The festival, which now routinely attracts more than 200,000 visitors a year, got its start as a weekend event that was considered a success if 15,000 people paid just $5 for a daily ticket.
Bill Human
In 1983, Daytonian Bill Human produced the first Dayton Medieval Fair, which was held at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds.
The four-day event started on Thursday May 19, 1983 with chariot races, jousting matches and elephant rides.
In 1984, Human’s company, Oho Valley Festivals Inc., attempted to stage the Ohio Valley Renaissance Faire on 257 acres along Wilmington Road near I-71. That festival folded after two weekends.
Chuck and Marilyn Rigsby
Chuck and Marilyn Rigsby, of Huber Heights, took over ownership of the fair in January 1985.
They attempted to host a Medieval Fair in 1985 at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds but were unable to sign adequate sponsorship in time for the event, so it was canceled.
In 1986, the fair was held at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds.
The festival, held June 6-8, featured entertainment, arts, crafts and food representative of the 14th through 17th centuries.
In 1987, their plan to build a Medieval village near Wilmington failed due to financial problems.
The Rigsbys had their reasons for wanting to move the festival away from the fairgrounds.
“It’s not that we are worried abut being heard; it’s that we do not want to hear the 20th century,” Rigsby said. “It does little for your marketing to photograph your jousters with NCR buildings in the background, which was the case in Dayton.”
The Rigsby’s again tried to relocate the fair near Wilmington in 1988, but the Clinton County Board of Zoning rejected their application to stage the festival on a farm along U.S. 22, west of Wilmington.
• PHOTOS: Ohio Renaissance Festival through the years
Their application sparked an outcry among area residents who feared the event would increase traffic and lower property values.
Their mortgage broker also failed to come through on a $1 million loan needed for the project. After not having a festival in 1987, the Rigsbys had no choice but to cancel the festival at the last minute again in 1988.
At that point the Rigsbys said they were not giving up. In the end, they decided to end their involvement in the festival and sold the rights and name “Ohio Renaissance Festival” to new owners.
Peter Carroll and James Paradise
Today’s version of the Ohio Renaissance festival was started by Peter Carroll of Atlanta and James Paradise of Minneapolis.
In 1989, the two men announced that they planned to spend $1 million to build a replica of an old English village on 120 acres along Ohio 73 in Harveysburg in northern Warren County.
The site was picked after marketing studies showed that it was within a 90-minute drive of 4.5 million people.
Carroll and Paradise had already been operating similar festivals in Colorado for 13 years and Georgia for four years.
Credit: Ron Alvey
Credit: Ron Alvey
Carroll described the new Ohio Renaissance Festival as a “recreation of a 16th century English county fair.” He planned for the fair to be open weekends from Aug. 25 through Sept. 30 in 1990.
“It’s a totally unique experience,” Carroll said at the time. “You are literally stepping back in time 400 years. It’s a form of escape, you might say. The more frantic our lives become today, the more people want to go back to what we portray as a gentler time.”
The first festival featured about 100 artisans displaying crafts made of materials that existed in the 1500s. There was a variety of entertainment, including jugglers, fire eaters, sword swallowers and minstrels. Dozens of actors were to roam the village streets in period costume, doing their best to speak in Elizabethan English.
Food from the period was also available, including sausages on a stick and turkey legs, to go along with the normal hot dogs and hamburgers.
Brimstone and Fire LLC
The Ohio Renaissance Festival was bought in 2015 by Brimstone and Fire LLC. The company’s managing partner is David Ashcraft, who is from the Dayton area.
It has grown into a 30-acre village with 112 shops and 169 daily performances on 24 stages.
This year is being celebrated at the 35th year of the modern Ohio Renaissance Festival, and it runs through Oct. 27.
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