The forty acres between the cities: the fair becomes Potawatomi Park

1881 - 1906

The society with the famous roll: The revival, when it came, came with the county's strongest names on its paper. An act of 18 March 1873 had authorized county commissioners, on petition of a majority of voters, to invest up to five thousand dollars in land for agricultural fairs. On 3 February 1881 the Northern Indiana Agricultural Society was formed to hold fairs on grounds to be purchased by the county under that act, organized as a stock company with shares at five dollars and no limit on their number. Howard prints its incorporators, men representing every township, and among them stand Henry Studebaker, John M. Studebaker, Peter E. Studebaker, Jacob F. Studebaker and Clement Studebaker. The family that built the wagons signed the fair society's roll: in South Bend the fair was never a farmers' affair alone, and the men who manufactured the county's other great product underwrote its exhibition of the first one.

The purchase: On 20 April 1881, at a special meeting of the board of county commissioners, the required petition was filed and an order entered for the purchase of forty acres on the north side of the St. Joseph River, between South Bend and Mishawaka, to be used for agricultural fairs. The fair's own history carries the same acres in shorter words: the commissioners and the old Agricultural Society bought forty acres between South Bend and Mishawaka and named the fair Farmers Union Fairs, with horse racing a major activity, and the name afterwards changed back to the St. Joseph County Agricultural Society. On those grounds the society, in Howard's words, flourished and furnished exhibitions of a very high order for many years.

The surrender, and the park: What wore the fair down was not a rival fair but a bigger one: Howard dates the people's waning interest from the World's Fair at Chicago in 1892 and 1893, whose extraordinary exhibits made the simpler, more homelike local display suffer by comparison. A new society formed on 31 March 1899, restoring the old name, tried to revive the interest and could not. On 4 June 1903 the St. Joseph County Agricultural Society made a formal surrender of the county grounds, which the commissioners accepted, and on 3 April 1906 the grounds were placed in the custody of the City of South Bend to be used as a public park, the park the city named Pottawatomie and the county now knows as Potawatomi Park. It is the same course Fort Wayne's Swinney grounds ran, a generation offset: the exhibition leaves, the gatherings stay, and the city's beloved river park is a fairground that retired.

Sources:

1. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907) (the act of 18 March 1873; the Northern Indiana Agricultural Society of 3 February 1881, its stock form and its incorporators, the Studebaker names among them; the commissioners' order of 20 April 1881 and the forty acres described by section, township and range; the flourishing years; the World's Fair of 1892 and 1893 as the turning point; the society of 31 March 1899; the surrender of 4 June 1903; the custody of 3 April 1906 and the park name).
2. St. Joseph County 4-H Fair, About page (the Farmers Union Fairs name, horse racing the major activity, the restored society name, the forty acres as today's Potawatomi Park, the 1906 gift to the city).