WILMINGTON, Ohio — Wilmington, with its population of 12,000, has felt the brunt of hard times more than most cities in Ohio. Unemployment reached an all-time high in the area after Airborne Express and DHL closed their doors within the past two years, resulting in the loss of 14,000 jobs.

But each fall the residents put aside their worries and come together to celebrate fall and honor corn, with their annual Clinton County Corn Festival. The county ranks 16th in the state in corn production, with 67,300 acres planted each year.

“Corn is huge in this county and for many living here, it’s the primary moneymaker there is,” said Thelma Ledford, a festival committee chairman the past 15 years. “It didn’t start out as a corn festival. A local group of antique machinery enthusiasts started gathering here at the Clinton County Fairgrounds.”

That group was the Antique Power Club of Clinton County. Five men (Warren Murphy, Ralph Eltzroth, Bob Olinger, Maynard Harris and Donald Haines) formed the Antique Power Club in 1972 while sitting around a kitchen table. The five featured a few small, stationary engines on the Clinton County Fairgrounds and the group eventually invited other antique engine enthusiasts and the public.

By 1977 the crowd swell gave birth to the Clinton County Corn Festival, as hundreds of vendors and food booths flocked to the grounds. The machinery club was joined by other organizers and the decision was made to honor corn, since the crop is so important to the area.

“To this day we encourage all the food vendors at this festival to incorporate corn in some way in their foods,” said Barb Davis, Food chair for the festival. “The Antique Power Club still meets each month at the fairgrounds and is in attendance at each corn festival, but corn is the hot topic.”

There was no shortage of corn fritters, corn grinders, roasted ears, cornbread and kettle corn at this recent three-day event. Children were kept busy in the Children’s Corner, with puppet shows, games, face painting, workshops, story-telling, tractor rides and a gigantic tug-of-war. Other games included a corn-eating contest, rolling pin and skillet throwing game, hay bale tosses and the annual Corn Olympics.

For the mechanically inclined, there were threshing, belting-up contests, corn grinding, straw baling, a slow engine race, rock crushing and a continuous running saw mill.

At this year’s show were also quilting demos, a sack-tying contest, a hand-crank contest, draft horse pulling contest, water balloon toss and a show-and-tell that included the history of corn. Other activities included a beekeeping demonstration, wheat threshing, bingo, corn cob toss, treasure hunt, corn hole tournament, three-legged tournament, kiddie pedal tractor pull and plenty of steam engines.

The weekend began with a parade that started in downtown Wilmington and finished at the fairgrounds.