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1990 – the present
The trade's winter marketplace: The Fort Wayne Farm Show was founded in 1990 by Jack Thill, owner of Tradexpos of Austin, Minnesota, who had visited Fort Wayne in the 1980s and started the show in the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum; Thill died in July 2015, aged 90, with the show long established. It runs each mid-January, grown to some 1,100 booths of machinery, dealers, and farm services, and draws the county's farmers in their off-season: attendance ran to nearly 31,000 for the 30th show in 2019 and about 28,000 in 2023. The 2021 show was cancelled in the pandemic. It is the modern form of the trade this section traces — the implement row and the branch house become, each January, a coliseum floor of new tractors under lights, in the city that sells and services the machines and has never built one.
Sources:
- Farm World, Fort Wayne Farm Show accounts — the first show in 1990; founder Jack Thill of Tradexpos (Austin, Minnesota), died July 2015 aged 90; the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in mid-January; some 1,100 booths; attendance of nearly 31,000 in 2019 and about 28,000 in 2023; the 2021 cancellation.