without volunteers, it's unlikely the Clark County Fair would happen.

"Almost every part of putting the fair together is volunteering," Tod Robison, the fair's director, said. "Usually by Christmastime we're in full swing trying to take care of things. We have people who take vacations to and volunteer at the fair.

"A lot of people plan family reunion-type activities. A lot of people have extended families. This is a good time of year to come home."

The fair has grown immensely since the 1950s, when it was held at Cashman Field and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority was known as the Clark County Fair and Recreation Board.

It moved to Logandale, 45 miles north of Las Vegas, in 1987 and became a nonprofit organization and a source of pride for the rural community. A fair board meets year-round. Touring Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) contestants (669 of them) compete at the fair. Next year the rodeo will be televised. The majority of fair-goers at the Clark County Fair are Las Vegas residents.

"We're already starting working on next year's fair," Robison said. "We're just trying to stay ahead of it.

"We have only about a hundred rooms here in the valley. They're sold out a year in advance."

Volunteers start gaining momentum months before the fair. Houston started on the fine arts building a few months ago by ordering rolls of construction paper to make the carrots enclosed in white picket fences and the 4-foot cornstalks that climb the walls.

The building will host, among other elements, artwork, photography, horticulture and home art competitions and industrial arts and science projects.

"Everybody likes to work in this building because at fair time, we're done," Houston said.

Show time

For others involved, the opening of the fair is just the beginning of their time to shine.

Alyssa O'Toole, an 11-year-old who grew up in Moapa Valley, is entering her goat, Dumbo, in the market competition at the Clark County Junior Livestock Show, designed for Future Farmers of America and members of 4-H clubs.

Wearing Wrangler jeans, a white T-shirt and cowboy boots, she climbed over a white metal gate and approached the animal.

"He's a lot of responsibility," O'Toole said. "You have to feed them, water them, take care of them."

O'Toole is also showing a blue-bottomed pig she didn't name because she didn't want to get attached. She keeps her animals at Moapa Valley High School's FFA area, where her father works. This is her fourth year participating.

Letting go of the animals for slaughter, O'Toole said, is sometimes sad. After the livestock competitions, the animals are sold and harvested.

"Through agreements with parents, kids purchase animals themselves and are responsible for the feed and cleaning the pen," said Brenda Slocumb, vocational education instructor for the Cooperative Extension and coordinator for the 4-H program.

The livestock and small-animal competition brings children, ages 8 and older, from Moapa Valley, Pahrump, Las Vegas and Lincoln County. About 250 children participate.

"It's quite an education for these kids," Slocumb said. "They learn responsibility. They learn life. They learn death."

Bunny rabbit

Many of the children return every year. Jenna Rhude, who was 13 when she first entered her pet rabbit in the small-animals division, was a five-time returnee, garnering more awards as the rabbit matured.

"I traded two guinea pigs to get her," Rhude said from her cell phone as she was driving home to Moapa Valley after picking up strawberries in Las Vegas.

Now married and with two children, Rhude focuses on her pomegranate jelly and strawberry freezer jam (the latter brought her a Grand Champion award three years ago). She gets the pomegranate juice from a neighbor in the area.

She'll sell jelly, along with homemade bracelets, barrettes and scrapbooks at the Country Store, where baking begins each morning around 8 a.m.

"There's always your banana bread, lemon bread, pumpkin bread, and, of course, homemade pie," Pulsipher said, adding that she'll make homemade rolls using a family recipe.

"One family sells homemade ice cream, and this year, caramel popcorn balls. They're making 800. They have four or five kids. It's one way they teach their kids how to manage money."

Engine Bob

Every year Bob Hitchcock brings two trailers of antique and novelty engines. Hitchcock travels the country to engine shows and is a staple at the Clark County Fair, where he runs the hissing engines simultaneously.

"I consider myself an entertainer, but I can't sing or dance," Hitchcock said. "I show people how it used to be done.

"Half say, 'I remember when,' the other say, 'What the heck is that?' "

Looking around at the engines spilling out of his garage last week, he said, "All of this will go to the fair. There's about 10 of us who have our stuff there. They're all from Southern Utah, Vegas, Moapa Valley."

Hitchcock, who lives in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Overton, credits the fair's success to its Moapa Valley location, saying, "If it was in Las Vegas, it would be just like a swap meet. The people of the valley deserve a lot of credit for their hard work and dedication for the ongoing effort of the fair."

Rolling out The Flying Dutchmen, an early 1900s engine that runs at 500 RPM and 2.5 horsepower, he explained, "If it was on a farm, it might have been used to run water, a washing machine used in a workshop. Whatever you could belt it up to made your life easier."

Wittwer's garden

While Hitchcock lives in a secluded area, Wittwer, a Logan-dale resident and lifelong agriculturalist, came full circle when he built a house near the highway in Logandale. His family were pioneers in Southern Utah. He attended Hurricane High School and graduated in 1935.

For years area residents wanted him to enter his produce, but Wittwer knew he had too much of an edge. So last year he teamed with the Logan-dale office of the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension to create an educational exhibit at the fair.

"Knowing this area, I decided I would do something good," Wittwer said.

Looking over his garden that provides healthy beets, asparagus, onions, tomatoes, broccoli, spinach, carrots, strawberries, peas and cabbage, Wittwer said, "This is seven years of trial and error, of experimenting."

Wittwer has spent a lifetime in agriculture. Before retiring he served as director of the Michigan State University Agricultural Experiment Station and director of horticulture, and was agricultural consultant for the government. After spending time in China, he co-wrote the book "Feeding a Billion" with three Chinese agriculture scientists.

His garden is watered by a drip irrigation system. Wittwer and his wife, Maurine, have been harvesting seven pounds of asparagus a day. He sells his produce at the local Farmer's Market or to the herbal store up the road. He grows apricots and pomegranates and would like to grow blueberries and raspberries, but temperatures in the area are too hot.

Having an educational booth at the county fair shows gardeners what can be grown in Southern Nevada, he said.

This year, Wittwer says, "We'll have peas, two varieties of beets at two stages of growth. We'll have two onions, we'll have cabbage, we'll have broccoli, we'll have carrots.

"It's going to be better than last year."