Thousands attended final Saturday at the North Carolina State Fair: 'It's crowded'

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (WTVD) -- They say to save the best for last.

And that's exactly what we saw at the North Carolina State Fair on Saturday - Great weather led to large crowds on the final weekend of the fair.

Many battled traffic during the afternoon hours heading into the fairgrounds, including one family who made the trek from Nash County.

"It's crowded, very crowded. There's a lot more people it's a little harder to find a stuffed turkey leg," they said.

Aside from the traffic and higher prices on some of the food items this year, the crowds were much higher than last weekend, when it was rainy.

Last Saturday, just 62,000 people attended. This week, it was looking more like the kind of numbers reached in 2010 when the last Saturday of the fair saw over 150,000 people.

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With the large crowds, a lot more security was seen posted up along the perimeter.

"It's nice, it's enjoyable, it's always safe, you feel good and secure," said one visitor from Virginia.

She makes the trip every year because she likes the North Carolina fair better than her own.

"Yes they have one in Richmond Virginia but not as nice as this one, it's not as big," she said.

For the final Saturday, the hours were expanded to midnight.

Saturday's attendance numbers won't be released until Sunday at 10 a.m. But overall, it will still take massive weekend numbers to get ahead of the 2022 turnout.

Between Saturday and Sunday, there will need to be 284,000 people attending to surpass last year's numbers, and 415,000 to break the overall fair record set in 2010. That year over 1,091,887 people attended the fair.

Since then, in the last few years recorded since 2018, we have not reached the million mark. In 2022, over 960,000 people were in attendance at the State fair.

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