Steele County Free Fair
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Steele County Free Fair is an annual week-long summer county fair held in Owatonna, Minnesota, United States, the county seat of Steele County. It is the largest free county fair in Minnesota, displaying over 2,000 animals each year and hosting over 450 vendors who sell food, commercial goods and services, and arts and crafts.
History
The first fair in Steele County was held on October 17, 1860. Prizes were awarded for categories such as "best 6 yoke of working oxen", "best butter churn", and "best wagon made in county". Horse racing featured. There is no record of the fair having taken place between 1861 and 1871, possibly due to the American Civil War. In 1872 it was held in a pasture on Main Street, and until 1917 it was held at various locations in the community. It moved to its current location in 1918. By 1927 the fair became a "free fair" with no admission charged. In the 1930s the fair introduced auto racing and grandstand stage shows with chorus lines, as addition to its traditional attractions.
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This entry incorporates text from “Steele County Free Fair” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.