When the Midway Came to Town
The great amusement districts of the nineteenth-century expositions demonstrated what could happen when entertainment, spectacle, commerce, food, technology, and performance were gathered together in one place.
But an exposition midway was fixed to a particular location.
The developing American carnival faced a different problem:
How could that experience be taken to the public?
One important answer emerged in the streets of American towns and cities.
Street fairs, merchants’ carnivals, agricultural fairs, civic celebrations, and events sponsored by local organizations created opportunities for amusement attractions to gather before large audiences. Instead of requiring the public to travel to a great exposition, entertainment could come directly into the community.
For the developing American midway, the street fair became an important proving ground.
Here, showmen learned how to contract for dates, promote an engagement, assemble attractions, work with local committees, construct temporary show fronts, organize employees, feed and house people, attract crowds—and then do it all again somewhere else.
The midway was becoming mobile.
From the Exposition to the Street
The World’s Columbian Exposition closed in 1893, but the idea of the midway did not remain in Chicago.
People, attractions and entertainment forms moved elsewhere. Midway-style entertainment appeared at subsequent expositions and in other amusement settings. Entrepreneurs experimented with collective traveling amusement enterprises.
At the same time, American communities were creating entertainment events of their own.
The street fair provided particularly fertile ground.
A town could transform familiar streets into a temporary entertainment district. Local merchants benefited from increased traffic. Civic and fraternal organizations could sponsor events or use them for fundraising. Committees could arrange attractions, decorations, parades, music and free entertainment.
Showmen found an audience.
The community supplied a place.
Together they created a temporary midway.
[Previous: Birth of the American Midway →]
What Was a Street Fair?
There was no single formula.
A street fair might occupy several blocks of a downtown business district. Another might be associated with an agricultural fair, local celebration or special civic event.
The entertainment could include animal exhibitions, theatrical shows, dancing, music, novelty performances, illusion shows, mechanical attractions, concessions, free acts and parades.
Some events were organized largely by local committees.
Others increasingly relied upon professional amusement operators who could provide multiple attractions and the people necessary to operate them.
This distinction matters.
The history of the traveling carnival was not simply a matter of putting several shows together.
The difficult part was creating an organization capable of repeating the operation from one engagement to another.
The Town Became Part of the Show
Early street-fair operations could depend heavily upon the community they were visiting.
Local committees arranged space.
Local newspapers promoted the event.
Businesses decorated their storefronts.
Local organizations sponsored festivities.
Bands could be supplied locally.
Materials could be purchased or borrowed in town.
Structures might be built specifically for an engagement rather than transported intact from the previous one.
That relationship between the traveling showman and the local community is an essential part of early carnival history.
The carnival had not yet become entirely self-contained.
It needed the town.
Building the Midway on Location
The experience of Frank W. Gaskill’s early organization provides an unusually useful window into this period.
A later account of Gaskill’s first show recalled that show fronts were made from flats fastened to frames that had been constructed in advance of the engagement. Stages and ballyhoo stands were also supplied locally.
That is a very different operation from the enormous railroad carnivals that would later arrive carrying elaborate show fronts, wagons, rides and other equipment of their own.
The early system required preparation before the performers and attractions arrived.
Someone had to know what was needed.
Someone had to arrange materials and labor.
Someone had to make sure construction was underway.
This helps explain the growing importance of the advance department.
[Explore: Early Show Construction →]
The Men Who Went Ahead
Before the midway could open, someone had to prepare the town.
Contracting agents negotiated engagements.
Advance men traveled ahead of the show.
Promoters worked with local organizations and businesses.
Advertising had to appear before opening day.
Posters and bills had to be distributed.
Newspapers needed information.
Arrangements had to be made for the lot or streets, construction, supplies and sometimes accommodations.
The show itself might be the most visible part of the business, but much of the work began days or weeks before the public saw anything.
These jobs became increasingly specialized as carnival organizations grew.
The development of the midway was therefore also the development of an organization behind the midway.
[Explore: Advance Men, Contracting Agents & Promoters →]
Selling the Street Fair
A carnival could not simply arrive and hope that people appeared.
The public had to know it was coming.
Newspaper advertising became an important part of promotion. Posters, handbills and other printed material spread the word. Billposters covered available advertising spaces. Local merchants and organizations could help promote the event.
Parades and free acts could turn promotion into entertainment.
A spectacle moving through town did more than entertain the people watching it.
It told them:
The show is here.
This relationship among promotion, advertising and entertainment would remain one of the enduring characteristics of the American carnival.
[Explore: Early Advertising, Billposting & Promotion →]
The Billboard and the Amusement Business
The growth of professional amusement also created a need for professional communication.
Trade publications such as The Billboard became important sources of information for people working in outdoor entertainment.
Routes, personnel changes, business news, advertising, fair dates, attractions and industry developments could circulate among people who spent much of their lives traveling.
