100 Years Ago - the 1919 Indy 500

I thought I'd start the month of May off with a look at the Indy 500 from 100 years ago.

Gentlemen Start Your Engines

As the drivers of start their engines for the 2017 Indy 500, here's a quick look at the starting field for the 1919 race.

French Lick in 1944

Sometimes insomnia leads you to interesting discoveries. Tonight, after several hours of fruitless pillow surfing I dug into the Life Magazine archives to while away the midnight hours and I came across a 1944 article about the French Lick spa, what we currently call the West Baden Hotel. Back in the days of World War II, French Lick was slowly passing into obscurity. It'd been a Midwestern hot spot during the Jazz Age, but by black '44 the "It Girls" who'd rouged their knees and caught the midday train from West Baden to the Kentucky Derby had joined the varicose vein club and were more interested in Pluto Springs' purported ability to maintain regularity than catching the eye of the fellows.

Even the staff looks a bit past prime. Hard eyed fellows who looked like they belonged at the sort of sanitarium where the guests aren't allowed to leave whenever they want. It wouldn't be long until the statue of Pluto would be gone from the entryway and the state would be looking for someone to take on the tremendous job of maintaining the hotel and its sprawling grounds.

Eventually a group of Jesuits from Chicago took over the hotel and its grounds. Sometime in the fifties they poured concrete into the springs rather than maintain them, but even with the help of God they couldn't keep the place up. Today all that remains of their attempt is a tiny Jesuit graveyard on the property. It'd take a multi-millionaire with an eye for historic preservation to bring the hotel back to something like it's original glory. I guess money goes where angels can't afford to tread.

Anyway, it was nice to see the place as it used to be - even if it wasn't at its prime. A glimpse of a simpler time whose days were numbered back when this article ran. An ocean away the children or grandchildren of these folks probably were fighting the Nazis or the Japanese. The Grim Reaper was sitting on the veranda, rocking in one of the hotel's famed rocking chairs, and waiting to sweep all of this aside. Time waits for no one and nothing.

1938 - Fair Time

With August here and the Marion County Fairgrounds preparing itself for the 2014 edition of the Indiana State Fair, I thought I'd get into the mood with a Life Magazine's September 1938 cover. It's a nice shot that you might be able to capture today - a man dressed as a clown enticing the crowd to enter (what appears to be) the fun house. 1938 was a time when country and state fairs came and went with the harvest season. They were a venue where hard-working farm folk could display and sell their wares while, at the same time, taking a break from the hard work of scraping a living from the soil. Now we're used to every event being directly linked to ticket sales. But, let's not veer into wanton sentimentality or wax poetic about the ways things used to be!

In the idiom of the carny, the fellow in the clown getup is known as the outside talker and it's his job to deliver the bally or ballyhoo which will build the tip or crowd of onlookers. You're probably familiar with the ballyhoo as a bunch of noise meant to attract attention, but according to Carny Lingo the term comes to us from the Streets of Cairo pavilion at Chicago's 1893 Colombian Exposition where Middle Eastern performers exhibit manager W.O. Taylor brought out Beledi dancers (a term he later corrupted to belly dancers) and musicians during slow periods in order to attract a crowd. Since these unscheduled calls to perform tended to rouse performers from relaxing between sets they often were heard to mutter "D'Allah hun", or (roughly) "Oh, for God's sake!" and mishearing this utterance, Taylor began calling them to "ballyhoo."

Attracting the attention everyone within earshot it’s known as making the opening and a good outside talker has many tools at his disposal to do the job. All he wants is for people to pause just a moment to pay attention to what he’s saying. That's right, today only you can witness a special free show unlike any other performed to date in this great country. Step into the cool comfort of the tent and out of the swelter of the midway and you'll witness wonders galore!

