Carnivals

A travelling show of rides and games that sets up for a few days, often alongside a community event.

A carnival is a travelling show of rides, games and food joints that sets up for a few days and moves on, often alongside a fair or town celebration. It grew from the Midway Plaisance at the 1893 Chicago fair; by 1899 organized carnival companies were finishing whole seasons on the road.

What it is

A carnival is owned by a midway operator, a company with rides, games, generators and trucks, plus the crews who build the midway in a day and tear it down in a night. It plays a route: fairs, exhibitions, rodeos, town days, and in BC a spring and fall run of mall parking lots.

The word means the travelling show itself, not the pre-Lent festival of the same name.

History, era by era

1893: The World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago put its amusements, restaurants and villages on the Midway Plaisance, with the first Ferris wheel at the centre.¹
1893–1898: After the fair closed in October 1893, travelling shows began copying the Midway. Otto Schmidt, a showman at the fair, founded one of the first; some of his people later started carnivals of their own.²
1899: Frank Gaskill, a hotel keeper, organized the Canton Carnival Company. It opened in Chillicothe, Ohio, and ended a 22-week season in Savannah, Georgia, the first carnival company to finish a season at a profit.³
1913: Outdoor showmen met at the Saratoga Hotel in Chicago and founded the Showmen’s League of America, with Buffalo Bill Cody as first president.⁴
1950s–today: In BC, Bingo Hauser traded his travelling animal show for a used merry-go-round in 1950. The company he started, West Coast Amusements, is now run by four generations of the family.⁵⁶

The midway connection

A carnival is the midway, packed into trucks. When a fair, a rodeo or a town festival books one, it is buying the whole strip: rides, games of skill, cotton candy and mini doughnuts, set down for the weekend and gone by Monday.⁶

Between the rides there is always a row of independent booths: concessions, sellers and small stands that travel the same circuit. A booth like ours belongs in that row.

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

Gaskill’s show started its 1899 season in a single railroad baggage car and finished it as a much larger train.³
A lion cub named Simba from Bingo Hauser’s animal show became the West Coast Amusements logo.⁵

Questions people ask

What was the first travelling carnival?

Carnival historians usually credit Frank Gaskill’s Canton Carnival Company of 1899 as the first to complete a profitable season, after earlier shows that followed the 1893 Chicago fair.³²

Is a carnival the same as a fair?

No. The fair is the event; the carnival is the travelling company that brings the rides and games to it.⁶

Sources

Chicago Park District: Midway Plaisance Park. Read on October 14, 2026 · government
South End Historical Society: The Origins of the American Traveling Carnival. Read on October 14, 2026 · reference
Doc's Midway Cookhouse (American Midway Archives): Canton Carnival Company. Read on October 14, 2026 · reference
Showmen's League of America: About us. Read on October 14, 2026 · official
Penticton Western News: Life is a carnival. Read on October 13, 2026 · news
Digital Museums Canada (Community Stories): West Coast Amusements: modern carnival. Read on October 13, 2026 · reference

Short listings from the census

Checked and sourced, but without a full page yet. Each one links to its row on its province or state page.

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.

Running a fair, a booth or a fundraiser?

Bring the Machine to your event: sell printed reading tickets, or run the machine on a screen facing the crowd. Reading codes for booths and fundraisers.

All kinds of fairs · Midway Directory

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