A little History about the Delaware County Fair

Probably there is nowhere else in the country where San Francisco’s Golden Gate Exposition and New York’s World of Tomorrow mean less than they do in Delaware, Ohio.

For Delawareans these days are busier than a one-armed trap drummer with a case of hives, preparing the new “wardrobe” in which their new county fair baby is to make its bow in the court of the harvest king this autumn.

The new fairgrounds on the north city limits present a hectic, kaleidoscopic panorama of fever-heat construction tuned to a symphony of swinging hammers, riveting in staccato time, the rhythm of a hundred saws and the slow, even waltz tempo of slapping paint brushes-all punctuated by incessant admonitions of fair board members, who are on hand seemingly at all hours, to remind the workers to “Step on it, for the lovamike!  The gates open Sept. 13^th!”

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On the town’s main stem, county fair patriotism runs high.  It’s the biggest thing that’s happened within the memory of the oldest native.  It isn’t “just another fair,” and if you want to bathe in an atmosphere of dry ice, just go up to Delaware and suggest that it is.  No indeedy; it’s a brand-new from-the-ground-up project and less than two years span the time of its inception in the minds of a few citizens and the actual construction of the unique new plant.

            A few Delawareans have been out to look over the New York World’s Fair, but as soon as they returned and before any curios stay-at-homes could get in a question or two about the fabulous “World of Tomorrow,” these travelers usually interrupt with “How’s the new fairgrounds coming on?  What’ll be the capacity of that grandstand?  Is the coliseum roofed yet, and is it true that “Billy Direct” and ‘Her Ladyship’ are entered in the free-for-all?”

            With classic modesty, the folks up in Delaware are referring to their exposition as “The World of THE DAY AFTER Tomorrow.”

            Yet for all its pristine splendor, it’s attractive buildings in Mount Vernon architecture designed by the firm of Vernon Redding Associates in Mansfield and its fine big swimming pool, which is a part of the whole fairgrounds development, the fair up at Delaware in mid-September will be as home-spun as huckleberry pie.  It will have the usual farm products competition, impressive cattle, sheep, swine and poultry shows, a very competent Junior Fair program, shows and games and rides and free acts, but its special emphasis is in the horse department in which Delaware County excels.

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Principal center of Percheron horse breeding in the world, home of Eli Long’s famous White Star Saddle Horse Farm and the more recently established Rossmore saddle farm and of the racing stables of Joseph A. Neville, William McKenzie and Walter Pollock, the fair at Delaware in its 1939 premium book has given its colleagues something to shoot at.  Its speed program is the most ambitious undertaking of any county fair in the United States with stakes appropriately named for President Rutherford B. Hayes, who was Delaware-born; the Allen Hotel, the Chamber of Commerce and after Moses Bixby, who is created with founding the town along the Sandusky trail in the long-gone days when the Delaware tribes were encamped along the banks of the Olentangy.

            The fair’s $10,400 racing purses in a department headed by Attorney Joe Neville and Winston W. Hill and by Henry Thomson, city editor of the Delaware Gazette; its heavy-horse program with 1200 in premiums under the supervision of George Dix whose Percheron champions are know the world over, and its night horse shows, engineered by Eli Long, Priscilla Huntington and C.B. Marquette, bid strongly toward making Delaware the home of the horse during Sept. 13, 14, 15 and 16.  Barns containing 300 stalls are being built to accommodate the entries in these three departments alone. 

            This baby among Ohio fairs was born on a street corner, nursed along by a couple of attorneys, an insurance salesman, an automobile man and furniture dealer who puts in a portion of his time with the publicity staff of Ringling Bros. And Barnum & Bailey Circus.  None of these “fair-mined” citizens owned farms and none was especially equipped to promote anything as bucolic as an agricultural exposition.  The fair cut its baby teeth a year ago on its own 57-acre “Flushing Meadows” without a roof on the grounds, but with rented canvas and a determination to “show the county” what could be done with nothing except the faith of the sponsors and of the county commissioners who had purchased the land for the fair.

