In 1916, Harrison County had not one, but two county fairs, named “Harrison County Fair”. One was the first annual fair held in Bethany on the current fairgrounds. It was a great success and in 1917, it was renamed the Northwest Missouri State Fair and continues to this day.
The other “Harrison County Fair” was held in Ridgeway. Sponsored by the Ridgeway Agricultural and Mechanical Society as the “Corn Show and Live Stock Exhibit”, the first fair was held on October 22-24, 1914 in Ridgeway. They offered premiums for “live stock, corn and other products” and “everybody should get up on their toes for the biggest little affair of the kind ever pulled off in Harrison County”.
In 1915, the fair was held in the J. W. Leazenby pasture west of town (on the north side of the current Route A just before you get to town). It featured not only exhibits of livestock, crops and other items but also musical entertainment and the aerial sensations “The Flying Bicketts”, who were “double trapeze experts and wizards of the air”. While the Ridgeway Journal referred to it as the “Harrison County Fair”, the other county papers called it “the second annual fair at Ridgeway.”
The 1916 Harrison County Fair in Ridgeway lasted 5 days and promised “to eclipse, in more ways than one, any like event ever held in the county.” Free attractions included the Kohlman’s big band and the “biggest display of fireworks ever set off in Harrison County” including a piece specially made for the fair called “America First, Then Comes Ridgeway.”
The 1917 Ridgeway Fair was still called by Ridgeway as the “Harrison County Fair” but listed on other Harrison County papers as the “Harrison County Agricultural and Mechanical Fair”.
That year’s event was not a financial success and it seemed that some people thought that Ridgeway should give up on having a fair “after being rained out and frozen out for four years, but the Ridgeway spirit is not so easily broken” and the promoters were already planning to enlarge the fair. However, there was no Ridgeway fair in 1918, although there would be other fairs in later years.
