Finger Lakes history · regional story
Developing historyA hotel meeting and a racecourse in Hemlock’s fair history
The local historical society tells the fair’s beginnings through a hotel gathering, a two-day event and years of horse racing.
Research status
This history is still developing.
Parts of this account remain unresolved. Here is what the sources support, what is uncertain, and what we are looking for next.
About this review. Written and source-checked with AI assistance under an owner-authorized editorial process. This is not a personal review by Riley or an independent historian. Sources and unresolved questions are listed below; corrections are welcome.
- What the records establish
- The published local history records several stages and names. A discussion about holding a fair and a dated two-day event need not refer to the same milestone.
- What remains uncertain
- The 1866 meeting remains an attributed local account. We have not inspected organizing minutes or an 1877 program, and this article does not assign a single, definitive founding date or assume that the event ran every year.
- What we are researching next
- Find contemporary advertisements, fair programs and organizing records for the 1860s–1870s. Compare the organization’s founding, the first event and the establishment of its grounds as separate questions.
The Livonia Area Preservation and Historical Society begins its fair account outside a hotel. It retells a story of people gathering in front of Hemlock’s Metropolitan Hotel in 1866 to discuss holding a fair. The wording matters: the society presents this as a remembered beginning, rather than citing minutes of that meeting. Hemlock: Town History.
The account becomes more specific in 1877, when it describes a two-day fair. It then follows the event toward horse racing, which became a large part of the fair into the early 1900s. Slab City Fair, Little World’s Fair and Hemlock Fair all appear in the society’s account. Hemlock: Town History.
Sources
- Hemlock: Town History — Livonia Area Preservation and Historical Society; Not stated. Locator: Town History / Hemlock: paragraph beginning In 1866 through the early-1900s horse-racing account. Accessed October 22, 2026.