Dakota Datebook

Wells County Fair

June 22, 2022 — The first Wells County Fair was in August 1907. The Wells County Free Press boasted of the good times to be expected: “The fair will be a place to see what your neighbors are doing, to meet your friends, to enjoy the sights, to forget your troubles, to make life worth living.” Indeed, the fair had much to live up to if it was to make life worth living, but in a time when work and church governed the lives of the North Dakota homesteaders, the fair was a major social highlight.

The primary attraction at the fair was the horse races. In 1929, Betty Critchfield remembers the excitement of the races:

“There was plenty to watch at the races, the trotters walking around in their dusters, with eyeholes bound in red braid and the drivers of the sulkies looking over their two-wheeled carts and limbering up their horses. Just before the races, it always seemed like some bewildered old farmer would drive his wagon onto the track about the time the heat was to start. Everyone in the stands would start shouting and laughing at him.”

Then, the horses would be off, said Critchfield and the crowd would stand and yell for the horses. “One rider, Harold Jakle, had to climb up on his horse and grab the bit after one line of the reins broke,” said Critchfield. “That brought the whole crowd to its feet again, roaring and shouting.”

“Dakota Datebook” is a radio series from Prairie Public in partnership with the State Historical Society of North Dakota and with funding from Humanities North Dakota. See all the Dakota Datebooks at prairiepublic. org, subscribe to the “Dakota Datebook” podcast, or buy the Dakota Datebook book at shopprairiepublic.org.