The crowd has assembled, now it's time to freeze the tip. Put simply is forcing the crowd to pay attention and drawing them closer. During daylight hours freezing the tip might mean bring out a couple scantily-clad dancing girls and at night there might be a fire-eater - anything to grab the crowd's attention and hold it. Gradually the curious crowd closer to the outside talker and the mere presence of a few mesmerized onlookers draws more attention and more spectators until a tightly-packed tip has been formed. Now it's time for the outside talker's next trick, the pitch.

The pitch is where the outside talker describes the wonders that are to be witnessed inside. Amazement and splendor await you just inside, see the scandal that rocked the caliphates of all Araby, Seraphim the Seductive Cobra of Cairo will gyrates and sway to the hypnotic music of the mysterious orient! See Sampson the Strongman of San Francisco tear battleship steel with his teeth! Meet Rita the Human Heatah and see the dance that brings young men's blood to a boil! See the tattooed woman and learn all the history they never told you about in school! Witness the Necro-Magical feats of Madam Wundry as she delivers messages from the great beyond!

Next comes turning the tip, that is to say turning the sales pitch into a call to action, driving the crowd toward the ticket booth and eventually inside the tent where the show will take place. The outside talker might even turn the microphone over to a grind man at this stage, a fellow whose only job is to maintain the call to action - that's right folks, twenty beautiful women on one stage right inside...step right up, don't be shy!

Once inside its time to make some real money. Typically, the inside money, that is to say money made inside the confines of the tent, doesn't have to be split with the house. Members of the show sell their pictures, bios, and other trinkets and once the show's over there's always one more special treat for those with the curiosity (and spending money). This is where you might get a chance to gaze upon a specially hideous exhibit such as (what supposedly is) a deformed fetus preserved in formaldehyde (also known as a pickled punk), catch a glimpse of the cabinet of death wherein lies the lovely (and naked) Lola, or maybe learn a lot from Lydia the Tattooed Lady!

So, if you're strolling the midway this summer and you hear the well-measured cadence of an outside talker mingling with the music of the calliope and the happy babble of fair-goers, pause a moment. You're hearing the sound of hundreds of years of history. Maybe you ought to part with a few dollars, step outside your busy schedule, and wander into the shady, salacious, and marvelous world of the sideshow tent. It just might be the greatest show on Earth.

Foods of the 500 - Friendly Franks

With May being the month most associated with racing here in Indiana, I thought that I would use my usual Wednesday foodie slot to feature the dishes many race fans might be cooking up over at 16th and Georgetown. We start off with hot dogs or, in the parlance of this 1941 American Meat Institute ad, friendly frankfurters. I'm not sure if the whole friendly shtick owes to the looming threat of the Axis powers in Europe and the Pacific, but I guess it's better than militant, angry frankfurters. In 2001 they would have been called freedom-furters or something equally asinine, so I won't poke too much fun.

Nearly forty years after Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle and the meat packing industry still was trying to convince Americans they weren't eating the severed digits of some poor slob working nineteen-hour shifts in a Chicago weenie-skinning operation.

The weenies themselves look pretty innocuous, just like the dogs you might get out of an Oscar Meyer package today, but it's the inset that I find disturbing. Exactly what is smeared on that hot dog? I think it's supposed to be mustard, but why is it smoldering?

100 Years Ago Today - The Lincoln Highway

Today we travel superhighways, great six-lane beltways of asphalt and concrete that span thousands of miles of countryside. It’s a banal mode of travel, the most amazing sights you’ll see from the interstate system are billboards advertizing the same handful of fast food joints over and over again. We ride in automobiles that, for the most part, are reliable, safe, and almost identical in every way. A hundred years ago, though, travelling across the country in your merry Oldsmobile or Tin Lizzie was a different affair. In fact, a hundred years ago today the Lincoln Highway became the first paved motorway that crossed the country from coast to coast. The Lincoln Highway was the brainchild of Hoosier Carl G. Fisher and his great road joined New York with San Francisco, crossing thirteen states and spanning 3389 miles in the process.

The Lincoln Highway crossed northern Indiana, starting in Allen County and progressing through Ft. Wayne, Goshen, Elkhart, Mishawaka, La Porte, Westville, Valparaiso, Merrillville, and Dyer before departing into the Illinois plains and to date you still can travel this hundred year old track.

