With the Sublette County Fair growing in recent years, the fairground is growing, too.

Construction at the fairground will continue through the winter and should finish in time for next year's Sublette County Fair.

The main new attraction is a 54-foot-tall livestock barn, spreading over 80,000 square feet.

The barn is designed to host the regular activities of the Sublette County Fair, with 170 pens for animals and arenas for showing them in addition to seating for about 1,000 people.

The barn can also be converted to use as a venue for concerts or other events for about 3,000 spectators.

“The idea with this facility is that it'll do anything you want,” said Mark Klein, Groathouse Construction Superintendent overseeing the project.

Construction started at the end of October. The footing for the building is already in place and crews started laying the foundation this week.

Klein said they will erect the steel beams in January and February, and masonry will start in February.

Robin Schamber, 4-H Educator for Sublette County, said she is glad many long-standing problems at the fairground will be addressed.

“Frankly, our program is growing, and space has become a huge issue,” she said.

Schamber said she hopes the new arenas will make it easier to rearrange 4-H events, so the fair can end on Saturday instead of Sunday, something people had requested for religious reasons.

The barn would replace the tents that held many animals during the 2009 Sublette County Fair, which can become hot and possibly dangerous to the livestock.

The livestock barn may also make the fair safer by limiting interactions between livestock and spectators. An entrance on the north side of the barn will be designated for livestock, while the south entrance will be for people.

Since the barn will have show arenas within the building, livestock will not travel through crowds or through gateways like they have in years past.

“It's a great addition to the fairground,” said Klein.

While Schamber said she is optimistic for the opportunities the new livestock barn presents, she is skeptical that the facilities will be ready soon enough for the 4-H program to benefit from them this year.

“It's going to be difficult for us to get a lot of use out of it until Fair,” she said. “Hopefully it's ready for Fair.”

The livestock barn is just one of many changes coming to the Sublette County Fairground. The agricultural arena is also being renovated, with the addition of new bathrooms and concessions areas.

The arena needs some structural changes, too. Flaws in the ventilation have allowed moisture to ruin the insulation of the building.

Schamber said the structural deficiencies have made it difficult to use in winter months, and the 4-H program has had trouble scheduling time in the arena.

Klein said the agricultural arena and warm-up ring are used almost constantly for practice by students and ropers and for events year-round. Schamber said she hopes the addition of the livestock barn will alleviate some of the congestion in the agricultural arena.

To support the growth of the fairground facilities, the water and sewer systems from Marbleton are extended to include the fairgrounds. That project started at the end of September.

Fairground Manager Frank James said this opens up the opportunity for businesses to move into the area between the grounds and the town.

Marbleton Mayor Jim Robinson said he hopes the changes will benefit the community economically.

“I think it'll benefit us, though, just with having a better place for our community to have projects,” said Robinson.

A hotel would be particularly appealing, James said, since the lack of nearby hotel facilities has been a major limitation in attracting larger events.

The fairground will be able to host more recreational vehicles than in years past, with 82 water and power hook-ups and an RV waste dump on site.

Also, the fairground will receive its power from natural gas rather than propane.

Sublette County FFA President Liz Shaffer said the power used to go out occasionally, and overall she said the facilities were “old-fashioned” in comparison to other counties'.

Schamber corroborated the electrical issues. She also said during the fair, the sewage system would overflow, especially when a lot of people used the wash-rack at once.

“I'm excited that those are things that we really won't have to deal with anymore,” Schamber said.

She said she was frustrated that those problems were not addressed sooner because of the danger they posed.

The original designs for the fairground were more ambitious, but a lack of revenue has scaled those plans back.

“We've downgraded the plan quite a bit,” James said.

The original 10-year plan, proposed in June 2008, had a budget of about $33 million. That project was designed by a 10-person committee after it held public meetings to solicit ideas from area residents and groups like the 4-H and the FFA.

The budget for the new water and sewer lines, the agricultural arena renovations and the new livestock barn is about $9 million.

One of the items removed from the plans is a second entrance for the fairground, which would have cost about $300,000.

“My hope is that for the amount of money that we're putting into the project that it is used by the community, too,” said Schamber.

In the coming years, though, the fairground will add a motocross track and a scenic horse trail, also. James said there was a lot of interest in creating the motocross track, especially, since there are no other facilities similar to it nearby. It could bring a lot of new visitors into town.

In the meantime, the construction continues. The official groundbreaking of the project will be on Dec. 7.

“I'm excited to see how all of this plays out, and I hope we are given the opportunity to use it as much as we would like to,” Schamber said.



For the complete article see the 11-20-2009 issue.

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