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Wisconsin State Fair’s 175-year history rooted in agriculture and farm families
A second-generation archivist for the Wisconsin State Fair says about 10,000 farm families have been part of its history over the past 175 years.
“I hope people continue that legacy.”
Tom Zimmerman’s father Jerry began curating for the fair in 1996.
“He wrote a book about the Wisconsin State Fair for its 150th anniversary in 2001, and this year I took that digital, and I put up a 175th trivia questions and challenges online.”
He says the Century Farms Program started recognizing family farms as part of the state’s centennial.
“In 1948 is when they actually instituted their century farm program where people who had a farm for 100 years came and celebrated and had breakfast,” he shares. “Later on, they added and made it to 150, but 10,000 properties have celebrated that.”
Zimmerman says agriculture’s impact on the fair lives on for visitors at the Tommy Thompson Youth Center building on the grounds, and additions to the collection are always welcome.
“We would also like to get things with stories attached to them,” he encourages. “If anybody does have that and they can give us a note and say, and by the way, here’s what it meant to us or here’s where it came from, we would love to identify those and put them together.”
Take the fair flash back quiz.
This is a wonderful article and a very interesting broadcast . I attended my first Wisconsin State Fair seventy-four years ago. I was four months old! I’m grateful to the people who are preserving the history of our state’s family run farms. They are the backbone of Wisconsin’s agricultural industry..