Attendance at this year’s Kentucky State Fair was down by about three thousand from last year.
Spokeperson Vicki Glass says just over 586,000 people visited the fair during its eleven-day run.
“People that were looking ahead and planning ahead probably got discouraged by gas prices and the economy. Those people being concert-goers, exhibitors at the fair and school field trips,” Glass said.
Glass says while there was a attendance decline among those groups–many of them from out of town–the fair did see an increase in-full price gate admissions over 2007.
She adds that this year’s relatively mild weather likely helped attract more senior citizens to the fair. Their numbers increased by more than two-thousand.