Sam Wagner, left, and Nathan Blackwood carry a sign as they finish setting up the Prospect Volunteer Fire Department booth at the Big Butler Fair, which opens Friday. The fair concession is the fire department's best fundraiser of the year, offering meatloaf and chicken dinners, hot dogs, hamburgers, and other fair foods. Cary Shaffer/Butler Eagle

PROSPECT — The bones of the carnival pulled into the Big Butler Fairgrounds on Monday, and in just a few days, more than 100 tents, booths and rides will be ready to serve legions of fair-goers who visit the fair over the next week-and-a-half.

The Big Butler Fair officially opens Friday for its 166th year, and Harold Dunn, secretary of the Butler Fair and Agricultural Association, said organizers are anticipating a crowd at least equal to the 100,000 paying visitors who attended last year’s fair.

“A small city grows here over the course of a few days,” Dunn said. “We are hopeful that we are able to meet or exceed the crowd we had last year.”

The setup for the Big Butler Fair involves many who will return to the grounds once it opens, like the 4-H groups that show off their livestock and the harness racers, who participated in races Tuesday and Wednesday on the fairgrounds.

According to Dunn, the fair has grown over the years thanks to the participation of more and more local groups.

“The carnival is bigger than ever before, the livestock show is way bigger,” he said. “There are a lot of exhibits being set up and mostly everybody tries to get ready Thursday.”

While many events that take place throughout the week attract people, the carnival is always one of the biggest draws. The fair has contracted with Powers Great American Midways for nearly 35 years, Dunn said.

Marc Janas, public relations director of Powers Great American Midways, said the carnival travels to many fairs around the east coast, but the Big Butler Fair is its longest-lasting customer.

Janas said the Big Butler Fair’s consistency has made it one of the crew’s favorite events to attend as well.

“It’s the largest continuous event we have done,” Janas said. “So we have grown with the fair and the fair has grown with us. It’s ‘Always over the fourth,’ so we always have it in our schedule.”

Having attended the Big Butler Fair for several decades now, the midways crew has the setup down to a science; Janas said the organizers know what order to bring the rides in, how to set them up efficiently and even where to put everything for best public view.

Additionally, the event is a chance to catch up with old friends.

“This is like a homecoming for us,” Janas said. “We have met a lot of folks here we like to see every year and we really like meeting new folks.”

Once everything is set up, the carnival undergoes a state inspection to ensure everything is operating properly.

“Safety is our first priority and fun goes hand in hand with that,” Janas said.

Dunn said alongside many attractions that are consistent every year, the fair tries to bring something new each year. Events like the horse pulls, rodeos, mud bog and the live music that takes place over the nine-day fair are always popular, not to mention the Fourth of July fireworks show.

“We work at this year-round so we can have everything as good as it can be,” Dunn said.

In terms of new attractions, the carnival is often responsible for bringing in unique thrills. Janas said the midways has one of only two “Itsy Bitsy Spider” Ferris wheels in the country, and it has the only mobile Sky Hawk ride, where riders lay on their stomachs on a platform that rises into the air before spinning around.

“Even though we’re mobile we stick to the theme park environment,” Janas said. “If we see something at a park and think, ‘We can do that,’ we’ll try to build it for the next summer.”

Dunn said he is always excited to pull off another year of the Big Butler Fair, having worked for the fair for about 36 years. He said he has been going to the fair since he was a child, and keeping the century-and-a-half tradition alive is exciting for him.

“When you reflect on that, there are not many organizations that are able to say they have been around that long,” Dunn said. “That’s the exciting part is we are still able to pull it off after all these years.”

The fair opens at noon from July 1 through July 9, and admission costs $7 before 4 p.m. and $9 after 4 p.m. Carnival ride tickets are an additional cost. For more information, including a schedule of fair events, visit bigbutlerfair.com.