The Carver County Fair has a long and rich history, dating back to 1868. On July 20, the Carver County Agricultural Society formed in Chaska. Later that year, on October 10, this group held the first Carver County fair in Chaska, to display their crops and animals. An elected Board of Directors planned the fair. Despite later battles over location, the fair has been held almost every year since.
In 1868, after the first fair was held, the fair Board of Directors decided to move the fair to Carver, where it stayed until 1882. While in Carver, the first two-day event was held in 1871. The fair returned to Chaska from 1883-1886. Finally, wanting to become the fair's permanent home, the City of Carver offered the fair board a hall, sheds, a half-mile race track and one hundred dollars each year for five years if they chose Carver as the fair site. Board members at the April 4, 1887 meeting agreed. Between 1887 and the late 1930s, this now three-day event called the City of Carver home.
In 1911, the City of Waconia decided to start their own fair. They wanted to use the name "Carver County Agricultural Society", but that name already belonged to the Carver organization. Instead, they became the "Farmer's Cooperative Agricultural Society." Originally held on the southwest shore of Lake Waconia, additional land was added to the original Waconia fairgrounds in 1914. The fair moved to its current home when the fair board bought land about three blocks south. This property was purchased in 1938 and 1973, and buildings from the original grounds were moved to the new site. The first fair held on the new site was in 1939.
Waconia's new fair started an almost thirty year battle over which was the true and best "county fair." In 1911, the Waconia fair group applied to the state to get their share of the subsidy money provided to all county fairs. They were denied by the State because they were not incorporated. The fair board suffered a nearly three-hundred-dollar loss that year. They incorporated as the Waconia Fair Association in May 1914. Following this, the State divided the subsidy funds between the two cities.
With both cities now recognized as the "Carver County Fair", competition grew strong. Each tried to outdo the other by advertising the biggest and best fair. One ad from the early days of competition was in a September 13, 1912 Norwood Times. It has Carver announcing to county residents that they ought to know that Carver is the "original" fair.
Competition continued until the late 1930s, when Carver tired of the battle and gave in. The Carver fair generously gave the Waconia fair two buildings, Ozzie's and the Lion's cheese curd stand, which are still in use in the twenty-first century. The only building still standing from the 1911 Waconia fair site is the French fry stand. On April 18, 1953, the Waconia fair's "Farmer's Cooperative Agricultural Society" incorporated as the "Carver County Agricultural Society."
Other historic buildings on the fairgrounds include the stone entryway and agricultural building, which were built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Depression of the 1930s. County fairs are often affected by the medical, environmental or financial concerns of the times, and the help of the WPA is a major example of this. Another happened during the 1940s, when a polio epidemic was causing a scare across the country. In 1946, the fair decided not to allow anyone under the age of fifteen to enter the fair. Three days later, August 14, 1946, the city of Waconia passed a resolution cancelling the fair completely for that year.
Fairs change over time as well. The main road on the fairgrounds was once called "Amusement Lane." It, along with other roads on the fairgrounds, was curved to go around the original grandstand location. When the new grandstand location was built in 1987, the original grandstand was burned down by the fire department in exchange for a case of beer, and for extra firefighting practice. There have been other changes to the grounds as well. A historic log granary from a Camden farm was added to the fair in 2007, and a new fair office was built in 2012.