How We Traveled to the Wood County Fair

by Alan Borer

The two pictures speak for themselves in some ways. Both are postcard views of the “parking” facilities at the Wood County Fair. Postcards are usually undated except for their mailing dates, which in this case were 1912 and 1923 respectively. Although we do not have the exact date of either photograph, it shows a remarkable, and remarkably sudden, change in the visual landscape of northwest Ohio. In slightly more than ten years, rural Ohio abandoned the horse in favor of the gasoline engine.

This was a national trend, with World War 1 marking the tipping point. Before the war, the car was a novelty, a toy for the rich, a noisy machine to be played with on Sunday afternoons. The horse felt no threat. Used for transport since the Neolithic, the horse was the center of a network of blacksmiths, wagon makers, livery stables and hay and feed dealers. In 1912, there were only 94,400 cars on the road in the states.

Then came Henry Ford. For better or worse, Ford pioneered the car as a machine that could be purchased and maintained by all but the poorest. Ford popularized both the car and the method of making cars, using the assembly line to build plentiful, affordable vehicles. And while Ford and his Model “T” were eventually surpassed by other companies, all of his competitors used Ford’s model to make cars.

And the world changed. By 1922, there were 1,227,400 cars on the road. The horse and his attendants were subsumed in a newly built world made for and by the car. Blacksmiths were replaced by auto mechanics; roads were rebuilt with asphalt. Downtown hotels were replaced by “tourist camps” and motels. Living downtown was replaced with suburbs, and the oil that was used for kerosene was suddenly diverted to gasoline. In time, shopping malls would replace downtown shopping, and longer and longer drives to work were becoming the norm. The two postcards illustrate this change graphically.

County fairs were among the chief holidays of a farming population. The first Wood County fair dates back to 1851. The fair moved back and forth between Bowling Green, Portage, Tontogany, and Perrysburg. The fair stayed in Bowling Green starting in 1886, until in 1927, a fire at the fairgrounds coupled with bad weather and a bad farm economy ended the run of the Wood County fair. The fair did not resume until 1950.

For many folks in Wood County, the county fair is a milestone of the year. Farm animals are shown, FFA projects are displayed, and contests are held. The fair is still fun, but the atmosphere is different. The world is noisier now, and the fragrance of manure, while still there, is mostly drowned out by diesel exhaust. Whether or not we will all visit the fair by electric vehicles, flying saucers, or teleportation remains to be seen. That it will change is bound to happen.


[The postcards are in my private collection. Statistics came from the U. S. Census Bureau. Background on the fair comes from https://bgindependentmedia.org/county-fair-history-hoochie-coochie-girls-a-hanging-and-much-more/]