1928 Map of the Lincoln Highway in Northern Indiana

Don’t think of the Lincoln Highway as a highway in the modern sense of the word. Automotive travel in 1913 was a dicey thing; a point brought home by this line is from The Complete Official Road Guide of the Lincoln Highway a promotional guide published in 1916:

“You can drive anywhere between New York and the Indiana-Illinois line either during or after heavy rainstorms without difficulty, but once west of this point it is wise to delay the trip, as many days as necessary, stopping comfortably at a hotel, if heavy rainstorms are encountered. You will make more progress in the end, and you will be saved many disagreeably experience.”

In fact, the guide provides a lengthy list of items the traveler should carry while traversing the Lincoln Highway. The provision section follows with its Donner Party preamble left intact.

It’s always interesting to pour over these old travel guides. Early automotive guides tend to be pretty utilitarian with lots of ads for cars (of course) and the parts to keep them running. There were a couple ads of interest to the native Hoosier, though. 

Hotel Rumely (or Rumley depending on your source) was situated on the Lincoln Highway in La Porte, Indiana and according to their ad they provided “special attention” to “automobile parties”. Somehow I get the feeling special attention means they had parking and maybe bellboys who would help unload the dozens of bags motorists carried. The building still stands today, though it’s now apartments. The Automobile Maintenance Company garage located a block east of the Rumely didn't fare so well and has been lost to time and urban re-muddling. I found a postcard of the Rumely, typical brick and stone behemoth of the era with little architectural detail. You probably could have found a similar hotel in every middling-sized town across the Midwest during the mid-1910’s. By the way, the term European plan used in the Rumely ad might make the hotel sound extra-fancy, but it simply means your meals aren’t included in the cost of your room.

In Elkhart, Indiana motorists could stay at a fancier institution, the Bucklen Hotel. There isn't much information about the Bucklen, except for the fact that like the Rumley its name has had numerous spellings (Bucklen, Bucklin, and Buckland). The Bucklen Hotel connected to the Bucklen Opera House, forming the entertainment center of small-town Elkhart in the mid-1910’s. According to the ad, the hotel was American plan meaning your meals came with the room. Photos I found show the hotel’s slow descent into disuse and decay. In the seventies it looks like there may have been a fire and today a parking lot occupies the corner where the once grand old lady stood.

I’m going to have to plan a trip along the Lincoln Highway this fall. Maybe take in the colors, the cool air, and stop at a few roadside sights. Who knows what provisions I might need, especially if the rains come early!

Indiana State Fair - The Better Babies Contest

At its heart every State Fair is a celebration of mankind’s control of nature. Proud farmers from across the state come to Indianapolis with the best of their hybrid crops and selectively bread flocks, judges tally up pluses and minuses based on how well each conforms to established breed standards, and ribbons and prizes are awarded for the best representatives in each category from cabbage to cattle. It’s a tradition that’s nearly as old as agriculture itself – pride and competitiveness paired with a festival on the downhill side of the growing season and I enjoy digging through the records of the past to bring up little quirks and interesting tidbits. Unfortunately, not every aspect of the Indiana State Fair’s history is quaint, bright, and nostalgic. Our American past is troubled and murky, and as a people we've stumbled in the darkness of ignorance as often as we've stood tall in the sunlight. I end this year’s fair season with a post about a shadowy facet of the Indiana State Fair, one that combines advances in healthcare with the ignorance of bigotry and pseudoscience.

In the early 20^th century a growing awareness of the importance of the health of mothers and babies swept across Indiana and in 1920 this new wave of awareness manifested in the form of a new competition at the Indiana State Fair. I’ll admit, when I first saw pictures of the Better Baby Contest I thought that’d I’d be writing a comic piece. Frankly, the thought of mothers and fathers displaying their offspring for a panel of judges in an attempt to win a blue ribbon and cash prize sounded like fodder for a mocumentary or maybe one of those child beauty contests that plague reality television.

