July 16, 2004: This corn float (?) appeared multiple years in the Corn Carnival parade, including Gladbrook’s 125th anniversary in 2005.
Gladbrook’s Corn Carnival is being held for the 100th time this weekend.
Director O’Connor has received word that the Grundy Center band has been selected for the Gladbrook Corn Carnival which will be held in Gladbrook Sept. 30th and Oct. 1st, two weeks from yesterday and today.
— Grundy Republican, September 17, 1914
Corn Carnival to be held at Gladbrook
TRAER, Sept. 24 — Gladbrook’s annual corn carnival comes next Monday and Tuesday. The business men of Gladbrook have raised $1,000 to finance the enterprise.
— Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, September 24, 1920
Those clips are over 100 years old, but the answer to this discrepancy is in the 1987 Tama County History book: “The Corn Carnival was first held in 1913, discontinued for two years during WWI, and after being revived was again discontinued in the late 1920s.” The first reappearance of Corn Carnival in both the Traer Star-Clipper and Marshalltown Times-Republican (the nearest papers available online) is 1933, when it was held August 23-24 “until everyone is tired and ready for bed on Thursday night” (TSC, 8/4/33).
The Mesquakie Powwow started in 1915. The Star-Clipper in 1916 said “So great was the success of the second powwow that it is to be made an annual event.” The 2021 powwow was billed as the 106th following the 105th in 2019, the gap being for the obvious reason. So Corn Carnival is “one of the oldest town celebrations in Central Iowa” (T-R, 8/11/52), but the powwow has more occurrences.
Corn Carnival has moved up the calendar in the past century, going from the end of September to mid-August to mid-July to its present spot in the third weekend of June (which, unfortunately, is too early to have Iowa corn at the event).
One of the bragging points of the festival is that the Friday night parade has never been rained out. There have been some very close calls, including in 1952, when “Friday afternoon’s heavy shower halted long enough for the Tama County town to hold its parade at 6:30 p.m. before a sizable crowd that crowded into the two-block-long Main Street.” (T-R, 8/16/52) Then as now, the parade will be at 6:30 on Friday night.
The parade, but nothing else, happened in 2020, and it is treated as the event’s continuation. My blog post about the festival being cancelled that year has been amended.