Calaveras Visitor’s Bureau Brings Home Gold!

Calaveras Brings Home Gold and Best Experience Awards at California State Fair
—by Lisa Mayo

Sacramento, CA…Calaveras County was awarded Gold for their booth at the 2009 California State Fair. In addition, Calaveras County also received the Best Experience Award which is awarded to the booth that best engages fairgoers to experience the county. “This is a huge win for Calaveras and gives all those fairgoers very real reasons to take the short drive to visit Calaveras County,” said Lisa Mayo, Executive Director of the Calaveras Visitors Bureau. The Awards Ceremony, which took place Friday afternoon at Cal Expo, was attended by Calaveras County Supervisors Gary Tofanelli and Russ Thomas as well as a number of volunteers and Calaveras Visitors Bureau staff who helped make the booth happen….

This year’s state fair theme is “Weird, Wild and Wacky.” “We know we have some weird, wild and wacky things to share about Calaveras County but we wanted to do it tastefully so we focused on our wild side – things like the Pioneer’s Cabin Tree at Calaveras Big Trees State Park, our wild rivers, wild adventures and wildlife,” stated Mayo. Throwing in some wacky Calaveras-only experiences, like Twisted Oak’s Rubber Chicken National Forest was in keeping with this year’s State Fair theme.

Creating and building a booth for the State Fair is a major undertaking. This was the first year the Calaveras Visitors Bureau had sole responsibility for this project. With the help of State Fair veteran, Anna Davies of the Calaveras Winegrape Alliance and booth builder, Richard Bay, the exhibit is a true representation of all the attributes of Calaveras County. Mayo and niece, Chloe Crawford of Avery gave a presentation to the judges. The booth is judged on content, marketability, craftsmanship, creative use of products, produce and/or artifacts and technology and/or animation, special effects and experience.