U.S. entry into WWI caused cancellation of 1917 Colorado State Fair

By Mike Spence
via the Pueblo Chieftain web site

As years go, 1917 provided the Colorado State Fair with a series of landmark events -- and one huge disappointment.

After bouncing around Colorado in various forms and locations since 1886, the Fair appeared headed toward a new and elevated status in 1917.

The admission line for Colorado State Fair in 1917 never formed, as the Fair was cancelled due to the fairgrounds being used as a place to billet and prepare troops for battle by the Army.State Sens. W.O. Peterson and Frank H. Means, along with a number of others, convinced the Colorado State Legislature to create a State Fair Commission.

The legislature went beyond that, though, granting the Fair a tax levy of .01 mills.

Those moves were significant. The unofficial Colorado State Fair had been operating annually in Pueblo since 1901. Now, it was officially Colorado's state fair.

Pueblo civic leaders, no doubt buoyed by the state's actions, deeded an 80-acre tract of land to the state to secure a permanent home for the Fair.

As bright as the Fair's future looked at that point, a cloud -- World War I -- had been hovering on the horizon for nearly three years. In 1917, that cloud finally burst.

One of the war's multitude of casualties was the 1917 Colorado State Fair, which was canceled.

A world at war

The eventual demise of the 1917 fair started far from Pueblo.

World War I had begun in the summer of 1914, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia over the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (the heir to the Hapsburg throne) and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo, Serbia.

Read the entire article on the Pueblo Chieftain web site here.

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