But the Better Baby Contest was a symptom of something more sinister. Yes, it marked a shift in the understanding of the nature of childhood and motherhood, but it also embodied an attempt legislate the sort of selective breeding that had to that point only been seen in raising livestock on the human population. Eugenics sought to “strengthen” humanity by restricting and controlling procreation. It sorted people based on measures of genetic worthiness and desirability. The poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally challenged were deemed “defective” and a danger to the strength and purity of mankind. Likewise women deemed promiscuous, homosexuals, and non-whites were identified as “degenerate” and, therefore potentially dangerous to the health of the nation’s population as a whole. Under the guise of racial improvement governments put in place policies of segregation, institutionalization, sterilization, and even euthanasia.

In Indiana the eugenics movement took the guise of a drive for better Hoosier children and a direct outgrowth of this was the Better Babies Contest held at the Indiana State Fair from 1920 through its discontinuation in 1932. Parents from every county in the state brought their children to the Better Baby Pavilion located on what is now the western end of the Fairground’s Main Street where they would be would be weighed, measured, and tested by physicians and psychologists affiliated with the State Board of Health's Division of Infant and Child Hygiene.

At the forefront of Indiana’s better babies program was Dr. Ada E. Schweitzer, a rare feminine presence in the medical profession who worked tirelessly and in the course of just over a decade constructed a nationally recognized health agency which promoted the application scientific methods and modern medicine to motherhood and child rearing. By 1907 Indiana enacted its own Pure Food and Drug act as well as a Vital Statistics act requiring accurate birth and death records. The dark side of the movement showed through and that same year Indiana put in place the country's first eugenic sterilization law. By 1915 The American Medical Association (AMA) ranked the Indiana State Board of Health sixth in the nation and it seemed there would be no stopping her Division of Infant and Child Hygiene.

The Better Babies Contest acquainted Hoosiers with the current opinions of child specialists, reinforced pediatric norms, and gave university-trained experts a sort of unquestionable authority in all matters pertaining to the biology, physiology, and psychology of children. The introduction of sponsorship into the contest helped connect consumerism with motherhood and childhood and Indiana businesses such as the Hoosier Fence Company and the Weber Milk Company became Better Babies Contest sponsors. The contest excluded African American children, reinforcing segregation in Indiana and promoting the idea only white babies could achieve perfection. Schweitzer herself declared the contest “a school of education in eugenics”, promoting racial intolerance and prejudice while purportedly seeking the betterment of Hoosier children.

It’s important to state that though immensely popular; the Better Babies Contest isn't a product of Indiana. The first contest was held at the Iowa State Fair in 1911 with Mary T. Watts’ question to Iowans, “You are raising better cattle, better horses, and better hogs, why don't you raise better babies?” Watts used the model applied to livestock to judge superior infants, developing scorecards which tallied physical health, anthropometric traits, and mental development. Soon after Woman's Home Companion magazine embarked a better baby campaign of its own, sending an editor to promote the contests in Colorado. By 1914 the contests had become a fad and Woman's Home Companion proudly proclaimed that the existence of contests in every state (except West Virginia, New Hampshire, and Utah) and the examination of more than 100,000 children a laudable mark of progress.

In Indiana Children’s Bureau workers took part in organizing, officiating, and facilitating the Better Babies Contest joining with the AMA to standardize a scoring system acceptable to the pediatric establishment. This collaboration led to alternative children's health conferences, which conformed to the credo and flawed assumptions of the contest but lacked the competitiveness. Still, by the mid-1920's, Schweitzer went on the radio airwaves and in magazine articles promoting Better Babies Contests as a means for establishing a yardstick for childhood heath standards against which parents could compare their own children. She promoted the eugenic theme that race betterment (referring to the white race only, of course) depended on restricting the right to bear children to only the fittest and “protecting” genetic health through marriage and sterilization laws. Chillingly she stated, “You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, neither can we make a citizen out of an idiot or any person who is not well born.”

