09/07/2026
In 1904, the Minnesota State Fair debuted a new entertainment district called "The Mighty Pike" featuring rides, carnival games, funhouses, sideshows and "freak shows," b**r vendors, vaudeville stages, and burlesque and mild st******se acts. "The Mighty Pike" was managed by the Chicago-based Gaskill Carnival Company, which ran similar amusement districts in fairs across the country.
The idea of placing these sorts of attractions all in one district originated with the World's Columbian Exposition (aka the Chicago World's Fair) in 1893. Organizers knew that such attractions were popular and that crowds expected them, but worried that rides, games, and various risqué stage acts would detract from the upscale and edifying tone that they wanted for the exposition. They decided to confine all such attractions to a single region, which they called the "Midway Plaisance," located between the two main campuses of the fair, the "Upper Plaisance" and "Lagoon Plaisance."
In 1904, another world's fair, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, was held in St. Louis, Missouri. The organizers of the St. Louis fair created a similar district to the Midway Plaisance, but called it "The Pike." Opening later the same summer, the Minnesota State Fair's "Mighty Pike" adopted this name.
However, thanks to the notoriety of the Chicago fair's Midway Plaisance, the term "Midway" had already come to be widely adopted to refer to carnival districts across the country. Though officially called, "The Mighty Pike," so many people at the Minnesota State Fair were calling it the "Midway" that the name was eventually changed to the "Mighty Midway," by which it is still known today.
"Midway" districts like this were popular but always at the outer edges of respectability, and there was much concern about vice and immorality. The Gaskill Carnival Company's contract vaguely stipulated that, “Tone will not be allowed to drop below the proper level.” Not willing to take the company's word for it, the organizers of the Minnesota State Fair hired a bunch of off-duty St. Paul police officers to form an undercover "Vice Squad," tasked with ferreting out illicit liquor sales, gambling, and other "lewd or immoral behavior contrary to public decency."
The Vice Squad reported zero legal or moral offenses were being committed, despite ample anecdotal evidence to the contrary. This first Vice Squad was then fired and replaced by agents from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The Pinkerton investigation revealed that every member of the previous Vice Squad had been bribed, and that there were at least 36 vendors illegally selling alcohol, or "hop tonic."
The biggest offender was the "Temperance Tent." This was a large tent divided into two spaces; in the first room fairgoers could hear lectures on the evils of alcohol and immorality; but if you had the secret password you could be admitted to the back room which was a covert saloon and gambling den.
After several years of offenses such as this, the Minnesota State Fair organizers fired the Gaskill Carnival Company and assumed management of the now-renamed "Mighty Midway" themselves. Despite numerous efforts to combat vice (some of them serious, some more halfhearted) the Mighty Midway would continue to have a fairly dubious reputation up through the 1970s. By the 1980s and 90s, a more vigorous effort to clean up the Midway's act had largely banished the sideshows, "freak shows," gambling, liquor sales, and st******se acts of the past. Today it is almost entirely rides, games, and funhouses.
You can learn more about the early history of the Minnesota State Fair on the latest episode of the 'Minnesota Unknown' podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. You can also see many more historic State Fair images using the following link:
https://www.minnesotaunknown.com/post/ep-18-minnesota-state-fair-the-first-50-years
