Where the Traveling Midway Became an American Story
The American midway was more than a collection of rides, shows, games, and concessions. It was a traveling community—built by showmen and showwomen who learned how to move an entire world from town to town, raise it, light it, entertain thousands of people, take it down, and do it all again.
Its story reaches back to the great Midway Plaisance of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the men and women who carried new forms of organized outdoor entertainment beyond the fairgrounds.
From the early street fairs came increasingly sophisticated traveling carnival companies. Wagons gave way to railroad shows. Electric light transformed the nighttime midway. Elaborate fronts, towers, banners, music and machinery created a spectacle that could arrive in an American town almost overnight.
But The American Midway Archives is not only preserving what was on the midway. We are preserving the people who made it possible.
Explore the American Midway
The Birth of the American Midway — Chicago’s Midway Plaisance and the beginnings of the organized traveling American midway.
The Street Fair Years — The rise of street fairs, civic celebrations, fraternal sponsorship, promoters, advance men and the early carnival business.
Expansion of the American Carnival — The period when carnival companies expanded their organizations, attractions, routes, transportation, staffing and business systems.
Growth of the Railroad Shows — The development of larger traveling organizations increasingly capable of moving people, equipment, rides, shows and entire midway operations by rail.
The Golden Age of the American Midway — The great railroad carnivals, spectacular fronts, lighting, equipment and increasingly elaborate traveling midways.
Television, Highways, & Change — How trucks, highways, television, changing communities and changing entertainment reshaped the American midway.
The Modern Midway — The continuing evolution of carnival companies, rides, transportation, technology, families and midway operations.
How the Midway Works — The working machinery behind the midway: advance work, transportation, loading and unloading, construction, teardown, housing, feeding, ticketing, publicity and the people who made it function.
The Heart of the American Midway — The people, families, relationships, traditions and human community behind the business.
Journey Through the American Midway — The visitor’s journey through the midway—from its arrival and construction to its lights, sounds, attractions, people and departure.
More Than the Shows and Rides . . .
The Heart of the American Midway
Meet the people, families and traditions behind the business.
Midway Community
Discover the fraternal organizations, showmen’s clubs, charitable work and community relationships that reveal something important about these people: service was behind so much of what they did.
Journey Through the American Midway
Follow the midway as an experience—from arrival and construction through the lights, sounds, attractions and people who made the grounds come alive.
Follow the People Who Built It
Every midway had people behind it. Owners and managers, agents and builders, performers and concessionaires, painters and electricians, railroad crews and ticket sellers, families and generations who spent their lives on the road.
Explore Biographies of the American Midway →
Explore Carnival Companies →
Explore the American Midway Research Library →