Country Fair, c.1947
This painting was featured in a 1947 Maxwell House coffee advertisement. A recent addition to The Orton Collection, this highly detailed scene by Aldro Hibbard is the Bondville Fair. The Bondville Fair has been operating annually since 1797, making it the oldest country fair in Vermont. Hibbard lived not far from the fairgrounds in nearby Jamaica.
Bondville is a part of the town of Winhall. From the fair’s archives, we learn what it was like in the old days:
It moved to its present location in the 20s, when Floral Hall was built. The Dance/Crafts Hall was added in the 30s, and other facilities through the 1980s. The newest structures are the sugar house (1999) and the schoolhouse (2000).
Life was hard for families on the Vermont mountain farms pre-WWII, so you can imagine how people looked forward to the annual Bondville Fair. It brought in a Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, square dancing, games of chance, a horse pull, agricultural and handcraft exhibits.
In fact, the Bondville Fair was known state-wide as a pretty wild affair. During Prohibition homemade hard cider of a lethal potency was passed around freely.