Volunteers moved the Southern New Mexico State Fair & Rodeo to its current home on the West Mesa. Now in its 36th year, the fair, which runs from Oct. 2 to 6, still relies on the enthusiasm of volunteers as its continues to grow.
The big exposition on the mesa was preceded by a smaller Junior Livestock Sale on the New Mexico State University campus. The sale was conducted under a simple metal-covered shed east of the university housing complex.
That changed in 1967 when the U.S. General Services Office offered Doa Ana County a former Air Force radar station, 13 miles west of Las Cruces, for use as a community multi-use center for $30,450. The county commissioners saw the opportunities that the old station would offer and quickly accepted the deal.
The old radar station occupied 50.8 acres. It contained several buildings, 28 family housing units, dormitories, a recreation building and warehouse. It also had an electrical distribution and transmission system and water supply system.
The government had stipulated that when the county acquired the property it would be used for public recreation and education " just what the community needed for a county fair, recalled Adrian Ogaz of Garfield, who was on the commission at the time.
Ogaz was also a Junior Livestock Sale supporter and understood the need for a larger fair program.
"I`ve been buying at the Junior Livestock Sale for 40 years," he said. "I havent missed a year. The fair is doing something that we needed and is doing a lot for the kids. Thats why I was in favor of acquiring the old radar station. It was a good start for a fair."
During that first Junior Livestock Sale, the young livestock growers entered 100 animals, and bidders paid about $7,000 to the youths, who put the money into college funds or future livestock projects.
As a measure of progress, last years Junior Livestock Sale brought in $213,849 for 140 animals. This years Junior Livestock Sale will be held Oct. 4 in the Doa Ana Building.
"We spent a lot of hours getting the sheds set up and a show ring built with cutting torches and arc welders and we had our first Junior Livestock Sale there," Bartlett said. "Everyone just pitched in and went to work. We didnt have any head honcho."
They succeeded in erecting the sheds and arena on a rise just east of the Doa Ana Building where the livestock exhibitions, judging and sale are now held.
After the county acquired the old radar station property, it had to do some renovation on the water system, buildings and streets " and without any federal funding or grants. But the county had money in its budget for such expenditures, Ogaz said.
The late Earl Youngren, who operated an auction company, was the first fair manager, serving from 1967 to 1973 to get the fair off to a strong start.
"We did something good for the county," Ogaz said. "Bargains like that dont come around very often. It was one of the best buys the county ever made."
In 1974, the County Commission named a new concession and multi-purpose building after Ogaz. The proclamation read in part:
"Whereas the present Commission Chairman Adrian Ogaz has concerned himself with the problems and needs of the Southern New Mexico State Fair and has made unselfish contributions of time and money to the promotions of the objectives of the fair ..." the building was named after him.
Ogaz has farmed in the Garfield area for more than 40 years. He served four two-year terms on the County Commission, two terms as chairman.
He is known for his community service in the Hatch-Garfield area. At present, he also is the Democratic chairman in the Garfield Precinct.
"I cast my first vote for President Roosevelt for his second term," Ogaz said.
Mobley joined the fair board in 1970 and served on it just short of 20 years. He recalled that in the early 1970s the board wanted to extend the animals barn building for the auction, and it raised $5,000 with an auction of donated articles.
As the sale grew, the board decided to build a larger and separate animal show and auction building just west of the old animal holding pens and show ring. That was before Wells Fargo took over the former First National Bank, where Mobley was then employed. He worked out the financial details that allowed the fair board to obtain a $150,000 loan to build what is known as the Doa And Building where the animal exhibits, auction and buyers barbecue are held.
The board also laid a 25-foot by 100-foot concrete slab, "... because the kids wanted a place to dance," Mobley said. He was one of the hands to help pour and level the concrete slab.
Mobleys volunteer work did not end there. After the fair opened, if anyone wanted to talk to him, they could find him in the Doa Ana Building weighing animals for the youths who were showing in the livestock exhibition.
Another new building that the board soon put up was the Poultry Exhibition Building.
"We just poor-boyed it," Mobley recalled about the volunteers work. "The fair board didnt have a lot of money. We didnt have an architect or contractor. We just went ahead and did it ourselves."
As Mobley watched the fair activities and facilities grow, he said the new boards of directors are doing a better job. "But I think they learned and built on our experience," he said.
The later boards remembered Tom Mobleys work, and they named the administration building, a former gymnasium, the Mobley Building. "Working on the fair board is one of the best experiences that Ive ever had," Mobley said. "The fair is one of the better programs that we have here. And one of the reasons I kept getting involved so long was that I liked the people I was working with. I got paid in satisfaction and fun."
He remembers showing animals as a 4-H youth at the former Doa Ana County Fair when it was held at the Lions Club grounds on Picacho Avenue, which are now covered with tennis courts. At that time, a viaduct carried traffic over the railroad tracks, and the livestock pens were at the base. And the Lions Club also would put on a hurly-burly musical show for entertainment, Calhoun recalled.
