BACK TO THE FAIRGROUNDS

Friday, October 5, 2007 9:35 PM CDT

This week we're going back to the fairgrounds stories that we've been writing about over the past few weeks, but it will be a relatively short visit.

Regular readers know we've been talking about the old Inter-County Fair which was held in the early 1900s at the south edge of the city in the general area of the present National Guard Armory on River Drive.

We've also wrote a bit about the big fairs in the late 1800s which were held off of Milford Street, in the general area of the city's industrial park. It was where Alvoss Road used to intersect with Milford Street. That road is now known as Commerce Drive.

Both of those fairs were huge attractions for Watertown residents. Back then, Watertown was a bustling community and it was a hot spot for social activities for many miles around.

There were early reports that the Inter-County Fair brought upwards of 40,000 people to the community over the four days of the event, and it's likely the fair out on Milford Street garnered thousands of people as well.

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We're going to continue along that broad topic a bit yet today. We have a couple of topics still to cover, one on each site. So, let's get started.

First of all, in recent days a couple of our regular readers stopped by, and both of them had old postcards that depicted the old fairgrounds for the Inter-County Fair.

Both of them are excellent views of the fairgrounds and they certainly show some of the buildings and of course the famous horse racing events that were held there.

We thought it was worth printing both of them with this column today to give our readers another look at the fairgrounds from long ago, and also to get a couple slightly different angles.

The top photo is a reproduction of a postcard which was colored and is often found as part of Watertown postcard collections.

The bottom photo was not a colored one but it shows the races on the straight-away with the grandstand on the left, the judges booth on the right and other buildings in the background. This second postcard was sent to someone in North Dakota and the 1 cent stamp with Ben Franklin's likeness on it was postmarked here in Watertown back on June or July 29, 1909. That was back in the heyday of the fair.

The postcards are both in private collections in Watertown.

Now, we'll take a few minutes and go back to the Milford Street fair site and some comments from another reader of this column. He said he did some research years ago and learned that the Driving Park which was the site of the fairgrounds, was the wooded area which is now the north end of Grinwald Park, north of the soccer field.

He said the entrance was off of Milford Street and continued west through the wooded area and then exited on to what is now known as South Street.

He said that wooded area became known as the Methodist Campgrounds which was in use for many years. This fellow has a metal detector and he said he combed that area many times, finding coins as new as the 1920s and as old as the mid-1800s. He even mentioned the coins he found included “Seated Liberties, Barbers, Indian Heads and Wheat Pennies,” all of which make the eyes of coin collectors sparkle.

He said you can find spots where stones were gathered in circles which was where campers pitched their tents and started campfires, no doubt.

Also to be found out in that area are the remains of three buildings. He said one looks like it could have been a shelter for the campers in the event of stormy weather, inside bathrooms, etc. He surmised another building might have been a commissary. The third building, he said was a large church. In fact, this contributor said he helped tear down the church back in about 1950.

He said, “I remember there were huge 12 foot by 12 foot beams that were cut and reused as 2-by-4's, 2-by-12's and others pieces of lumber for a new house being built in the ‘settlement' on the west side of town. He said one of the beams was large enough it became the primary support beam in that house.

So, this information sheds a little more information on the Methodist Campgrounds which were out where the first fairgrounds were located.

We were amazed at how many people had information, photos, memories and the like of these two fairs from generations ago. We even had a couple people contact us who actually had attended the Inter-County fairs. It was a fun topic!

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