Here©s Georgia! LIBRARIES - the Digital Library of Georgia

Flour mills and grain
elevators are fast mul
tiplying in Georgia,
keeping pace with in
creased wheat acreage.
The fall of 1916 finds
Georgia farmers plant
ing winter grains more
extensively than ever
before. Atlanta has one
of the largest flour mills
south of the Ohio, loith
daily capacity of 2,000
barrels of flour, 5,000
bushels of meal ana
grits, ana 70 tons of
other feed. Two large
mills in Macon, both
serving a wide terri
tory, give preference to
home grown corn and
wheat. In Columbus
are two well-equipped
flour mills, with daily
capacities of 500 bar
rels of flour and 8,000
bushels of meal each.
124 FACTS ABOUT GEORGIA
The Georgia State Fair at Macon
The Georgia State Fair, field annually at Macon, under the
auspices of the State Agricultural Society, is the only State Fair
in existence that is self-sustaining. It is an established financial
success, receives no government assistance, and pays the regular
State licenses and taxes required of all shows and exhibition
concessions.
The sixty-second annual fair, in 1916, was the largest agricultural
and live stock exhibition ever held in the South. Most of the
twenty separate county exhibits would have made creditable fairs
by themselves. Among the individual exhibits were 465 hogs of
all classes, and 438 cattle, -both beef and dairy, including the finest
herd of Shorthorns in the United States, in open competition for
cash premiums. The permanent fair grounds are spacious and
include a mile race course. The buildings are substantial and
conveniently grouped. The officers of the Fair Association are:
Julius H. Otto, president; Chas. B. Lewis, treasurer; Harry C.
Robert, secretary and general manager.
The Georgia State Fair was organized under an oak tree at
Stone Mountain, DeKalb county, in 1846, and was held at Stone
Mountain annually for three years, after which, with several
intervening years at Atlanta, Savannah, Valdosta, etc., the per
manent meeting place was established at Macon. There is a
legend that at the first fair at Stone Mountain, there were only
two exhibits, a jackass and a large pumpkin. The groom of the
jack was a negro of 84 years, who had been a personal attendant
of George Washington. The story goes that the groom fell
asleep, the jack jumped the fence, ate the pumpkin and took to
the woods, whereupon the fair was declared officially adjourned
for the year.
Southeastern Fair at Atlanta
The Southeastern Fair at Atlanta was organized under the
auspices of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce as a permanent
annual agricultural and industrial exhibition, modeled after the
famous Canadian National Exposition at Toronto, and the Fair
at Dallas, Texas. It has been planned on a broad scale, and
while two large permanent buildings were completed that year
in time to hold there the usual corn and pig club show and an
exhibit of Hereford cattle, the first complete exhibition on the
new site was in the fall of 1916, when a number of substantial
buildings had been added, a mile race track completed and the
grounds extensively improved.