When beer was banned at the Illinois State Fair | Community & Lifestyle

Acting on complaints from church groups and parents, the administration of Gov. William G. Stratton prohibited the sale of beer at the 1953 Illinois State Fair. The ban on beer, as well as on any other alcoholic beverage, remained in effect for the next 21 years.

“People don’t want a state fair that smells like the back end of a tavern,” Stratton’s agriculture director, Stillman J. Stanard, said when the ban was proposed. Union representatives speaking on behalf of bartenders, hotel and restaurant workers and teamsters came out against the ban owing to the potential loss of revenue for their workers and for the state. Their protests, however, went nowhere.

The beer ban was initially enforced by a police unit assigned to the fairgrounds to keep an eye out for what were called “beerleggers.”

It’s unclear how well the public accepted the ban. Groundskeeping crews reported finding hundreds of empty beer cans during the fair that year, but an Illinois State Journal story said the ban was “accepted with good graces by visitors.”

“Elaborate schemes, developed around city bars, to circumvent the ban just haven’t come off, the police say. Nobody, it seems, is trying to smuggle beer into the fairgrounds.”

Early state fairs emphasized agriculture over entertainment – in fact, the fair had no carnival during the first decade it was held in Springfield. Similarly, research suggests no alcohol was sold at the state fair until the end of Prohibition in 1933. “For the thirsty, the fair for the first time will have 3.2 (percent alcohol) beer in bottles and on tap in numerous stands,” the Illinois State Register reported that August.

A new debate over beer sales at the fair arose in 1938. The hang-up involved an Illinois Liquor Control Commission decree that no liquor could “be sold or delivered” in any state building. The question was whether that ruling applied to state-owned land in general. After heated argument, however, beer was allowed at the 1938 fair, and that continued until Stratton’s decision in 1953.

Attempts to return beer to the fair peaked in 1960-61, when letters pro-and anti-beer were regular features of the Springfield newspapers’ op-ed pages. In July 1960, a letter writer who signed himself “The Colonel” called Stratton’s action hypocritical.

Beer tents have been a tradition at state fairs for generations, but Mr. Stratton apparently feels he is above respecting tradition and removed the beer tents – for what reason I’ll never understand.

It should be pointed out, however, that although Stratton felt beer should not be sold at the state fair, he apparently sees no objection in the near-naked girls in the “girlie” shows in Happy Hollow!

The arguments returned after Otto Kerner Jr. replaced Stratton as governor in 1961. The point man for beer was Paul Powell, the newly elected Secretary of State. Powell told reporters in January 1961 that allowing beer, along with making fair admission free in the evenings, would bring more people to the grounds and more revenue to the state.

“The beer tents would be a place where you could meet your friends,” he said. “There would be a juke box playing and you would have a little life. Now it’s like a morgue.”

Kerner’s agriculture director, Ralph Bradley, and fair director Franklin Rust both said they saw little harm if beer was allowed on a limited basis. Their statements prompted more pro and con newspaper letters.

“It has been pretty nice going to the fair for the last few years and not having to fall over beer bottles, not being run into by a drunk, and not getting on a cheap drunk by someone’s breath,” wrote Boyd Sathoff of Atterberry.

“There was quite a bit of singing and speech making” when beer was allowed, responded letter writer “H.J.H.”

“I’m afraid that those of us who used to sing and make speeches are still doing it with or without the beer tents,” he wrote. “The atmosphere at the grounds was much better.”

Most newspaper letters favored beer, but Kerner’s own correspondence reportedly leaned heavily against allowing alcohol sales at the fair. The governor left the decision up to the State Fair Advisory Board. However, the Board waited until the week before the 1961 fair to decide. By then, they said, it was too late to reintroduce beer.

It took another decade and three more governors (Samuel Shapiro, Richard Ogilvie and Dan Walker) for the idea to again get serious consideration.

In early 1974, Walker expressed support for the return of beer as part of a package of proposals designed to boost fair attendance.

In response, the Rev. Harvey B. Wright of Illinois Church Action on Alcohol Problems called for a boycott of the fair should beer sales return. Beer sales would be “detrimental to the basic purpose of the fair, of promoting agriculture and young people,” he said.

The Walker administration responded by noting that both the DuQuoin State Fair and the Sangamon County Fair had retained beer sales during the whole period the state fair prohibited them.

Walker officially announced the return of beer at the fair, along with the addition of bingo games and pari-mutuel betting on horse races, in May 1974.

Beer sales on the fairgrounds would be controlled, fair manager Paul King said. Vendors would be confined to a fenced-in area “and people won’t be allowed to walk around the grounds carrying beer,” he said.

In the end, two beer gardens were permitted at the 1974 fair. An estimated 701,370 visitors, paid and non-paid (admission was free after 3 p.m.), went to the fair that year.

Officials gradually added other beer venues, along with limited wine sales, at subsequent fairs.

Original content copyright Sangamon County Historical Society and republished via SangamonLink.org, the online encyclopedia of the Sangamon County Historical Society.