Five Minute Histories: The Maryland State Fair

hello everybody this is Johns Hopkins with Baltimore Heritage and we're back with another of our 5- minute history videos and today I'm out on York Road and behind me is the Timonium Fairground if you're following along real time more or less you know we're heading into the state fair the end of August early September and almost for sure will be hot but there is so much going on it is irresistible where else can you watch a horse race or a pig race where else can you see a concert or a strolling piano and where else can you get something called a crab and cheese stuffed pretzel roll washed down with something called a chocolate dipped strawberry iced tea it is all fabulous and that's what we're going to talk about today now the first state fair was not in Maryland it was in New York in Syracuse in 1841 it's been there uh every year ever since our state fair didn't get started quite as early it has its roots back in the 1880s with a kind of unusual story a gentleman named Grafton uh Marsh Bosley uh in 1878 hosted an event uh on his property just north of tonum he was a doctor and he was raising money to help patients who had yellow fever it was pretty popular and the next year 1879 a group of folks formed what was called the Agricultural Society of Baltimore County and they leased 37 Acres of property here at what was called the Timonium estate as a somewhat aside tonium got its name from a woman uh named Mrs archabal Buchanan she in her later years uh was really sad she had lost a lifelong friend and was losing her eyesight so she decided to name her estate after an estate in classical literature and that was a Roman that was one of a Roman general and the lover of cleopatrick Mark Anthony he had an estate on the island of ante rodos I hope I'm saying that right uh outside of Alexandria Egypt and in a precursor to Romeo and Juliet he uh committed suicide there on the false news that Cleopatra had priorly also committed suicide so Timonium uh has somewhat of a sad origin story but the name stuck all right back to the state fair the agricultural society's first state fair was in 1879 it was not the first state fair or the only fair going on at that time in 1870 the Maryland state fair was in Frederick just around the corner at that same time there was a state fair in Lutherville and to make matters more interesting uh at about that same time the folks at Pimco were running a fair that they uh claimed was the state fair having two state fairs was not tenuous and eventually in 1906 uh the two merged uh ending up choosing uh this place as its headquarters and it's been here uh going strong ever since with two little hiccups one was during World War II for several years the Army occupied this site as a Depot and vehicle maintenance yard the second was in the 1950s uh when the uh uh Maryland Jockey Club which was the controlling stakeholder and the business uh decided it wanted to sell the fairgrounds for an industrial park people rose up all sorts of people bankers and farmers and business people they raised $600,000 they formed a group called The save the Maryland State Fair committee they purchased the property and uh said that it would be the state fair indefinitely so now that we've gotten ourselves safely into an annual state fair what's gone on over the years here well the early years the fair was largely intense but it had the same key ingredients I think that the state fairs uh today have the first of those uh was exhibits it had Farm and Garden Products it had home Arts like sewing and cooking and it had livestock of sort of every imaginable animal on a farm it had competitions back then the competitions were the ox pull and plowing and it had food uh back then it was largely the wives of farmers who uh made homemade sandwiches and they were the concessionaires and finally it had Amusement uh maybe not as thrilling is today's Rip Tide roller coaster uh but back then they had sack races and grease pole climbing by 1916 things started to change a little bit the star attraction then was an exhibit on canned foods and another one on the still new automobile um it was hot like always uh and like always there were Medics on site uh to help out although these Medics came from the Red Cross back then by 1929 uh there were still the typical exhibits of cows and horses and whatnot but new to the state fair that year were exhibits by the Maryland state normal school which had moved to uh uh T in 1915 of course today that's talson State University in 1942 a year after we entered World War I uh there was a less exuberance but there was still a Midway and the Midway had acts like Mystic mdy the lady of the swords and Johnny the seal boy whomever that was the 4 Club back then had exhibits uh titled economy for defense and linen substitutes for the war in 1961 the fair had bounced back uh with a record attendance of 76,000 people still hot 96° at 3:00 that's what was recorded and uh at least one person who was not phased by the heat was governor Marvin mandal he had been presented with a special Maryland cake that day and a basket of winning vegetables from the state fair and he won $740 on a race a horse race that was suspiciously called the governor's daily purse H in 2002 uh one of the uh star attractions was the livestock birthing center in the fabulous Cow Palace in that year a pig Nam spot to held people wrapped attention for hours until giving birth successfully to a litter of piglets in 2005 the big attractions some literally were the Budweiser Clydesdales uh the FBI agent and Watergate uh figure G Gordon ly and the rebel rocker uh Ted ment I guess some things have changed since the beginning days but maybe not a lot has changed from the beginning days we can't end this video without talking about food and there's something about state fairs that makes everybody want to fry everything possible not sure what that is um a few years ago there was a wonderful article in the Baltimore Sun by a journalist Rob Casper who was featuring uh fried corn dogs and fried Oreos also noting what some other state fairs had the Florida State Fair fried pickles of course called frickles and the Minnesota State Fair which seems to be the frying State Fair capital of America uh folks were there were frying spaghetti and meatballs fried pizza and apparently one stand was attempting to fry a sloppy joe sandwich I guess you got to try it if you're there um I don't know uh what all of the food is going to be this year but I'll wrap up by saying uh this year again there's a competition called the Mallet a food competition and you don't have to be a risky Gambler to bet a good portion at is going to feature crabs thanks so much and we'll see you next time e