“Ask Steve” is a State Journal-Register series where you can ask questions about Springfield’s personalities, history, buildings or tall tales and reporter Steven Spearie will do his best to answer them. What are you curious about? Send your questions to sspearie@sj-r.com.
Question:Â How many sitting U.S. presidents have visited the Illinois State Fair in Springfield?
SPRINGFIELD, IL — President Dwight Eisenhower recalled an Abraham Lincoln story. President Ronald Reagan left with a home baked peach pie. President George H.W. Bush made a joke referencing a corndog.
In all, five sitting U.S. presidents have visited the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, according to the Illinois State Fair Museum and files from The State Journal-Register.
Besides Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush, Presidents Richard Nixon (1971) and Rutherford B. Hayes (1879) also visited the State Fair.
Future President Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in Springfield in 1854 and visited the State Fair when it was held in Centralia in 1858.
President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech at the fairgrounds’ Coliseum on Oct. 19, 1962, after the fair. Years later, it was revealed that two persons arrested that day in Springfield had pointed a rifle at Kennedy’s motorcade.
Other sitting vice presidents and presidential candidates have also visited the State Fair.
Eisenhower drew a purported crowd of 225,000 people to the fairgrounds. He labeled critics of the economic policies of his administration as “prophets of doom and gloom.”
Those critics, Eisenhower said, “remind me a little bit of the story of Lincoln’s crooked fence. You will remember that he said a farmer built a fence so crooked that every time a pig bored a hole through the fence, he found himself on the same side from which he started.”
A New York Times account of the speech reported that the original Lincoln story was told by Judge John M. Scott of Bloomington, Ill., who had practiced law with Lincoln in the old Eighth Judicial District. Lincoln was defending a client when he told the story in court and the jury ruled in the defendant’s favor.
Reagan, visiting Springfield Aug. 12, 1986, said there was “no better way to experience the true America than to visit a state fair.”
The SJ-R reported that members of the national press corps covering Reagan’s visit received a box of saltwater taffy, a box of fudge and “an undetermined number of corndogs.”
Reagan, who was born in and grew up in Dixon, Illinois, left with a peach pie baked by Mary Tarr of Springfield. It was chosen as “the representative state fair pie.”
Bush and his wife, Barbara, ate pork sandwiches at the Pork Avenue Cafe prior to his Aug. 23, 1992, address at The Coliseum.
There, Bush complained that Congress was blocking his programs, and he felt like “one of those corndogs at the fair, skewered by the Democratic opposition.”
Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; sspearie@sj-r.com; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Ask Steve: How many sitting US Presidents have attended the State Fair?
Reporting by Steven Spearie, Springfield State Journal-Register / State Journal-Register
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By Steven Spearie, Springfield State Journal-Register | USA TODAY Network
