The city of Greenville will double its daily population over the next eight days as the Great Darke County Fair opened today.
More than 250,000 people are expected to attend the Darke County Fair before next Saturday, Aug. 24, according to fair manager Daryl Riffle said, up from 214,446 attendees in 2013.
Greenville, the county seat of Darke County, has just more than 13,000 residents.
All those people mean people not just spending money at the fair, whose revenue last year was $1.4 million, according to Riffle, but often on hotels and local restaurants as well.
"(Fair weekend) is usually a pretty big weekend for us," Edie Arnett, front desk manager at the Comfort Inn in Greenville, said.
People who move away come back for a few days, which is part of the reason hotels are so packed. The fair is late in the summer, but lots of people want to come, Riffle said. Visitors come from as far away as California.
Vendors, who come from all over southern Ohio, will stay in hotels, Greenville mayor Mike Bowers added, and visit the downtown area. He added the Darke County fair is just one of the events Greenville has for its residents at the end of the summer.
"There's a lot of foot traffic into the community," Bowers said. "It's definitely a positive effect."
Daily admission to the fair is $5. A 9-day pass is $15.