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2020 - 2022
The cancellation: The modern fair's one fully documented interruption is the pandemic year. The fairgrounds' own notice states it flatly: the 2020 Allen County Public Fair has been cancelled. What replaced it was the exhibitor core with the public removed. Allen County 4-H hosted an Allen County 4-H Experience from 28 July to 1 August 2020, with in-person livestock shows closed to the public, the fairgrounds asking residents not to attend even when they saw activity on the grounds, and the livestock auction run virtually, from noon on Sunday 2 August to noon on Tuesday 4 August, through an online sale system. County reporting through the summer told the same story, down to the 2020 Dairy Beef Queen named in June for a fair that would not open.
The proof of the model: Purdue Extension's county director, James Wolff, reported that November that the county's adjusted 4-H events produced no COVID outbreaks traced back to them. The 4-H engine, in other words, ran the fair's essential business, judging and selling a year's work, with the gates shut, and the fair as a public gathering simply skipped a year. No earlier interruption of the Allen County Fair is documented with anything like this clarity in the sources found, which is why this section claims no others.
The return and the move: The public fair returned on August dates: the fairgrounds published 16 to 22 August 2021 and 15 to 21 August 2022. By 2025 the fair runs in June, 17 to 22 June 2025 on the fairgrounds' own listing, and 23 to 28 June 2026 in the state fair listings, which puts Fort Wayne where the Indiana fair form now mostly lives, in June. The year between 2022 and 2025 in which the season moved is not fixed by the sources and is carried as an open item, not smoothed into a date.
Sources:
- Allen County Fairgrounds, "Allen County 4-H Experience (Closed to Public)" (July 2020) (the cancelled public fair in its own words, the closed livestock shows of 28 July to 1 August, the virtual auction of 2 to 4 August).
- KPC News (Northwest News), 22 June 2020 (the fair joined the canceled county fairs; members-only judging planned) and 6 November 2020 (Extension director James Wolff on the adjusted year and no traced outbreaks).
- Allen County Fairgrounds, published fair dates (16 to 22 August 2021; 15 to 21 August 2022; 17 to 22 June 2025).
- AgriNews, "Indiana county fairs," 25 May 2026 (23 to 28 June, Allen County Fair, 2726 Carroll Road).