Wartburg Community Fair

by Emeline Bluestocking

Ah, the County Fair! Countless are the memories created through the years. Beauty pageants, animals, monster trucks, and fried food! But, did you know that there once was a Wartburg Community Fair?

The people of Wartburg, besides giving recognition to unusual accomplishments of their adult citizens, did a fine thing for their youth. The benefits cannot be measured by the fine variety of prizes offered; they are rather to be sensed in the growth of community pride, in the quickening of pride in school work well done, in a sense of individuality in work that commands a blue ribbon bestowed by the public.

I remember seeing there the work of elementary school classes - drawings and hand built models and figures depicting the pageant of American development, scenes representing its discovery, the life of its pioneers. I saw a relief map of the southern half of Morgan County as a part of the landscape between the wings of the school building. I saw specimens of the handwork of Morgan County’s future housewives. I saw exhibits of the skill of our future mechanics and artisans. I saw poems, historical sketches, biographies, all well done. All of these accomplishments are like a flow of water bubbling up from the well spring of natural ability, needing but the proper direction to turn it into the stream that turned the wheels of modern civilization.

Be sure to visit the Morgan County Fair before it’s over for another year.

‘Til next time,

Emeline Bluestocking