Lifelong love of West Valley Fair leads to history project

YAKIMA, Wash. -- Bobbie Benton Hull remembers being 8 years old and riding her horse Beauty down Ahtanum Road.

She was dressed in borrowed and beaded buckskin, traditional Yakama garb on loan from a friend of her grandmother, and she waved to folks as she trotted by.

It was 1967, the first year she participated in the parade that's part of the West Valley Fair.

Some four decades later, she's putting the finishing touches on a book that outlines the 60-year history of the fair -- from its humble beginnings with cardboard "ribbons" to a down-home affair that reminds folks of country days gone by.

"The atmosphere has not changed," Hull says. "It's still like stepping back into the 1950s."

At this year's fair, she'll sell electronic versions of her compilation, "Decades of Dedication: The History of the West Valley Fair," for $10. Hull expects the book, available on disc, to be about 350 pages when she's finally finished.

All proceeds will benefit the West Valley Fair.

Hull's been doing the writing and research as a volunteer. And she's still gathering information, particularly from the last 10 years.

"This history has to be saved, or it's going to be lost," says Hull, who now lives in Kennewick but was raised in Tampico and still considers West Valley home. The 51-year-old artist grew up going to the fair.

"In the last 15 years, I've only missed one fair," says Hull, who served on the fair board from 1997 to 2000 and still enters items in the home economics categories.

"In the '60s, I went to the fair as a child," she says. "In the '70s, I showed sheep. In the '80s, I took my kids to the fair via strollers. In the '90s, they joined 4-H and showed sheep, rabbits, poultry, rats."

And in the new millennium, her daughters took part in the fair's royalty program.

"My children are fifth-generation to show at the fair," says Hull, whose own family fair history starts with her great-grandmother Delia Teague, who entered her arts and crafts and gardening and canning projects in the fair.

Hull began working on her book 11 years ago, using scrapbooks and newspaper clippings and conducting interviews with old-timers. She had been compiling the information for the fair's 50th annual event in 2000, but didn't finish in time.

Recently, she picked up the project again, in time for the 60th annual fair.

"I've been working on it about 20 hours a week since April," Hull says. "I estimate I probably have about 1,000 hours into it."

The West Valley Fair started as the Ahtanum Fair in 1951. That first one-day event had about two dozen exhibitors. It didn't stay that way very long.

The name changed to the West Valley Fair in 1956. A royalty contest was added in 1957. And the fair expanded to two days in 1958.

And it continued expanding. The fair grew to three days in 1961 and four days in 1962. The first premium book was printed in 1965. By then, the fair lasted five days.

That growth dropped off with the recession in the 1980s, but picked up again in the 1990s.

"Whatever the reasons, the fair has survived," Hull writes in her book.

She plans to make 50 copies, featuring historical photos, brief descriptions of each fair and results.

"If we need more, we can burn discs at the fair," she says.

The "Up, Up and Away"-themed event kicks off today with a horse, cat, dog and critter show. The bulk of the events run during the main portion of the fair, Wednesday through July 24.

The fair features a livestock auction, egg toss, water balloon toss, watermelon eating contest and -- just like it did when Hull was a kid -- a parade, with horses, floats, tractors, decorated wheels and costumed walkers.

"This is about the kids, the kids and their animals," Hull says. "It's old-fashioned fun."

* Anyone wishing to contribute to "Decades of Dedication: The History of the West Valley Fair" are asked to email Bobbie Benton Hull at sciphimom@aol.com. For more information, visit BobbieBentonHull.com.

If you go ...

* What: 60th annual West Valley Fair

* When: Today, and Wednesday through July 24

* Where: West Valley Fairgrounds on South Wiley Road, off Ahtanum Road in Wiley City

* Free Admission and parking

* On the Web: wvfair.weebly.com.