An official PHMP marker out front boasts these fair grounds as the oldest in the United States. Marker is located on historic Lincoln Highway. The sign is one of those official blue, metal, official Pennsylvania markers. The marker is to the left of the entrance to the Fair, on the easement. The sign reads:
Recognized at America's oldest agricultural fair, dating its origin from a charter issued by the Penns in 1765. Discontinued after 1815, the fair has been conducted annually since 1853 by the York County Agricultural society. The present ground has been used since 1888.
This Historical Marker is located at the Market Street entrance to the fair grounds on Pa. 462, West end of York, Pennsylvania.
From the Fair website:
The traditions of fairs in the New World began with the York Fair, America’s first fair, held in the historic old Town of York in 1765, eleven years before the nation was founded. A charter to hold that fair was granted to the people of York by Thomas Penn, son of William Penn in recognition of “the flourishing state to which the town hath arrived through their industry.” Those early gatherings were reported to have been “the liveliest days of the whole year.”
At that time, the York Fair existed as a two-day agricultural market on the town commons, now known as Penn Park. Records don’t tell us too much about the York Fair during the American Revolution or the War of 1812, but we know the troops passing through York camped in the commons, so they would have shared the grounds with the Fair.
In 1853 a group of prominent York County agricultural leaders formed the York County Agricultural Society for the purpose of making the fair a three-day event and finding it a new home. That society purchased seven acres and established a new fairground in 1856. The new location was on what was then the east side of the City of York near what is now Queen Street and King Street.
In 1861, within days of the firing on Fort Sumter, injured Union soldiers were placed in temporary hospitals set up in the old Penn Commons and in the new fairgrounds. In 1862 the Secretary of War made those hospitals permanent so by fair time that year, the halls and grounds were filled with wounded from Antietam and the fair was closed until 1865.
Following the Civil War, the York County Agricultural Society, in 1888, decided the fair had once again outgrown its grounds and these early fair leaders purchased land and moved the event to the 73-acre site that was eventually expanded to become the current York Fair/York Expo Center property.
The fair remained open after the outbreak of World War I, but was not held in 1918 due to an influenza outbreak that killed 166 people in York.
Citation noted below.