Once again, thousands poured in through the gates to hear the Minnesota State Fair sing its swan song to summer.

And, boy, did they pour in this year.

The Great Minnesota Get-Together attracted a record number 1,943,719 fairgoers over the 12 days that ended Labor Day. That’s up about 9 percent from last year and about 7 percent from 2014, which previously held the attendance record with 1,824,830 visitors.

The Fair’s two Fridays broke attendance records for those days, and the 260,374 people who came through gates on Saturday set a record for any day at the Fair.

One factor that certainly drove up attendance this year: fantastic weather with no late-summer heat wave. The average high for the Twin Cities during the Fair was 78, and none of the 12 days rose above 86.

But Jerry Hammer, the Fair’s general manager, said the great weather couldn’t fully explain why so many people made a trip to the Fairgrounds this year. He believes that with all that is going on in the world, people more than ever wanted to be with one another and celebrate the best of Minnesota.

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It’s also increasingly more than a one-day affair for many fairgoers. The growing number of Fair attractions is leading to more people making return trips; you just can’t see and do everything in a day — or even two or three, Hammer said.

The high attendance didn’t lead to any major problems, he added. And while it can be a struggle to keep the grounds clean on the busiest days, employees did an admirable job, he said.

The Fair has also been making efforts to ease congestion. The past dozen years or so years, they’ve been moving more food vendors and activities to the north end of the grounds, which had traditionally been devoted to farm machinery, Hammer said.

“I think one of the most important things we’ve done over the years is spread things out,” he said.

It still gets packed in some places, but even at the busiest times on the busiest days, crowds didn’t seem to faze fairgoers.

“You could see that they were just so happy to be (at the Fair),” Hammer said.