Frank Gaskill created the Canton Carnival Company
Recognized as the first organized traveling carnival to play a state fair.
Frank W. Gaskill, a hotel keeper, organized the Canton Carnival Company in 1899. The show played its first date in Chillicothe, Ohio, and ended its 22-week season in Savannah, Georgia. It would be the first time an organized carnival company successfully completed a season on the road, showing a financial profit, and set the stage for every traveling carnival in America that exists today.
How successful was he? Well, Gaskill set out with his entire show contained in a single beat-up railroad baggage car when he left Chillicothe in the spring, and he came back on a special 24-car train when he arrived home in the fall of that same year.
Not a bad season.
- 1899 – 1901 Gaskill’s Canton Carnival Company
- 1900 – Canton Amusement Company
- 1901 – 1903 – Gaskill- Munday Carnival Company
- 1902 – Canton Carnival Company
- 1903 – Gaskill – Munday – Levitt Carnival Company
- 1904 – Great Gaskill Show
- 1904 – 1905 – Gaskill Carnival, Company (Mrs. Mary Gaskill and Harold Bushea, General Director after Gaskill’s Death)
