Aug 11, 2016 3 min read

The Washington County Fair, which begins this evening with judging in the halls and concludes Aug. 20, will, as always, draw large crowds to Arden. The event is a celebration of the county’s agricultural past, present and future. It’s a sure bet, however, that attendance will not surpass that of the 1916 fair.

In those days, the fair took place at the end of August, just before Labor Day. Nevertheless, it was front-page news in The Washington Observer exactly 100 years ago, on Aug. 11, 1916. It was announced on that day that DeLloyd “Dutch” Thompson, “king of aviators,” would return to his hometown to perform an exhibition over the fairgrounds in his flying machine.

The news was startling in that Thompson had been seriously injured in a crash on Long Island just three months earlier. The plane in which he was riding plummeted 600 feet to the ground, breaking his leg in two places and crushing his foot and ankle.

But the return of the celebrated son was hardly the only draw to the fair. The Observer reported on Tuesday, Aug. 29: “Yesterday at the fairgrounds all was bustle. Wagons laden with cattle and swine, farm machinery, merry-go-rounds en dishabille; automobiles filled with exhibitors and exhibits in the women’s departments; sleek thoroughbred horses; with pedestrians sandwiched in between or trudging alongside according to the condition of the road, formed a kaleidoscopic scene on the highways from Washington to Arden which was never without interest.

Inside the gates, the bustle was intensified. Men and women afoot hurried about in seeming confusion, but really part of a system which will have put every stray object in order by this morning.”

On Thursday of that week, attendance was estimated at 15,000, a third of them coming by automobile, 2,000 of which were parked in the infield of the race track. That crowd would be far surpassed the next day when Thompson flew his loops and performed his “death tumble.”

“Promise of rain early in the afternoon had not the slightest effect on keeping the crowds away from Arden,” the newspaper reported. “Every car that left town was packed from fender to fender. They came in automobiles and horse-drawn vehicles, too, and filled the fairgrounds more than it has ever been filled before. And those who could not find room inside the fence stayed outside, occupying every point of vantage, to the number of several thousands.”

Thompson used crutches and had to be assisted into the cockpit of his plane. He concluded his two shows by climbing to 2,000 feet, shutting off his engine, diving toward the earth, only to right the plane at the last second and land softly on the grass.

Thompson said he had performed for even larger crowds, but “I never experienced the same feelings that came over me this afternoon as I was in the air soaring about and knew that it was my own people to a large extent watching me.”

A century later, the crowds still pour into Arden (by automobile, mainly) to view the same sort of exhibits and experience the same sensation of community that has survived through all of these years. So much has changed in that last 100 years, and so much has stayed the same.