Date Posted: Thursday, October 1st, 2026

Crowd gathered in front of a packed grandstand at the Greater Delaware State Fair at Wawaset Park in Wilmington, September 1914.
A packed grandstand and crowd at the Greater Delaware State Fair in Wilmington’s Wawaset Park, September 7–11, 1914. Women in long dresses and men in straw hats fill the grounds beneath a sign promoting “Big Thursday” at the fair.
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Elevated view of the Delaware State Fair midway, showing crowds, colorful carnival rides, tents, and amusement attractions.
An aerial view of the Delaware State Fair by photographer Robert J. Bennett shows the crowded midway, with a carousel in the foreground and the fair’s familiar Ferris wheel rising near the skyline.
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In the Beginning

Deeply documented in Delaware Public Archives collections, the Delaware State Fair is credited with putting the City of Harrington on the map.

What has become the state’s biggest annual event—with a record 330,000 gate admissions during its 10-day run in 2026—began with humble roots in the 19th century.

In 1876, Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition—which celebrated America’s first 100 years—was tremendously popular, adding to the growing trend of holding local fairs in the region. Multiple events claimed the “state fair” name, with the most established being held in Wilmington’s Wawaset Park and Dover’s Fairview Park.

The Wilmington fair moved to Elsmere for more space in 1917, and a forerunner of The News Journal/Delawareonline reported two years later that the five-day fair opened on Labor Day and drew “the largest ever assembled” crowd at any event held in Delaware.

Meanwhile, talk of creating a downstate fair began among a handful of residents who gathered around the potbelly stove at the train station in Harrington, which was renamed from “Clark’s Corner” in 1859 for Samuel M. Harrington, an advocate of extending early railroad lines in New Castle County to his native Kent County.

Word spread, and the train station chatter of 1919 became public meetings, and the group incorporated in 1920 as the nonprofit “Kent and Sussex County Fair.” They held their first event that July.

The presence of the railroad town’s early connection, featured in the Archives’ new exhibit Tracks, Towns, & Transformation: How the Railroad Changed Delaware, powered fast growth in the fair’s attendance.

The Kent and Sussex County Fair in Harrington grew as other fairs waned. The one in Dover’s Fairview Park was short-lived, and the one in Elsmere, by then owning the name “Delaware State Fair,” went bankrupt in 1924. Decades passed before the Kent and Sussex County Fair bought the idle name in 1962, becoming the Delaware State Fair we know today.

Our fair’s popularity extends far beyond the boundaries of our relatively small state.

The fair earned a runner-up spot on USA Today’s “10 Best State Fairs” list in 2025 and 2026, and was inducted into the International Entertainment Buyers Association (IEBA) Hall of Fame in 2019.

Black-and-white postcard showing harness racers passing a trackside viewing stand as spectators watch from the infield and shaded grandstand.
A 1912 postcard captures harness racing at the State Fair, with horses and sulkies speeding past spectators gathered along the track and in a viewing tower. The image is preserved in the Delaware Public Archives’ George & Irene Caley Postcard Collection.
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Black-and-white postcard showing a man in a horse-drawn carriage on a curved path beside an open-sided pavilion at Fair View Park in Dover.
A 1920s postcard shows Fair View Park in Dover, where events known as the state fair were held for a time. A man drives a horse-drawn carriage along a curving path beside a pavilion.
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A Special Eye on the Fair

The late Robert “Bob” J. Bennett of Bridgeville was the Delaware State Fair’s first and only official photographer.

Fair leaders created the title to recognize the longtime role he already filled.

Bennett, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 76, developed his skills behind the camera during his military service as a young man. Stationed in Germany, he served as a photographer in the U.S. Army Signal Corps from 1951 to 1953.

When Bennett returned to Delaware, he became a professional photographer, but that was only part of his renewed, intense and diverse involvement in the community where he had lived his entire life.

During his early 20s, he joined the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Company and is credited with bringing ambulance service to the community in 1947. He served as the fire company president from 1956 to 1963, remained a life member, and was an active longtime member of the Delaware Fire Police.

Bennett also returned from the service to his earlier job working for the U.S. Postal Service. He started in 1945 in Bridgeville and, before retiring in 1984, also served as postmaster in Dover and Rehoboth.

He served as president of the Delaware Postmasters Association, vice president of the National Association of Postmasters of the United States, and led the Southern Delaware Postal Employees Federal Credit Union.

He served on the Bridgeville Town Commission in the 1950s and returned to serve as a member and president of the panel in the 1980s and 1990s. He was a member of Union United Methodist Church, a board member of the Bridgeville Historical Society, and had been a member of the Bridgeville Lions Club, Bridgeville Kiwanis Club, Rehoboth Art League, Seaford Golf and Country Club, American Legion Post 26, and the board of Nanticoke Health Services.

Despite such extensive community commitment and the time it required—along with his avid stamp and first-day cover collecting—his photography and membership in the Professional Photographers of America remained constant. His photographs were published throughout Delaware and around the world and have won many awards.

Oval portrait of an older Robert J. Bennett smiling while holding a camera.
Photographer Robert J. Bennett documented the Delaware State Fair for more than 50 years, creating the largest collection of fair photographs held by the Delaware Public Archives. This portrait of Bennett with his camera hangs in the Judges’ Chambers at the Harrington fairgrounds and was published in TREASURED TRADITION: Delaware State Fair Centennial, 100 Years of Family Fun in 2019.

