THE OLD DAYS: When the county was...

THE OLD DAYS: When the county was truly agricultural, the fair seemed more important. . . . The first, held in Santa Ana in 1890, proudly displayed local produce in the downtown opera house. . . . There, according to the Orange County Almanac, “100-pound watermelons and 200-pound pumpkins vied with such attractions as A.E. Hawley’s stuffed rattlesnake, a display of parlor organs, Indian tobacco pouches and Bernard Ziegler’s butterfly collection, not to mention ‘a net woven by a boy of 8 over 100 feet in length.’ ”