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For more than three decades, the county fair had been held at Powell in the southwestern corner of the county where its location (10 miles from the county seat) gradually put so many strikes on it that it ceased to be a representative exposition despite efforts of its board to maintain it on a suitable scale.  Interest among Delaware city people and those in several rural sections favoring the moving of the fair from Powell was secured in sufficient strength to vote the demise of the Powell location and the resumption of the fair at the county seat.

            Necessary steps were taken to solicit PWA aid promised upon the passing of a local bond issue for the construction of a complete new fair plant.  In the meantime, last September, the board-object of jokes friendly and otherwise and tagged as a dream-group that had bitten off a chore as difficult of achievement in its own sphere as the promotion of world fairs has been comparatively, knew that it HAD to show something.  A creditable fair in 1938 would, perhaps, result in the passing of the bond issue would, perhaps result in PWA help to match the money raised locally.

            As so the Delaware County Fair took place for the first time on the new lot in Late September, 1938, with rented canvas, an excellent night horse show with entries from six states, but with no racing, with all exhibits housed in tents and with John Robinson’s elephants parading the principal streets of the town carrying banners urging the folks to support the coming bond issue. 

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A curtain of hard luck dropped with a resounding thud on the operators of the fair when it became apparent on the eve of its debut that the bond issue would have to be put before the public exactly eight days after the close of the 1938 fair in order to get in under the PWA wire.  This forced the fair board to face the seemingly insurmountable task of running a new fair with one hand and preparing a bond issue campaign with the other.

            But the new fair caught on.  The spectators had expected little; they saw much and marveled particularly at “the city boys who were putting on a darn good farm show.”  An interesting sidelight lay in the sale of the old fair grounds at Powell a few weeks before the 1938 fair.  The board had sold it fearing that if it didn’t burn its bridge behind it, the terrific obstacles that were piling up daily might tempt them into throwing the new project back into its old camping place.

            The 1938 enterprise encountered a cold rain on its opening day. That night the electric power went off because of overloading and stayed off for half an hour while spectators floundered in a muddy lane leading to the gates.  On the second day, the fair board’s luck changed and the exposition continued without major mishap, barring the complaint of one exhibitor that a night watchman had stolen her prize apples.  Confronted with the charge, the watchman scornfully stated that he did not like apples “and, besides, that ain’t my kind of stealin’.”

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With a surprisingly creditable fair under its belt, the promoters took a deep breath and went out to do battle for the bond issue.  It passed by the necessary two-thirds majority and in the city proper the majority was 87 percent.  Two rural communities – Ashley and Sunbury, one with its own independent fair which it feared would be outshone by a newer, bigger exposition on the county horizon, and the other with the natural jealousy that exists among crossroads merchants in competition with a county seat a few miles away, voted almost solidly against the bond issue.  Other rural areas helped save the day for the struggling new baby fair.  But it is interesting to note that it was the city folks who really carried the field for the agricultural society.  Their interest up to fair time had centered mainly in a proposed swimming pool that had been included as a part of the county fair grounds project, but the 1938 fair that yelped and squirmed in its swaddling clothes and plead for a chance to show what it could grow up to be with a little first-class financial nourishment made friends out of skeptics and militant supporters out of lukewarm friends.

            The morning after the bond issue carried, citizens were gathering in the streets to celebrate the great victory, but the promoters of the fair-Bruce Burgess, who first had the idea of bringing the county fair to Delaware City and who became its first secretary’ Eli Long, the 1938 president; Joe Neville, the treasurer, and Winston Hill and John Wagner, present secretary, and the writer were in possession of a wire from Washington saying that no funds were available through PWA to match the bond issue money.

            That afternoon, Hill and Neville were aboard a plane for Washington where a week later they finally received the allocation.  An avalanche of telegrams from Delaware citizens and organizations poured into Washington over a period of five days and included the classic from the pen of Jim Armstrong, secretary of the Chamber of Commerce:  “What?  Don’t tell us the circus is over after we carried water to the elephant.”

            Well, it’s a big baby now, this Delaware fair, and it’s all dolled up for its birthday party in September.  County fairs are almost as old as the nation and most of them grow slowly, but here’s one out in the Buckeye pasture that jumped from diapers to strapping adolescence in one year’s time.