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It’s not that we’re counting, but if we were, you might be curious to know that the Street Fair is just 210 days away ... 5,040 hours that is!
If you didn’t catch our Page 1 story last week, you might be interested to know that fair officials are in the home stretch in terms of planning this September’s annual fair. This year is expected to be one of the best fairs, as 2010 will mark the 100th Street Fair.
In some ways, however, it’s a miracle we’re able to celebrate the 100th fair because state officials, and even some locals, have tried to stop it throughout the years.
Of course, to most of us born and bred in Bluffton, each Street Fair is special because it has become an institution that brings friends and families together from all parts of the country. And, of course, we can’t forget the delicious Street Fair delicacies that we begin to crave when fall rolls around.
The Street Fair began in 1898 as a one-day event upon the city’s newly paved downtown streets. The cost: $1,800 raised from Bluffton’s saloon keepers. There were a number of years since then in which there were no fairs but this year’s will mark the 100th fair to take place in downtown Bluffton. (Back in 1998, officials celebrated the 100th year of the organization.)
While most of us who are Bluffton natives love the fair and eagerly await its arrival each year, it also, throughout the years, has had several outspoken critics.
Back in 1952, a Fort Wayne newspaper wrote a 16-inch editorial in which it said the fair created “unnecessary inconvenience, delay, confusion, and in some instances, unwarranted mistreatment to the traveling public.” The paper went on to say, “There certainly can be no excuse, however, for a repetition of this incompetent and inefficient arrangement next September.”
Fast forward to September 1953, and the fair went on as normal in spite of the outsiders’ criticism.
That same year, however, the Indiana State Highway Commission passed a regulation to ban carnivals on town and city streets used for state highway routes. In Bluffton, state routes affected back then during fair week were Indiana Highways 1, 116, 124 and 316.
The following year, in 1954, then Indiana Gov. George Craig called then Bluffton Mayor H.H. Robbins on Sept. 17 — the Friday before the fair was to begin — with some news that would put Bluffton in the state spotlight.
Gov. Craig told city officials that the two-block long merchants display tent on West Market Street — which at the time was Indiana 124 — had to be removed or state police would move in and highway crews would bulldoze the roadway, per the 1953 ruling.
Fair officials wasted no time taking action to challenge the state, and at 2 a.m. Monday, Sept. 20, they woke then Wells Circuit Court Judge Homer J. Byrd. Judge Byrd issued a temporary restraining order against Gov. Craig, highway officials and state police.
Officials set the hearing for Saturday, Sept. 25, 1954, the day after the fair was to end.
State officials, however, were not about to give up. On Monday, Sept. 20, Gov. Craig called the state attorney general to file a writ of prohibition in the Indiana Supreme Court — an order issued by a higher court commanding a lower court to cease from moving forward in some matter not within its jurisdiction.
A transcript of the court action in Wells County was flown to Indianapolis the following day. The fair began as normal Tuesday, Sept. 21, in spite of the potential adverse court order, and attracted near capacity crowds.
On Wednesday, Sept. 22, the state attorney general’s office went to the Indiana Supreme Court to request that Wells County’s court order be put aside. In an informal ruling, however, the state’s court said should the case formally come before the group, the court would hold that the city had the right of control of its streets.
The hearing originally scheduled for the Saturday after the fair was rescheduled for a date to be determined at the convenience of the court and the parties involved.
The state, however, was still determined and tried once again in 1955 to stop the fair. This time, the state filed its own injunction in Wells Circuit Court. The suit was later moved to Fort Wayne, where the state lost another round in its battle to stop Bluffton from holding a fair in the middle of a highway.
The fair faced more obstacles in the 1960s when a group of Bluffton residents signed a petition that no Street Fair be held in the future on the city’s streets. The petition — signed by some 159 people — stated that a “carnival has no place on the streets and highways of a modern community.” The petition had been started in September 1961 prior to the 51st fair and signed by 56 business firms, 37 professions and 66 helpers in business firms, teachers, ministers and others.
The plea, however, was ignored. Fair officials had their own petitions with eight or ten times more names in favor of the fair — some 1,500 names.
Bluffton has been lucky throughout the years that our residents and fair officials had the courage and determination to maintain the Street Fair because our community does need the annual fall festival today as much as it did 50 years ago and as much as it will 50 years from today.
Wells County residents, farmers and business people saw the value of a fall festival to the Bluffton community in the late 1800s before we were alive, and the importance of that tradition continues today thanks to the Street Fair officers and several others who spend countless hours working to make the fair a reality.
These folks have been working for nearly five years just for this September’s 100th fair, and all signs indicate it’s going to be a doozy!
by JUSTN PEEPER
jdpeeper2@hotmail.com
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