Wide-Ranging Fair Photos

As an enthusiastic and long-term fan of the Delaware State Fair, Bennett photographed pretty much everything there.

“He captured many unique, behind-the-scenes images of construction crews, employees, vendors, and livestock, as well as classic fair time shots of folks of all ages enjoying the annual event – from popcorn to the Pretty Animal Contest,” according to TREASURED TRADITION: Delaware State Fair Centennial, 100 Years of Family Fun. More than 100 of Bennett’s photos appear in that limited-edition book, published by the fair in 2019 in collaboration with the Delaware Public Archives.

The Archives also hosted a nostalgia-rich exhibit celebrating the centennial, with the fair lending a carousel horse, its original telephone switchboard, early fair posters, and other historic items. The event also launched the Archives’ ongoing project to digitize films from its vaults. The exhibit features the first newly digitized film of a livestock show held at the fair decades earlier, now one of many videos of the fair and other subjects available on the Archives’ YouTube channel.

The centennial book, given as an anniversary memento to fair directors, made its public debut at the exhibit, where then-Delaware State Fair General Manager William J. DiMondi presented copies for the Archives to preserve and share in its Delawareana Collection.

Both the book and exhibit honored Bennett, who was the fair’s official photographer until the day he died in 2006.

Before the 2006 Delaware State Fair opened, the Delaware State Fair Board of Directors honored him by creating the permanent Bob Bennett Photo Gallery in the Judge’s Chambers. Among the photos is one that shows a smiling, mustachioed older man holding his camera and a plaque that says, in part, “it was not unusual to see Bob, with his trusty camera strapped around his neck, traversing the grounds in pursuit of that perfect shot to memorialize an event or scene during Fair Week.”

Photos of the state fair are preserved in a variety of Archives’ collections. They range from antics captured on the fair’s annual Governor’s Day in collections documenting individual governors’ administrations, to photos by staff members of the Delaware Economic Development Office, to in-the-moment scenes captured by our state’s talented, hardworking daily photojournalists and preserved in the Archives’ Newspapers Collections.

Black-and-white photograph of a uniformed game warden holding a spotted fawn while a kneeling boy pets its back and a young girl smiles nearby.
Game Warden Dawson Sapp introduces two young fairgoers to a fawn at the 1957 Delaware State Fair. The photograph is part of the Delaware Economic Development Office Photograph Collection at the Delaware Public Archives.
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Preserving Bennett’s Collection

The Archives’ largest collection of fair photos is the Robert J. Bennett Photograph Collection.

With more than 22,000 images, it is also the Archives’ largest private photo collection.

Bennett took many thousands of his images at the Harrington Fairgrounds, but that was far from his only photo subject.

He also took family photos, many around Bridgeville and still more on drive-abouts, including farms where he photographed farm families and employees working the agricultural cycle from tilling and planting to harvesting their various crops.

On one of his drive-abouts, Bennett also photographed local fire hall signs, produce stand displays, and American flags flown in grief and unity after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Five years after he passed away, Eleanor Bennett – his wife of more than 50 years, mother of their two children, and a Delaware State Fair volunteer herself – donated her husband’s photos and slides to share his work with the present and future residents of Delaware through the Archives.

Archives leaders praised her generosity and said the important collection touches a common chord of memories among generations of Delawareans and helps tell the evolving story of life here in The First State.

We hope you will enjoy the selection we share here of Bennett’s photos taken “At the Fair” and “Elsewhere in Delaware.”

At the Fair

  • Black-and-white photograph of a helmeted race car driver seated in an open-top car marked “Mercury Special,” with a crowded grandstand behind him.
    Race Car
  • Color photograph of an ice cream vendor in a white shirt and paper hat holding three decorated ice cream cones across a concession counter.
    State Fair Ice Cream Concession Stand
  • Black-and-white photograph of a young boy in a plaid shirt taking a bite of food while holding a paper plate with a cupcake and other food.
    Boy Eating Fair Food
  • Color photograph of a smiling blond toddler in a pink dress reaching toward two goats lying together on straw-covered ground.
    Goats at the Fair
  • Color photograph of fairgoers gathered around a red Tastykake concession booth with large blue-and-white logos and a sign reading “Free Pies!”
    Tastykake Booth at the Fair
  • Black-and-white photograph of a tractor pulling a “Cooking Queens 1953” parade float carrying two crowned women past a crowded fair grandstand.
    Cooking Queens Fair Parade Float

Elsewhere in Delaware

  • Color photograph of a young girl holding a blue balloon inside a black horse-drawn buggy while a woman in a blue dress and white bonnet stands beside it.
    Amish Festival
  • Color photograph of two firefighters directing a hose toward a wooden barn engulfed in flames.
    Barn Fire
  • Color photograph of a deteriorating two-story wooden farmhouse with missing windows and siding, seen through leafless trees behind a wooden fence.
    Abandoned Farmhouse
  • Color close-up of red apples moving along a roller conveyor while workers sort them from both sides.
    Apple Packing
  • Color photograph of several parked motorcycles decorated with American flags, with one large flag filling much of the foreground.
    American Flags After 9/11