Botetourt’s 250th Anniversary Facts: Fair grounds near Fincastle
The Botetourt County Fair
Botetourt Celebration Facts 250 Anniversary continue.
Once upon a time there were Fairgrounds off US 220, adjacent to Old Fincastle Rd and Hawthorne Hall Road near the Town of Fincastle.
The first Botetourt County Fair was held in the fall of 1879. It ran for 70 years ending at that location in 1949. In 2013, The Botetourt County Fair was resurrected on the grounds of Buchanan Town Park by Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension and 4H.
The old fairgrounds had a nice grand stand and some livestock pens on a flat tract of land adjacent to the back side of Grove Hill Farm
The most renowned feature of the Fair were horse races. Our Botetourt version of the “Camp Town Races: Do dah, do dah!”
The last Fair was held on the Fairgrounds in 1949 the best that can be discerned.
The grand stands fell into disrepair and finally were demolished in the early 70s best to recollection of many local respondents. When the weather is really dry and the grass is short, you can still make out the rise of the race track.
Today’s sidebar: A Mother’s Day story of sorts.
The Fairgrounds almost kept me from being raised in Botetourt County.
In 1948 my newlywed (of 3 months) parents traveled down from Roanoke to the Fair. A woman went into labor and the doctor delivered the baby under the grandstand. My mother was shocked. She clutched her pearls every time she told the story. In 1962 my Dad purchased the farm here west of Fincastle without her seeing it. It took a year to get it in livable shape as sheep and chickens had been kept in the house. My mother whined profusely as I recall as we spent most weekends making the house improvements. I was six going on seven.
Upon moving here in late August of 1963, she proclaimed that this was a backward place. Always a curious sort, I walked off down the road with our dog and met the neighbors. She was beside herself because I had just taken off. But, she soon got to know them. Fortunately, she loved them all.
It turned out to be a great place to raise us. After she met the neighbors, made friends with the ladies in and around Fincastle , she absolutely loved it here. She resided happily on the farm from 1963 til her death in 1987.
This story has a point. Thanks to the Fairgrounds post, all these years later I finally figured out why Daddy bought the farm without her!
–Cathy Benson The Botetourt Bee. Sources postings on Facebook from History of Botetourt County VA 1770-present by Rena Worthen, et al and clippings from the Fincastle Herald.
