Kinds of fairs and listings
The words we use to sort the directory. Each entry gets one main type. Fairs are events with dates; amusement parks and midway attractions are places with a season.
The Midway Directory sorts every listing by kind: fairs, exhibitions, rodeos, carnivals, festivals and the places and companies that keep the midway running. Each kind has its own page with a short history, how it ties to the midway, and the listings we have checked so far, every fact pointing to its source.
What it is
A midway is the strip of a fair or exhibition given over to amusements: rides, games, food and shows, separate from the barns and exhibit halls. The word comes from one place, the Midway Plaisance in Chicago, and one summer, 1893. Almost every kind of gathering in this directory has some version of it.
Each type below has a page of its own. Events (fairs, rodeos, festivals) have dates and editions; places (amusement parks, piers, arcades, museums) have a season; companies and associations have a history and a list of where they work.
History, era by era
- 1760s–1840s
- Agricultural fairs come first. The fair at Windsor, Nova Scotia, dates itself to 1765, and in 1810 Elkanah Watson and his neighbours held a cattle show in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, that grew into the American county fair.12
- 1841–1880s
- State and city fairs follow: the first official state fair in Syracuse, New York, in 1841, and Toronto’s exhibition in 1879, which drew 100,000 people in its first year.34
- 1893
- At the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, rides, restaurants and shows were put on the Midway Plaisance and allowed to charge extra. Its centrepiece was the first Ferris wheel, 264 feet tall.5
- 1893–1910s
- Travelling shows copy the Chicago midway and take it on the road. Frank Gaskill’s Canton Carnival Company finished a full season at a profit in 1899, and showmen formed the Showmen’s League of America in Chicago in 1913.678
The midway connection
The Chicago fair learned in 1893 that amusements paid: the Midway attractions charged on top of admission and helped the fair turn a profit. Fairs have kept a midway ever since, and the companies that supply one now travel a route of fairs, rodeos and town days through the season.515
Wherever people walk a row of booths, the midway is there in some form: the full kind, with rides, games of skill and food joints, or the quieter kind, with craft tables, home baking and a booth like ours. That walk, with family and friends and something to look at every few steps, is what this directory is about.
Two facts worth knowing
Questions people ask
Why is it called a midway?
After the Midway Plaisance, the strip of parkland in Chicago where the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition put its rides, restaurants and shows.5
Which is older, the fair or the midway?
The fair, by more than a century. Windsor, Nova Scotia, dates its fair to 1765; the midway as a name and a layout dates from Chicago in 1893.15
Sources
- Hants County Exhibition (Windsor Agricultural Society): Our history. Read on · official
- New York State Library: Watson, Elkanah Papers. Read on · government
- National Conference of State Legislatures: Meet Me at the Fair. Read on · reference
- The Canadian Encyclopedia: Canadian National Exhibition. Read on · reference
- Chicago Park District: Midway Plaisance Park. Read on · government
- South End Historical Society: The Origins of the American Traveling Carnival. Read on · reference
- Doc's Midway Cookhouse (American Midway Archives): Canton Carnival Company. Read on · reference
- Showmen's League of America: About us. Read on · official
- Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas: Rodeos. Read on · reference
- The Canadian Encyclopedia: Calgary Stampede. Read on · reference
- Coney Island History Project: Paul Boyton. Read on · reference
- PNE: History and legacy. Read on · official
- What's Up Newp: On this day in Newport history: first Newport Jazz Festival held. Read on · news
- City of Trail: Trail Silver City Days. Read on · government
- Digital Museums Canada (Community Stories): West Coast Amusements: modern carnival. Read on · reference
- Agricultural fair
- A fair built around farming: livestock shows, 4-H, produce and home-craft competitions, usually with a midway alongside. (32 in the directory)
- Exhibition
- A big city fair, often more than a century old, that began as an industrial or farm showcase and now mixes a midway, shows, concerts and exhibits. (10 in the directory)
- County or state fair
- A US fair held for a county or a whole state, usually agricultural at heart, with a midway. (none in the directory yet)
- Carnival
- A travelling show of rides and games that sets up for a few days, often alongside a community event. (17 in the directory)
- Midway-only event
- A stand-alone midway: rides, games and food without a fair around it. (none in the directory yet)
- Festival with a midway
- A festival whose main draw is something else (music, a holiday, a harvest) that brings in a midway too. (3 in the directory)
- Community fair
- A town or neighbourhood fair or "days" celebration run by a community group, a service club or the municipality rather than an agricultural society: a parade, stages, food, often a few rides. (11 in the directory)
- Rodeo or stampede
- A rodeo or stampede: roughstock and timed events such as bronc and bull riding, roping and barrel racing, often with a dance, a parade or a small midway alongside. (9 in the directory)
- Street festival
- A festival held on closed streets or across a district: a street party, a car-free day, a cultural or neighbourhood festival with stages, food and vendors. (6 in the directory)
- Music festival
- A recurring festival whose main programme is music: folk, jazz, blues, country, roots, electronic or classical, over one or more days. (42 in the directory)
- Amusement park
- A fixed park of rides and games that opens for a season or all year, usually with a midway of its own. Some host a fair's rides when the fair is on. (6 in the directory)
- Midway attraction
- A year-round or seasonal place with rides or a midway that isn't a full amusement park: a pier, a boardwalk or a family fun centre. (7 in the directory)
Kinds of listings
Beyond the fairs: the rest of the midway world. Arcades, museums and historic rides sit under their city, like a fair. Companies and associations get a page of their own that says where they work. Listings are free and factual; nobody pays to be here.
- Arcades and game rooms
- A room or hall of coin-op, card-swipe or free-play games: pinball, video cabinets, redemption games and skill games, open on its own rather than as part of a fair. (9 in the directory)
- Museums and collections
- A museum or public collection about the midway world: circuses, carnivals, mechanical amusements and automata, carousels, sideshows and the history of fairs. (1 in the directory)
- Historic carousels and rides
- A carousel or other ride old enough to have a history of its own: who made it and when, who carved it, where it travelled, how it was restored and whether it is protected. (2 in the directory)
- Midway operators and travelling carnivals
- A company that owns rides and games and takes them on the road, setting up the midway at fairs, exhibitions, rodeos and festivals through the season. (2 in the directory)
- Ride and game manufacturers
- A company that designs and builds amusement rides or midway games, sold to parks, fairs and travelling shows. (4 in the directory)
- Vendors and suppliers
- A business that supplies fairs, carnivals and concessions: concession equipment, prizes and plush, tickets and wristbands, game supplies. Listed as facts only. (6 in the directory)
- Associations and trade shows
- A body that fairs, showmen or suppliers belong to, and the conventions and trade shows it runs. (7 in the directory)
- Oddity shops and curiosity museums
- A curiosity museum, oddity shop or dime-museum-style attraction: cabinets of curiosities, wax figures, sideshow banners and the strange things the midway once put on show. (1 in the directory)
- Touring concessions
- A food or game concession business that travels the fair circuit: mini doughnuts, corn dogs, candy floss, lemonade and midway game joints, set up for the run of each fair. (none in the directory yet)
The Midway Mailbag
New fairs, festivals, midways and attractions as we add them to the directory. About twice a month in fair season, less in winter.
Spotted something wrong, out of date or missing? The corrections page says how we fix it.