The Genesee County Fair has run near Mount Morris since the mid-1800s

Long before there was a city called Flint with car factories and freeways, Genesee County farmers were already gathering once a year to show off their best hogs, biggest squash, and fastest horses. The Genesee County Fair has been running since the mid-1800s, which makes it one of the oldest continuing traditions in the county — older than the auto industry that came to define the place, older than most of the towns around it in their current form.

These days the fair sets up on the Everett A. Cummings Center, a 690-acre spread out on Mt. Morris Road. It’s a big working horse-and-livestock complex the rest of the year, with more than 160 stalls, indoor and outdoor arenas, group campsites, and trails that wind down along the Flint River through the woods. Come fair week, the place fills up the way county fairs always have: 4-H kids leading animals they raised, a midway with rides and fried everything, a grandstand, and the loud, glorious mess of a demolition derby.

That mix is the whole point of a county fair, and why these things have outlasted so much else. It’s one of the last events that still puts a farm family showing a steer in the same place as a teenager riding the Zipper and a retiree judging pie. The county calls it the single largest family event in Genesee County, and after more than 150 years of summers, it has earned the title.

If you’ve never been to a fair where the loudspeaker announces both a poultry judging and a school-bus demolition derby in the same afternoon, this is the one to fix that.