September: Snohomish County Fair, 1876

The first fair was held in E. C. Ferguson’s Blue Eagle Saloon in 1874. It’s pictured left of center in the photograph above, circa 1885. The Ferguson Cottage is further to the left, the Jackson Wharf, center, and the Sinclair store to the right.

The Northern Star, September 23, 1876

On September 16, 1876, in his new newspaper The Northern Star, underemployed frontier lawyer Eldridge Morse (1847-1914) publicizes the first agricultural fair of Snohomish County, which was held two years earlier in the county seat, a small settlement also named Snohomish. Morse has brought a used printing press from Olympia to Snohomish and taught himself to set type. Drawing on his experience as a farmer, coupled with an imaginative sense of the county’s agricultural potential and the inspirational drive of a community activist, Morse plants the roots responsible for what will become the Evergreen State Fair, held every August for 12 days in the Snohomish County city of Monroe.

Continued at Historylink.org

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