I’d love to say that this contest met its end when its inherent racism and classism were recognized for what they were and that the good and honest people of Indiana rejected the tenants of eugenics, but I can’t. To be honest, the last Better Babies Contest held in 1932 was wildly popular. Its end came at the hands of the sexism of a medical establishment which could not tolerate the predominately female Indiana Children’s Bureau and the financial strictures of the Great Depression. The bureau ultimately was disbanded and its chief architects run out of healthcare. Indiana’s eugenic-driven sterilization laws would remain in place until 1974 when it was struck down by Governor Otis Bowen. The last concrete legacy of the contest is the two pavilions constructed to accommodate judging and a plaque on the statehouse lawn commemorating the end of the Sterilization Act.

Indiana State Fair - 1936 License and Registration Please!

I’m having a tough time with this image. It shows an exhibit put on by the Indiana University Department of Psychology at the 1936 Indiana State Fair and it is supposed to test reaction time. What on Earth could a Scotty dog have to do with reaction time? Whatever the connection, the woman in the driver’s seat looks a bit like the officer standing at her side has just asked for her license and registration and the kid watching looks like he’s in shock.

Indiana State Fair - 1852 Best Plowing

We’re used to seeing ribbons awarded to prize winners at state fairs, but in 1852 contestants were recognized with diplomas. This one from the archives of the Indiana Historical Society recognizes Michael Ingermann of Hamilton County for “best plowing for a boy under 15 years of age”. Nice furrows, young Mike!

Indiana State Fair - 1933 Cotton Candy

You're getting a bonus food post today. I couldn't resist putting down a few words about two classic fair foods: Cotton Candy and Funnel Cake.

What those of us in the US and Canada know as cotton candy goes by other names across the globe. In the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa it is known as candy floss and in Australia it goes by the moniker fairy floss. In all cases, though, it’s simply spun sugar. The first record of cotton candy shows up in Europe in the 1700s, but a mechanical means for producing the confection didn't appear until 1897. Ironically, the mechanism we use to create cotton candy owes its existence to a dentist. Dr. William Morrison teamed up with confectioner John C. Wharton to introduce their machine-made Fairy Floss at the 1904 World's Fair. Their product went over well and the team sold 68,655 boxes at roughly the equivalent of $6 a box in today’s terms. In 1921 another dentist, Dr. Joseph Lascaux, invented his own (similar) cotton candy machine and it is Lascaux’s patent which assigned the name “cotton candy” to the confection that shows up on midways across the country.

Another midway staple is the funnel cake, a deep fried pastry that typically is doused in powdered sugar or some sugar-laden fruit syrup just in case the oil from the deep fryer didn't add enough calories. The history of this pastry probably came to American shores with the Pennsylvania Dutch. The name, of course, comes from the cooking method – a funnel-shaped contraption is used to dispense a stream of batter into the hot oil.

 This lovely image of a little girl enjoying a cloud of cotton candy nearly as big as she is comes from the 1933 Indiana State Fair. In the heart of the depression, when everything was uncertainty, it's joy on a stick.

Indiana State Fair - 1939 Lard

You've heard of butter sculpture, well in true fair form here's a lard sculpture! I've always had mixed feelings about any food product that's gleefully promoted by the animals it's made from. It has a high creep-factor! According to the description on the Indiana Historical Society's site this photo was taken in the Horticulture Building and the sculpture sponsored by the National Livestock and Meat Board.

Indiana State Fair - 1946 Popcorn

This is Popcorn year at the Indiana State Fair, so what more appropriate image than that of a popcorn magnate handing out a prize at the fair? The tow-headed fellow on the right is John Coltrain, a farmer from Darlington, Indiana and he's being presented with an Angus heifer by none other than Mr. O. C. (Orville) Redenbacher of almost every kernel pops fame. At the time of this photo, Orville was a successful farmer and owner of Princeton Farms. Strange how history is written in circles!

Indiana State Fair - 1934 Kittens!

