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1852 - 1872
Two acres by the courthouse: The documentary sequence begins in motion. In the fall of 1852 the fair was held at Mishawaka, the people of the town paying all the expenses. For the fair of 1853, two acres of ground on Washington Street in South Bend, three squares west of the court house, were leased, and afterwards purchased by the society, which held its meetings and annual fairs on that ground, with varying success, until 1857. The fair's own timeline supplies the corner its county history leaves off: Washington Avenue and North Taylor Street, two acres, continued until 1857. A county fair on two leased acres a short walk from the courthouse is the form at its smallest honest size: close to town, close to the law, and entirely dependent on the society's energy year to year.
Portage Avenue: On 15 March 1858 the society was again reorganized, this time under the act of the general assembly for the encouragement of agriculture approved 17 February 1852. A month later, on 13 April 1858, it sold the Washington Street tract and purchased about seven and a half acres on Portage Avenue, taken off the south side of lot 112 of the State Bank's first addition of outlots to South Bend, at the corner the fair's timeline gives as Portage Avenue and North Scott Street. The first fair on the new grounds was held on 28, 29 and 30 September 1858, and the society entered on a period of prosperity which continued for ten or twelve years. Then the war used the ground for its own purpose: during the Civil War the Portage Avenue fairgrounds were occupied as a military camp for quartering and organizing troops, the camp the fair's own timeline names as Camp Rose. A fairground is flat, fenced, watered and near a road; an army wants exactly the same things, and in St. Joseph County, as in Allen County's record in this work, the exhibition ground and the muster ground are the same acres in different years.
The end of the first grounds: The annual fairs outlasted the camp but not the indifference that followed the prosperous decade. The grounds were platted and offered for sale as the St. Joseph County Agricultural Society's Addition to the City of South Bend on 16 December 1871, and the last annual fair was held on them on 16 to 20 September 1872. An exhibition was still attempted in 1873, in connection with the Northern Indiana fair, and efforts were made on grounds west of South Bend on Division Street, interesting and valuable exhibits, Howard records, but not successful financially. The first age of the county fair closes there: the society's ground became city lots, and the fair became an idea in search of acres, which is the condition in which the next article finds it.
Sources:
- Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907) (the 1852 Mishawaka fair and the Niles address; the 1853 lease and purchase of the Washington Street two acres, held until 1857; the reorganization of 15 March 1858 under the act of 17 February 1852; the purchase of 13 April 1858 of seven and a half acres on Portage Avenue; the first fair of 28 to 30 September 1858; the wartime occupation as a military camp; the platting of 16 December 1871; the last fair of 16 to 20 September 1872; the 1873 exhibition and the Division Street efforts).
- St. Joseph County 4-H Fair, About page (the Washington Avenue and North Taylor Street corner; the Portage Avenue and North Scott Street corner; the name Camp Rose).