Borke

As our republic marks its 250th year, Americans are rightly pausing to remember the traditions that built this nation. We honor the founders who pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor; the pioneers who cleared forests and broke prairie sod; and the generations of farmers whose labor turned a wilderness into the world’s breadbasket. At the heart of that story stands agriculture, not merely an industry, but the bedrock of American character. It taught us self-reliance, stewardship of the land, and the dignity of honest work. And nowhere is that heritage more joyfully alive than at a county fair.

Yet while our nation honors our rural roots, elected officials in Alpena County, Michigan, are moving in the opposite direction. In defiance of local tradition and plain common sense, they are actively working to dismantle the county fair and seize the fairgrounds that have served as its home for generations. Their dystopian vision seeks to replace agricultural exhibition with a sprawling mix of developments, parks, entertainment venues, and allegedly even a speakeasy. They have promised the moon, while offering the fair a temporary lease on life. This, they insist, is a “compromise.”

It is no compromise. Rather, it is a slow-motion surrender dressed up in bureaucratic language. The pattern is familiar: first a foot in the door, then a claim on the whole house. If this development is executed, the fair and fairgrounds we know will be dead. It will shrink, then vanish, not by force of law, but by our community’s own consent. To their dismay, residents will realize that they were deceived into trading in their heritage for short-term benefits and a false promise of “progress.”

Anyone who has been to this county fair knows it is about far more than rides and ribbons. It is the place where rural kids learn responsibility by raising and showing livestock. It is where neighbors gather under the grandstand to cheer for the demolition derby and swap stories over a corn dog. It is where the rhythms of planting and harvest are celebrated with exhibitions, tractor pulls, and the unmistakable scent of fresh hay. In an age of screens and sprawl, the county fair remains one of the last authentic expressions of Americana–proof that community, tradition, and self-sufficiency still thrive in small-town America. To lose it would be to lose a piece of what makes us who we are.

County officials have made their position unmistakably clear: if the community makes too much of a fuss and impedes the secretive, no-bid development project arranged with practically zero community input, the county will condemn the fairgrounds outright and take the land. This is not negotiation; it is a threat of eminent domain wielded as leverage. We know better than to mistake coercion for compromise.

The land for the Alpena fairgrounds was deeded in 1904 to the Alpena Agricultural Society under a special agreement. Their strategy, therefore, depends on persuading residents to sign away their rights voluntarily or intimidating them into silence with the threat of condemnation. They are counting on popular indifference and the seductive language of “partnership.”

The community should not oblige them and reject any agreement that compromises the fair’s mission and the fairground’s purpose: Apena’s heritage. Demand that elected leaders honor the original intent of the property and the agricultural purpose it enshrined. The community will lose nothing by insisting on principle, yet it will lose everything if residents consent to its gradual erasure.

This is not nostalgia; it is stewardship. The same pioneering spirit that tamed this land 250 years ago still lives in the farmers, volunteers, and families who keep the county fair alive. In urging its defense, we defend something larger than one plot of ground in Alpena County. We defend the idea that some traditions are worth preserving not because they are convenient, but because they remind us where we came from and who we still ought to be.

The choice before our community is abundantly clear. We should choose, with clear eyes and steady hands, to keep the fairgrounds vibrant with blue-ribbon livestock and alive with the laughter of children who will one day teach their own to plow, plant, and preserve the best of America. When children ask what you did to save our agricultural heritage, what will be your answer?

Brandon Borke is a past Alpena County Fair Board President and past Alpena County 4-H Member of the Year. All views expressed are his own.