Yes, I'm a sucker, I couldn't resist a picture of kittens. The 4-H Cat Show still goes on at the fairgrounds.

Indiana State Fair - 1935 Oxen

A team of oxen yoked to an advertising wagon for the 1935 Indiana State Fair. The building in the background is the Administration Building. According to the Indiana Historical Society digital collection entry, the opposite side of the wagon says "Lum and Abner in person, Armature Contest, Coliseum Sat. Aug. 31 - 8 P.M.".

Lum and Abner was a radio comedy that aired from 1931 to 1954 created by Chester Lauck and Norris Goff and featured the exploits of the title characters in a small town based on Waters, Arkansas near where the authors grew up.

Indiana State Fair - 1938 Northwest Territory Pageant

During this fair season I've spent most of my effort digging up (hopefully) interesting pictures and ads, easy reads that connect those of us who enjoy attending the fair with the people who felt the same in the past. Today I’m going to dig a little deeper and take a look at the 1938 Indiana State Fair and the Northwest Territory Pageant which played a major part in that year’s festivities. The Pageant was conceived as a celebration of the opening of the Northwest Territory to settlement.

In 1786 the Ohio Company of Associates was organized to promote the establishment of a settlement in what at that time was the western country. They raised funds and sent a representative to Congress to apply for the purchase of the necessary land. By 1787 the Northwest Ordinance had been passed by the US congress and a territory larger than any country in Europe (except Russia) was opened to settlement. The men of the Ohio Company set forth on December 3^rd, 1787 and arrived in what would become Marietta Ohio on April 7, 1788 where they set up the first civil government under the Ordinance west of the Allegheny Mountains.

150 years later, the Northwest Territory Celebration Commission began preparations to celebrate the contribution of these early settlers. They recruited a caravan of thirty six collage students to reenact the trek of the Ohio Company, bought two yoke of oxen, five cavalry horses, and assembled a Conestoga wagon from antiques salvaged from barns and carriage sheds in Pennsylvania’s Conestoga Valley.

Suited up in period gear, the commemorative party set forth from Ipswich, Massachusetts on December 3, 1937 and reached West Newton, Pennsylvania in fifty two days. In West Newton the party built flatboats, canoes, and a pirogue (a small flat-bottomed boat). They floated down the Youghiogheny River toward Marietta, Ohio, arriving on April 7, 1938.

Having completed the reenactment, the party made a tour of the states that rose from the Northwest Territory (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan), performing at festivals and fairs along the way. The planners of the sesquicentennial had created promotional materials for this phase of the celebration including four-color maps showing the phases of settlement and the native peoples who were displaced as the settlers moved westward. These maps included the text of the Ordinance of 1787 and were distributed to school children as educational material. A bibliography listing all known published materials on the settlement of the Northwest Territory also was created for and distributed for free to teachers within the territory. 

Ordinance of 1787 Stamp

1938 150th Anniversary Stamp

Two commemorative stamps were released for the sesquicentennial. The first, known as the Ordinance of 1787 stamp, was issued on July 13, 1937 and first day sales held in New York City as well as Marietta, Ohio. The second was issued on July 15, 1938 and commemorated the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the first civil government west of the original thirteen states. Commemorative ox team mail was offered, carrying letters along with the Pioneer Caravan from Ipswich to Marietta. A special cachet of letters was issued by the commission and the letters stamped and postmarked at Ipswich and again upon arrival at the Marietta Post Office. From Marietta they were re-mailed to the original addressee through regular mail.

The Commission also produced a historical novel in association with the commemoration. The novel was intended as an aid in teaching American history to high school students. Meade Minnigerode penned The Black Forest, combining historic facts with a romantic plot line.

Additionally there were school contests and local celebrations, but the main and most visible feature of the commemoration had to be the Northwest Territory Pageant linked with the caravan reenacting the trek of the Ohio Company. The Pageant directly involved each of the states which made up the Northwest Territory and through it the entire name became more aware of the sesquicentennial. The speed of the caravan was dictated by the plodding pace of its oxen and children along the route were able to touch the beasts of burden, connecting physically and conceptually with the life and struggles of the early settlers of their states.

