Pieces of original Knox County Fairgrounds lurk beneath Mount Vernon

MOUNT VERNON — Mount Vernon resident Linda Montgomery made an odd discovery in her backyard on Hamtramck Street 14 years ago.

When digging into the ground near her fence to plant flowers, she found her way blocked by bricks. What surprised her was that they were not a random pile of bricks but rather bricks carefully arranged in a decorative pattern on a flat plain.

Assuming the bricks were a surviving fragment of an old walkway or structure, Montgomery relocated her plant elsewhere. Years later, digging on the other side of her yard, she discovered the same thing: bricks arranged in a herringbone pattern framed by a border of single bricks. She realized that there was a chance that this buried walkway ran the entire width of her property, east to west.

Curious to see if it continued—and also determined to use some of the bricks for her
flowerbeds—Montgomery did a new dig this year in the middle of the yard and contacted me to show what she had discovered. I recently had a chance just before my talk at the library to stop by and see the excavation.

The hole in the ground that Linda dug is about two by three feet, enough to show the structure of the brick walkway, which she informed me is the same that she uncovered in other parts of her yard. Curious about what the structure could be, she did some research and discovered that her house sits just inside what was once the Knox County Fairgrounds.

The fair has been taking place at its current location for a good while, but that’s not where it started.

According to N. N. Hill’s history of the county, prominent local farmers had organized small agricultural fairs in the 1840s and 1850s, but they were held irregularly and had no permanent home. Any given fair might actually be separated into different locations because no single facility could handle all the exhibitions.

Such ad hoc host sites became a demonstrable problem in 1853 when an accident occurred.

A gray horse was tied to a fence rail on the farm where the fair was taking place. The horse was spooked by some commotion and reared up. The top fence rail to which it was tied had a deteriorated end, and when the horse pulled, the entire rail came loose, startling the horse further.

The horse took off running through the crowd, dragging the rail behind it. Since the horse had been tied to the middle of the rail instead of the end, the rail was perpendicular to the horse’s path, turning it into a virtual scythe that cut down a swath of people before the horse was calmed, giving one attendee, Knox County official Judge Hurd, a nearly-fatal head wound.

It was decided that it was time to create a proper fairground facility.

With the help of the county commissioners, the agricultural society was able to buy ten and three-quarter acres of land just southeast of Henry Curtis’ Round Hill mansion. After an initial fair in 1857, more land was added to it to meet the fair’s needs.

Described in terms of today’s streets, this 19-acre fairground started on Pleasant Street (across the street from the elementary school) and stretched south almost to Coshocton Avenue.

The fairground was enclosed by a board fence eight feet tall. Stalls and a floral hall had been set up, and a half-mile horse racing track ran for part of the length of the grounds, with a small pond at the south end of the structure. When Linda Montgomery talked to other people in the neighborhood about her brick sidewalk find, neighbors pointed out that local lore identified two large old sycamore trees near the intersection of Division and Hamtramck Streets as marking the main entrance to the fairgrounds.

A close examination of the 1871 map of the fairgrounds in the Caldwell & Starr Atlas of Knox County, however, throws some doubt on that. Modern Hamtramck Street extends farther than it did in the old days. The road ended at the western edge of the fairgrounds. If it had continued, it would have passed just south of the middle of the fairgrounds.

Montgomery’s buried sidewalk, north of her house, would have been entering the fairgrounds very close to the center of the east side. The two large trees—one of which was blown down over a decade ago by the stormy remnants of a hurricane—were clearly old enough to have predated the fairgrounds. But comparing the position of the surviving tree with the 1871 map suggests that the two grand trees were just about in the center of the fairgrounds.

What would they have marked? It seems odd that it would be the main entrance unless the brickwalkway was roped off to direct attendees to a central ticket location. Alternatively, they could have marked the entrance to the floral hall, a large structure that stood just northwest of the center of the grounds. It’s hard to say for sure, but since neighborhood folklore cites the sycamores as the main entrance, nothing clearly disproves that idea.

One of the two trees still stands impressively in a backyard near the intersection of Division and Hamtramck. One thing is clear from examining the location: The tree is indeed in the path of the brick walkway.

One wonders how much more of the brick sidewalk survives under this neighborhood. It was almost a foot below ground and could still be there in many of the yards unless removed by subsequent owners.

Montgomery said that her research on the house showed that the property was bought by Henry Curtis, who developed the fairgrounds property after the Knox County Agricultural Society declared bankruptcy in the 1880s. It was only in the 1890s that the fairs
found their permanent home, at Lake Hiawatha, where they still run today.

There’s a great 52-page history of the fairs, assembled by Jim Gibson, that is available at the Knox County Historical Society.

The brick walkway may well survive in significant pieces in the neighborhood. A section was probably torn out when Division Street was put in, but pieces of it may still be behind the house and around the base of the surviving sycamore.

Having no substantial historical significance (and being awkwardly located in the current properties), the bricks remain little more than a curiosity, a fascinating fragment of the early years of the county. The bricks are unmarked and were likely made on-site.

Linda Montgomery has appreciated them for practical use while still giving her a sense of connection to the past. She has a sense of humor about the discovery.

“Some people find buried treasure,” she said. “I find buried bricks!”