A reptilian moment at the 1999 Orange County Fair. Photo: Gregory Mulherin
The Orange Country Fair
A suburb of New Haven, the Town of Orange has a
small size (17.6 square miles) and population (13,000) which have
allowed it to maintain the charm of an open-space rural community.
The town's first agricultural fair was held on September 15, 1898,
on the Town Green. Exhibits included displays of local fruit and
vegetables, fancy work, bed quilts, knitted and crocheted articles,
canned goods and jellies, livestock and poultry. There was a
weight-pulling contest for oxen, a Grand Parade, horse racing, a
balloon ascension and a parachute drop. After 1912, interest in the
Fair began to wane, and the fair died soon after. In 1975, the
nation's Bicentennial sparked an interest in reviving the event,
and the first revitalized fair took place on September 13-14, 1975.
The new fair was a great success, and has been ever since: the fair
celebrated its 25th anniversary in September 1999. Like the early
Orange fair, today's event is also primarily agricultural, and
features horse and oxen pulls, tractor pulls, pigeon racing,
milking, sheep shearing, craft demonstrations, and exhibits of
flowers, fruits, vegetables, baked goods and animals. Greased-pole
and pie-eating contests delight the children, as well as one of the
largest snake and reptile exhibits in the East. The Orange Fair has
been awarded first prize for its fair book four times by the
Connecticut Association of Fairs.
Included the project documentation is a five-page
report detailing the history of the Orange Country Fair; a 1999
fair book; 28 photographs relating to the fair; information on the
Orange Historical Society, and a videocassette of the 1999
Originally submitted by: Rosa L. DeLauro, Representative (3rd District).
The Local Legacies project provides a "snapshot" of American Culture as it was expressed in spring of 2000. Consequently, it is not being updated with new or revised information with the exception of "Related Website" links.