For the American Midway Archives, these publications now provide something else:
a contemporary record of an industry learning how to organize itself.
They allow us to follow showmen from town to town, identify partnerships, reconstruct companies, compare routes and sometimes recover people whose careers would otherwise have disappeared from the historical record.
[Explore: Carnival Trade Publications Collection →]
The Local Organizations Behind the Fair
The relationship between carnival people and community organizations became particularly important during the street-fair period.
Elks lodges and other fraternal, civic and community organizations could sponsor or support fairs and celebrations.
These relationships served practical purposes.
A local organization knew the community. Its members had business and civic connections. They could help secure cooperation, promote attendance and provide local legitimacy for an outside amusement enterprise.
The visiting amusement organization, in turn, could provide entertainment that a local committee could not easily assemble on its own.
These arrangements also reveal something that can disappear when carnival history is told only through rides and show fronts:
The midway was built through relationships.
Business relationships.
Community relationships.
Professional relationships.
And often friendships that continued from one season to another.
[Explore: Showmen, Community & Organizations →]
Frank Gaskill and the Street-Fair Transition
Frank W. Gaskill is particularly important to this part of the American Midway Archives because his career allows us to see several pieces of the developing industry in one person.
Before becoming identified with organized carnival companies, Gaskill had experience in business, theater and hotel management and advertising-related work.
He understood commerce.
He understood entertainment.
He understood promotion.
And he understood the importance of community relationships.
His early carnival activity also shows an organization still dependent upon advance construction and local resources.
The attraction list associated with his early operation included animal exhibitions, theaters, dancing, novelty acts and free entertainment—the kind of varied amusement program that could transform a town into a temporary midway.
As the organization developed, however, the business changed.
Equipment became increasingly portable.
Responsibilities became more specialized.
Advance work became more systematic.
The organization could carry more of what it needed.
Eventually, the difference between an amusement company appearing at a street fair and a self-contained traveling carnival became increasingly visible.
Gaskill’s history helps us watch that transformation happen.
[Read: Frank W. Gaskill →]
[Explore: Frank Gaskill’s Carnival Companies →]
The Midway Needed an Organization
As companies grew, the old model of one person handling nearly everything became impractical.
The traveling midway required different kinds of expertise.
Managers directed the organization.
Contracting agents secured engagements.
Advance representatives prepared upcoming towns.
Press agents promoted the show.
Treasurers handled money.
Construction crews built and dismantled equipment.
Ticket sellers handled admissions.
Talkers attracted customers.
Performers presented the attractions.
Cooks fed people.
Laborers kept the operation moving.
Behind every brightly illuminated midway was an increasingly complicated business organization.
This organizational development is as important to carnival history as the invention of any individual ride.
Without it, the midway could not reliably travel.
Housing and Feeding a Traveling Community
Moving an amusement organization meant moving people.
They had to eat.
They needed somewhere to sleep.
They became ill.
Clothing needed washing.
Equipment needed repair.
Animals, where present, required care and food.
Employees had to be paid.
People joined and left the organization.
All of this happened while the show continued moving.
In an era before modern highways, widespread automobile ownership, chain hotels, convenient refrigeration and the communications systems we take for granted today, these problems were substantial.
The carnival increasingly developed ways of providing for itself.
Cookhouses and other systems for feeding the show became part of carnival life.
Living arrangements traveled with or followed the organization.
The people working together formed something larger than a collection of employees.
They created a community within a community.
That community would become one of the enduring characteristics of life on the American midway.
[Journey: Behind the Midway →]
The Community Outside the Midway
The carnival community and the town community did not always understand one another.
Carnival people could be welcomed enthusiastically in one place and regarded suspiciously in another.
Showmen depended upon relationships with fair boards, merchants, newspapers, local officials, fraternal organizations and civic leaders.
Reputation mattered.
So did the conduct of the show.
A successful engagement could lead to another contract.
A disastrous engagement could close a territory.
This helps explain why advertisements and trade notices increasingly emphasized business principles, organization and reliability.
Carnival operators were not merely selling amusement to the public.
They were also selling their organizations to the communities that might hire them.
America Was Changing Too
The midway did not develop independently from the country around it.
American cities and towns were changing.
Transportation networks expanded.
Electricity became increasingly available.
Water and sanitation systems improved.
Communication became faster.
Manufacturing made equipment more readily available.
Public expectations changed.
So did entertainment.
The strict social conventions associated with the Victorian nineteenth century were being challenged by a population increasingly accustomed to commercial entertainment, public spectacle and new technology.
As American infrastructure expanded, more became possible for the traveling amusement business.
But change was uneven.
A carnival could encounter modern infrastructure in one city and primitive conditions at the next engagement.
The industry had to function in both.
The Problem of Transportation
Transportation remained one of the great limitations.
Horse-drawn wagons could move equipment, but distance, road conditions, mud, weather, bridges and breakdowns limited what could reasonably be carried.
