A fair inside a pleasure ground: the Interstate Fair at Springbrook

to 1925

The ground: When the society's river grounds passed to the city in 1906, the county's exhibiting did not end; it changed landlords. The fair's own history carries the next entry in one line: the first Interstate Fair was established at Springbrook Park, and continued until 1925. Springbrook was South Bend's trolley park, opened to the public in 1896 at the northwest corner of Lincoln Way East and Ironwood Drive, offering, in the History Museum's inventory, a baseball diamond, a bandstand, a fairground, and an amusement park. A fairground inside a pleasure ground is a different creature from the society's acres: the exhibitions came with the park's crowd already gathered, and the park's rides and music came with the fair's week built in. The Interstate Fair's own first year, the fair's timeline as read does not date; only its end is fixed, at 1925. The bracket is printed at that size: a working fair at Springbrook by the early decades of the century, ended 1925.

The renaming, and the distinction: In 1925 the park itself changed names: a contest among children for a new name, a fifty dollar prize, and Springbrook became Playland Park under Earl J. (Pete) Redden's management. The year the Interstate Fair ended is the year the ground stopped calling any part of itself a fairground and became wholly a place of amusement. The leg prints the distinction here, where the record itself draws it: the Interstate Fair was a fair, a judged exhibition of the region's produce and stock, that happened to live inside an amusement park; Playland Park, the ground it left, was not a fair at all, but a park, and the two words are not interchangeable in this work. Venue does not decide the form. Judging does.

Sources:

1. St. Joseph County 4-H Fair, About page (the Interstate Fair established at Springbrook Park, continued until 1925).
2. The History Museum, South Bend, Local Lost Landmarks: Springbrook Park and Playland Park (the park's opening to the public in 1896; the baseball diamond, bandstand, fairground and amusement park; the location; Redden's management; the children's naming contest and fifty dollar prize; the 1925 renaming to Playland Park).