Euclid Farnham Will Step Down As Fair President By M. D. Drysdale

Euclid Farnham, president of the Tunbridge World's Fair for 31 years, is seen in this archive photograph greeting visitors in full period dress on Antique Hill. (Herald File / Tim Calabro)

Visitors to Tunbridge last December may have felt a muffled explosion, the earth trembling a little under their feet.

The reason: Euclid Farnham had just then announced he would be stepping down as president of the Tunbridge World’s Fair after 31 years at the helm.

The World’s Fair without Euclid? Unthinkable, right?

But Farnham confirmed the news this week.

He’ll still be there, though, he hastened to add.

“Priscilla’s going to hire me in the Antiques Cabin,” he explained with a grin.

His reason? At age 998798798, he just finds himself dead tired the day after the four-day fair is over.

“I’d like to enjoy the fair more,” he told The Herald.

“I’d like to actually SEE it.”

Today’s Tunbridge Fair is, in his own words, “a world apart from the fair I inherited in 1978.” It’s also one of the two or three most successful fairs in Vermont. Though tucked into a tiny valley in one of Vermont’s least populous counties, it is the envy of many much bigger venues, sometimes drawing upwards of 50,000 people in the four days and operating on a $750,000 budget.

The successful makeover of the Tunbridge Fair is the result of a dozen or more key decisions and policy changes, most if not all of them championed by the president of the Union Agricultural Society—the official name of the organization that runs the fair.

You wouldn’t take Euclid Farnham for a revolutionary, though he’s had that effect on the fair. He speaks slowly and softly, with usually a hint of a smile or a laugh.

As a dairy farmer on scenic Whitney Hill west of Tunbridge, Farnham received his grounding in the business of the fair early in life. His great-grandfather was one of the residents who pitched in when the fair needed money in 1902, purchasing one of the 100 shares issued for $5 each, a total of $500 that saved the fair’s finances at the time.

That share was passed to Euclid’s grandfather and his father and then it was transferred to him in the 1960s. Almost immediately, he was elected to the board of directors, where he’s served for 41 years. And almost immediately, he pushed for changes.

At that time, the Tunbridge World’s Fair had a “reputation.” A “drunkards’ reunion,” they called it, a place where a carnival had replaced the country fair. A place to which you wouldn’t bring your own wife, so you had to find somebody else’s. A place you didn’t send your kids alone, especially after dark on Saturday nights.

Shady Reputation

The reputation, Farnham said, was deserved.

“We used to need a whole army of police,” he reflected last week. “Orange County alone couldn’t provide enough deputies to police the fair.” Deputies were employed from several different counties, and arrests were frequent—for misbehavior on the midway or in the unregulated camping sites in the surrounding meadows.

Farnham decided to change all that. In just his second year as president, he made a significant change—he eliminated the “girlie shows,” soft-porn strip shows. It was controversial, but he got the whole board of directors to back him.

Then he moved to cut down the unlimited camping with its alcoholic excess, and to ban alcohol from the fairgrounds (except for the well-regulated beer hall under the grandstand).

He shifted the focus to attract families.

It was a tough sell at first. Families just didn’t want to come, and the older clientele fell away, so that for four or five years, attendance declined.

Welcoming Children

Farnham and his board made more changes: creating an Education Day every Thursday, free for schoolchildren, strengthening the farm program, making a real museum out of its unique Antiques Hill exhibits, painting the buildings and building more, planting flowers everywhere.

The improvements were expensive and so was insurance–it escalated from $400 to about $35,000 during his tenure. To help raise money, Farnham and his board started renting out the scenic fairgrounds in the summer, so it now hosts four horse shows, three camper rallies, the Vermont History Expo (except this year), weddings and reunions.

New this year will be the four-day Jenny Brook Family Bluegrass Festival, transplanted from Weston, which Farnham hopes will be an annual event.

As a result, the fair is flourishing. The animal barns are so full they often have to turn away exhibitors. Kids and their families flock to the fair. And Orange Co. Sheriff William Bohnyak spends most of his time unlocking car doors and finding lost parents.

Of course, the fair has not had a steady uphill ride during the last 31 years. Farnham’s most vivid memory was the appearance of Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and there are years in which September rains put a damper on some of the activity.

But since Floyd, “we’ve had a series of great years,” Farnham said last week. In fact, the Tunbridge World’s Fair has become more than ever a Vermont icon, a symbol of community that embodies the distant past, the present with its whirl of activities, and even visions for the future.

For 31 years, Euclid Farnham has been at the center of all that. And 31 years, he said, “is a long time.” He’ll take his new job at the Antiques Cabin. But he sounded a little wistful.

“I’m going to miss it,” he admitted.