Sioux Leaders at 1938 Indiana State Fair

In 1938 the caravan reached Indianapolis, putting in an appearance at the Indiana State Fair where they pitched camp near a band of Sioux who were taking part in the pageant. According to a doctoral paper written in 1948 by Carl Applegate on the topic of the Northwest Territory Celebration:

“To the left of the caravan the merits of a two-headed cow were being extolled by her proud owner. Though the area was filled with side-show people, the long hair and well trimmed beards of the "pioneers" attracted attention. They heard the query of the carnival folk who said, "Where you been, how'd you do, where you goin' next?"

The pageant was staged at the fairground’s mile oval racetrack, but the effort proved a mistake. A horse-pull was being staged on one side of the track while the other hosted an exhibition of dairy cattle, leaving spectators watching three events simultaneously. On September 17^th the caravan arrived in Vincennes in a rainstorm with just twelve days remaining in their trek.

Staging the Pageant at the 1938 Indiana State Fair

One last Indiana connection can be made through one of the dogs which accompanied the caravan along its route. Stogy (short for Conestoga) deserted the party somewhere in Indiana. The exact location where Stogy took his exit is a mystery, I didn’t find any reference aside from a citing in Applegate’s paper, but somewhere in Indiana lay the bones of dear Stogy.

I’ll end by echoing the sentiment expressed in Applegate’s work, though we no longer look westward and load up Conestoga wagons or flatboats to set off for unexplored horizons doesn’t mean we’re finished with being pioneers. We’re a questing people, an inherently incomplete and imperfect nation seeking something we cannot even define. The most valuable thing we can take from our forefathers isn’t the need for more territory or the blind desire to impose their social norms on other peoples, it is the ability to endure, forebear, and persevere over all obstacles no matter how impenetrable they may seem.

Indiana State Fair - 1900

A Victorian era crowd milling about the fairgrounds on a hot summer afternoon. No better way to spend the day!

Indiana State Fair - Poster for the 1885 State Fair

Indiana State Fair - 25 Years of Construction

 An article from the 1955 issue of The Billboard Magazine featuring the Indiana State Fairgrounds. 25 years worth of construction, that sounds a little like the Department of Transportation!

Indiana State Fair - 1936 Home Economics Club

You are looking at the women of the Indiana State Fair School of Home Economics wearing the finery they made and modeled for the 1936 4-H Dress Review. It never fails to amaze me when I see an image like this. Normally, when I see a historic photograph which features the clothing of a particular era I wonder who the maker was, but in my mind I'm envisioning a company. This shows how talented many people were at making their own clothing and not just flour-sack dresses, we're talking stuff that would look at home on a rack in your favorite high-end department store. All I can say is maybe consumerism isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Another thing that strikes me? Check out the right-leaning hats! It's like tilting your bonnet to the right is some kind of Econ-Club uniform that goes along with a secret handshake and midnight meetings to weave cloth for ceremonial gowns.

The building in the background is familiar, though I'm having problems placing it at the moment. When I make my annual pilgrimage to the fairgrounds this month I'll make it a point to look for the buildings in these images.

Indiana State Fair - 1873 Premium List

I found this 1873 Premium List for the Indiana State Fair in the digital archives of the Indiana Historical Society. Premium lists provide potential exhibitors and vendors with a list of rules and requirements they must meet if they want to be part of an event.

I'm not sure of the identity of the building featured on the list's cover. The Indiana State Fair didn't find a permanent home in Indianapolis until 1892, almost twenty years after this publication, so it's not located within the modern fairgrounds. I checked and the E. C. Atkins and Company did have a factory in Indianapolis during this era, but from what I've seen it didn't resemble the cover illustration. I can only conclude that the book depicts the location where the 1873 fair was held, but I've had no luck identifying the location or anything other than this image. If you have any ideas about the identity of this Victorian edifice, send them in!