VERMONT AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



operation for a number of years. The city of Waterville is the 

 center of a rich agricultural and stock growing region, and her 

 people proposed to do business on their own hook, entirely in- 

 dependent of the larger exhibitions, but to outshine them in 

 quality, even if the larger and older exhibitions exceeded them in 

 quantity. As some one expressed it, it was to be a dainty little 

 affair in a lace handkerchief. 



Well, in the fall of 1903 a small but earnest party of kindred 

 spirits met to talk the matter over. All were of one mind and the 

 more ardent ones could hardly wait for the spring to open, that 

 operations might commence. When a name was suggested for 

 the new baby, "Central Maine Fair Association" was the ex- 

 clamation of all, and so it went. 



A new trolley line had just been constructed, connecting 

 Waterville with the thriving village of Oakland, and midway be- 

 /tween the two a half mile race track and athletic grounds had been 

 constructed. The railway project was in the hands of enter- 

 prising, wide awake business men, who were not slow to see an 

 opportunity to boom the traffic on their road. No sooner was the 

 Central Maine Fair organized than a lease was taken of the race 

 track grounds, and the lease included the erection of generous 

 sized buildings, ample in number to house a great fair, should the 

 humble beginning ever grow to that magnitude. 



Well, at the first meeting of the directors of the new organ- 

 ization, the question of the limits of the territory of the fair 

 aroused a very heated and long continued discussion, which re- 

 sulted in making our tiny unique little fair, as proposed, a great 

 State affair, covering and calling for exhibits from the sixteen 

 counties of the State, and the new born infant instantly became of 

 necessity a rival to its older brothers, 50 miles distant, east and 

 west. We were facing a condition and not a theory, but the ex- 

 pansion had a wonderful effect upon all concerned. They said 

 they did not want a baby fair, but a full grown exhibition, and 

 went to work with heart and hand to make it. 



Substantial buildings, with all modern improvements sprang 

 up as by magic, and the baby began to grow. Early in the 

 enterprise it was announced as one of the cardinal principles of 

 the undertaking that the Central Maine was to be a clean, aggres- 

 sive exhibition, from the start to the finish. The promoters 

 were told that the people who patronized fairs had determined 

 the kind of a fair they wanted, and any decided innovation 

 would not meet with public favor — in other words they were 

 told that the public did not want an agricultural exhibition too 

 clean and quiet, that a little disorder and noise were necessary 

 to make it appetizing and attractive to the masses, meaning 