Later, he showed animals at the former campus livestock show and sale site while he was active in the Las Cruces High School FFA. So, when volunteers were needed to put together a show ring at the new fairgrounds, adding to the sheds that had been moved from the campus, Calhoun was one of the first to show up. He went out there with his own equipment and went to work on the new show ring.
"My kids were involved in livestock shows," Calhoun said. (He has four). "And a lot of the volunteer work was done by families who had children showing livestock. Wed designate a certain day or weekend to do the work that was needed and go out there and do it."
Auctioneer Charles F. Dickerson served as fair manager from 1982 to 1992, and also has been on the fair board for about 25 years. During his term as manager, he saw the fair activities expand with the addition of the Earl Youngren Building, special events, Veterans Building, exhibits and the Coca-Cola Building.
Dickerson said that he cannot recall exact dates for these improvements. "What was important then was just getting the work done. So all the work kind of runs together, and I cant remember dates," he said.
The $40,000 construction costs for the Coca-Cola Building was paid over a five-year span from fees the company paid for soft drink concession at the fairgrounds.
"All of the fair improvements were paid for out of fair proceeds," Dickerson said. "We were too red-necked to go out and get government loans. We just went out and got things done."
The volunteers spent most of September at the fairgrounds, cleaning up, making repairs, making sure that all facilities functioned, Dickerson said.
Volunteers also erected the new horse arena bleachers with the help of inmates from the Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility. Dickerson had the steel frame structure cut and welded at his auctioneer shop in Fairacres. Next, the volunteers and inmates assembled the steel work at the fairgrounds and bolted on the wooden bleachers, Dickerson recalled.
Deerman started out helping at the fair as an assistant livestock supervisor working in the swine division. He also worked for seven years with Los Amigos, a group that lines up potential buyers to support the Junior Livestock Sale.
"I enjoy it," Deerman said of his long volunteer service. "I think that these kids need a break. Instead of helping with football, soccer or the Boy Scouts my interest is in the livestock sale, the fair in general. And the people you work with in the fair are a fantastic bunch of people, the best."
The fair never made any money, Deerman said.
"But its been a challenge to expand the fair," he said. "A challenge to sit down with a bunch of guys, plan something new and to get out there and do it whenever you have time or on weekends."
Fair board of directors secretary Betty Brooks is another volunteer who has been with the fair ever since it opened on the West Mesa. She was one of many volunteers who worked in the old Quonset hut exhibition sites.
She started out with the Youth and Home Economics Exhibits, and she has been on the fair board since 1981.
"I just enjoy it," Brooks said of her volunteer work. "Its a lot of fun, its in my blood. And I like the people I work with. Its a community service, and I seem to take on more every year."
Four years ago, the fair board moved the exhibition departments " Home Economics, Quilts, Floral Culture, Gardening, Fine Arts, Photography, Youth and School " out of the old Quonset huts into the 75-foot by 200-foot Veterans Building.
"We had to put up interior partitions for each department," Brooks recalled. "We redesigned it and customized it for each department, three aisles of display areas the length of the building, all done by volunteers. And the fair paid for all the improvements."
Livestock Superintendent Joe Delk said he believes that working to put on the Junior Livestock Sale is one way that he is paying back the adults who helped him when he was showing livestock in Cliff during the Grant County Fair.
"Its a program that I have a passion for, you might say," Delk said. "This way I can give back for the help I got when I showed in Cliff and for the help my boys got. My family loved to show livestock. And Im sure that the day I leave the fair someone will take my place because the fair keeps going forward."
"Hidalgo is a rural county, and the people there contacted us about being included in our family of rural counties in Southern New Mexico," Delk said. "After all, this is the Southern New Mexico State Fair and Las Cruces is the commercial hub of Southern New Mexico."
For Rod Tharp, who farms north of Las Cruces, volunteering to do the basic work to keep the fair growing is the natural thing to do. He was the swine show superintendent from 1980 to the early 1990s, and he has had the satisfaction of seeing so much progress at the fairgrounds.
"Id go out there to help clean up livestock pens and the grounds before the fair opened," Tharp recalled. "Its a good community effort, and other farmers and people in the community did the same kind of volunteer work."
With all the excitement of the livestock shows, rodeo and carnival, many people overlook the displays that demonstrate the less spectacular skills. Wilma Ziehl, who helped develop the needlework exhibitions, recalls the early fair days when the needlework exhibitions shared a Quonset with the vegetable show, the vegetables in front, the needlework in the rear.
She started volunteering at the fair in the 1960s, working with Earl Youngren, and served for more than 20 years. She started with former department supervisors Marilyn Thompson and Joyce Syfert and entered needlework, embroidery, canning and baked goods.
"I loved working at the fair," she said. "I worked all summer making things to enter in the fair. Id still be doing it except for arthritis in my right arm."
She also is known for her quilt work. She started to learn how to make quilts in the 1970s at the Senior Hospitality House on Alameda Boulevard and the Munson Senior Center.
"I loved the colors and how to put them together while making quilts, the applique and embroidery," Ziehl said.