York Fair: Oldest Agricultural Fair in America

Every fall, York, Pennsylvania, holds an agricultural fair with a pedigree unlike any other in the country. Its origin traces to a charter issued by the Penn family in seventeen sixty-five, which the fair bills as the oldest agricultural fair in the United States.

The fair was discontinued after eighteen fifteen but revived in eighteen fifty-three under the York County Agricultural Society, which has run it continuously ever since. The current fairgrounds have been in use since eighteen eighty-eight. What began as a colonial marketplace for livestock and produce became a showcase for Pennsylvania German farming culture, and later an annual institution drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors. Most American state fairs trace their roots to the nineteenth century. York's goes back to before the Revolution, to a time when Pennsylvania was still a proprietary colony and farming was the entirety of the economy.