More equipment meant a larger show.
But more equipment also meant a larger transportation problem.
Railroads offered another possibility.
If people, wagons, animals, show fronts and eventually rides could be moved efficiently by rail, the midway could become larger and travel farther.
That transformation would not occur everywhere at once.
Some organizations remained dependent upon wagons.
Others began using combinations of transportation.
Still others increasingly organized their operations around the railroad.
The solution to one problem would transform the industry again.
[Continue: Expansion of the American Carnival →]
[Later: Growth of the Railroad Shows →]
From the Street Fair to the Traveling Carnival
There was no single day when the street fair ended and the traveling carnival began.
The two overlapped.
Carnival companies continued playing street fairs.
Street fairs continued long after organized traveling carnivals existed.
Agricultural fairs and civic celebrations remained important carnival engagements.
What changed was the ability of amusement organizations to arrive with more of their own infrastructure.
Instead of rebuilding much of the midway in every town, equipment could increasingly travel with the show.
Instead of relying upon an informal collection of attractions assembled for one engagement, organizations could maintain relationships across a season.
Instead of starting over each time, the midway could move.
That development leads directly into the next part of the story:
Expansion of the American Carnival
The experiments of the early midway and the lessons of the street-fair years were becoming an industry.
Companies grew.
Departments developed.
Equipment became more portable.
Routes became longer.
Partnerships changed.
Organizations incorporated.
Multiple units became possible.
And increasingly, the midway was no longer something a town assembled.
It was something a carnival brought with it.
[Continue to Expansion of the American Carnival →]
Explore This Era
Rise of the American Street Fair
How local commercial and civic celebrations became important venues for organized amusement.
Agricultural Fairs, Celebrations & Civic Events
The established gatherings that provided audiences and engagements for traveling attractions.
Elks and the Street Fair
The relationship between local Elks organizations, community events and outdoor amusement.
Fraternal & Civic Sponsorship
How organizations helped bring entertainment into American communities.
Advance Men, Contracting Agents & Promoters
The people who made an engagement possible before the show arrived.
Advertising the Street Fair
Newspapers, posters, billposting, publicity and the creation of anticipation.
Parades & Free Acts
Entertainment that simultaneously attracted crowds and advertised the midway.
Building Attractions on Location
The construction methods used before traveling shows became increasingly self-contained.
Feeding & Housing the Show
The logistical problem of caring for a moving population.
Early Carnival Routes
Following the developing amusement business from engagement to engagement.
From Local Construction to Portable Equipment
One of the crucial technological and operational transitions in carnival history.
The Ohio Showmen Connection
Alliance, Canton and the network of showmen associated with the development of organized outdoor amusement.
Research Notes & Open Questions
The street-fair period does not have a clean beginning or ending. Local street fairs, agricultural fairs, civic celebrations and organized traveling carnival companies overlapped for many years.
For that reason, the American Midway Archives does not assign a rigid date range to this era.
Research continues into:
- early uses of the terms street fair, carnival, midway and related amusement terminology;
- the relationship between local committees and traveling amusement operators;
- the role of Elks and other fraternal and civic organizations;
- early contracting and advance departments;
- construction methods used when show fronts and stages were built locally;
- early carnival routes and transportation;
- relationships among Frank Gaskill, Harold A. Bushea, Percy J. Munday, George F. Dorman and other early showmen;
- the development of portable equipment;
- and the point at which particular organizations became sufficiently self-contained to be described as traveling carnival companies.
Publication does not close these questions. New evidence will be incorporated as it becomes available.
Sources & Resources
- The Billboard. Contemporary amusement-industry reporting, advertisements, routes, personnel notices and later retrospective accounts concerning early street fairs and carnival development.
- New York Clipper. Contemporary theatrical, circus and outdoor-amusement reporting used to reconstruct early companies, personnel, routes and attractions.
- Mrs. Mary Gaskill, The Billboard, March 21, 1925. Retrospective account of Frank W. Gaskill and the early Gaskill organization; used as a later firsthand/family-associated account and identified as such.
- George F. Dorman, The Billboard, March 21, 1925. Retrospective account of early carnival development and Gaskill-associated operations; used with contemporary corroboration where available.
- Harold A. Bushea, The Billboard, March 1925. Bushea’s own retrospective account of early carnival history and his participation in the developing industry.
- William H. McKennon, A Pictorial History of the American Carnival. Later historical account and compilation used with attribution and checked against contemporary documentation wherever possible.
- Contemporary local newspapers. Used to establish street-fair dates, advertisements, sponsors, attractions, local committees, business relationships and public response.
- City directories, corporate records, court records and genealogical sources. Used by the American Midway Archives to establish identities, occupations, partnerships and business histories.
- American Midway Archives research files. Continuing research into early showmen, carnival companies, transportation, advertising, community organizations and the development of portable amusement.
