Harrington Vintage Country Fair

On a Saturday in summer, Third Street in Harrington fills with old farm machinery. The Harrington Chamber of Commerce’s tractor showcase sets vintage tractors and classic farm equipment along the downtown blocks of this Lincoln County wheat town of around 425 people, and vintage vendors line the street beside them. Admission is free, and the 2025 fair ran from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The chamber’s pages place the fair on the second Saturday, or second weekend, of July. The 2021 and 2025 fairs were held in June, on June 26 and June 21.

Third Street on fair day

The program changes a little from year to year. Listings for the July 11, 2026 fair named food trucks, balloons, cotton candy, a beer garden with trivia, a rummage sale and a kids’ decorated wagon parade. The chamber’s own notice added pony rides, live music, an ice cream truck and pie sales. The 2025 edition had two local bands, face painting and games. The chamber’s event pages also list a cornhole competition, a farmer’s market and homemade pies. Away from Third Street, residents hold yard sales across town the same day, and the chamber puts the sales on a map so visitors can walk from one to the next.

Quilts in the Opera House

The quilt show hangs in the Harrington Opera House, which a history published on the Opera House Society’s site dates to 1904. The auditorium is on the second floor, up the original staircase or by an elevator that passed inspection in 2016. It has had air conditioning since August 1, 2012. Society volunteers run rummage sales out of the building as fundraisers, and those sales began with two estates donated to the society.

A hundred and one degrees

The chamber’s newsletter announced the Vintage Country Fair as a new community event in the spring of 2021. It set the fair for 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and promised vendors, farm equipment, music and street dancing. Before the day, Mayor Luck marked off a safety area between the vendors and traffic, laid out parking lines, and put up signs and safety tape. Temperatures stood in the 90s when the fair opened. By 3 p.m., when it closed, the heat had touched 101 degrees, Marjorie Womach reported in The Odessa Record.

The Homemakers set up in the shade of a repurposed grain bin and sold out in record time. John Morey made balloon creations. A painted portrait of a farmer and his wife, with holes cut for faces, served for photographs. The Tribune, from Davenport, cooked each order on a barbecue in its vendor tent. Several visitors remarked on how little vintage farm equipment was on display and said they would gladly have brought their own if they had been told.

At the Opera House the rummage sale opened a day early, on Friday, June 25. Carol and her helpers arranged household goods in the Rummage Room. Volunteer Sheryl Stedman laid out vintage pieces in The Art Room as the new Vintage Shoppe. Saturday was the Opera House Society’s first event since the Covid lockdowns began, and tours were given.

Paula Harrington of Studio 1, on Third Street, organized the quilt show. It included:

• a table cover of martini glasses
• a wall hanging of the months of the year
• a tic-tac-toe game of chicks, carrots and bunnies
• a study in gray, black and white
• a quilt of the stages of quilt-making, from “I Love to Quilt” in the first square to fabric, thread, a pincushion, a sewing machine and an iron in the others

A wildflower quilt, Dancing Wildflowers, took close inspection to tell its piecework from its final stitching.

Mary Overmyer greeted visitors in the lobby, directed them to the elevator and sold tickets for a quilt raffle. At the top of the staircase stood a dress form robed in patchwork. Linda Wagner at the piano and Karen Robertson on the dulcimer took turns playing, and the music carried out of the auditorium.

The county fair of 1899

When the Record announced the new fair, it printed an older one beside it. In September 1899, committees were organizing a county fair. Mrs. Horace Haynes of Harrington sat on the one for the Woman’s Exhibit and Decoration. The Record also quotes a June 10, 1899 issue of the Harrington Citizen, which reported a building 60 by 100 feet going up at the race course for the fair. The program was to include races, baseball, Edison’s Waragraph, and concerts by the Sprague and Davenport bands.

On October 13 the Citizen announced that the Lincoln County fair would open on the 19th and run four days. It promised horse races, foot races, bicycle races, a baby show, war pictures and concerts. “Let everybody turn out and help make this first county fair a big success,” the paper wrote. The weather turned, in the paper’s words, “extremely bad.” About 2,500 people came on the Saturday.