Adams County fairgrounds once served as Civil War Camp Hamer
West Union’s fairgrounds still host the county fair, but the same seven acres once trained the 70th Ohio Volunteer Infantry as Camp Hamer before it marched to Ripley.
The Adams County Fairgrounds in West Union carry a hidden Civil War story that still sits in plain view. The Ohio History Connection’s Remarkable Ohio marker names the site “Pioneer County Seat / Camp Hamer,” and the same ground that supports county fair life today once served as a training camp for local men heading off to war.
From donated land to county landmark
The fairgrounds were established at this site in October 1853 on seven acres donated by Judge George Collings. That detail matters because it places the fairgrounds at the center of Adams County development, not on the margins of it, with land, public use, and civic life all overlapping in one place.
Local history also points to Collings as a figure of some standing before the fairgrounds were created. A People’s Defender archive caption says a large brick structure on the Collings property was erected in 1851 for Judge George Collings, which suggests the site already had local importance before the fair took hold. In other words, the fairgrounds did not appear in a vacuum. They grew out of a property that was already part of West Union’s civic landscape.
That continuity still shows in the present. The Adams County Fairgrounds website says the site continues to host county fair operations, and the Adams County Fair website lists the 2026 fair for July 12-18, 2026. For anyone who knows West Union through the fair gates, the marker adds a deeper layer to a place that is still active rather than frozen in the past.
Camp Hamer and the 70th Ohio Volunteer Infantry
During the Civil War, the old fairgrounds became Camp Hamer. The marker says the 70th Ohio Volunteer Infantry organized in October 1861 and trained there until Christmas Day 1861, when it marched from Camp Hamer to Ripley. That is the heart of the site’s military history: a familiar community space was repurposed for wartime mobilization, and the shift happened on land that local families already knew.
The regiment’s story is not isolated to the marker alone. Reference material on the 70th Ohio Infantry ties the unit to Whitelaw Reid’s *Ohio in the War* and the 1900 *History of Adams County, Ohio*, showing that Camp Hamer belongs within a documented local and state Civil War record. A January 6, 2023 archive item in The People’s Defender featured James F. Summers as captain of Company B, 70th Regiment OVI, giving the unit a named local officer and a clearer place in Adams County memory.
The march to Ripley on Christmas Day 1861 gives the story an especially local shape. Ripley sits on the Ohio River, so the route connected Adams County to the broader wartime movement of men and materiel along the river corridor. For West Union, the image is striking: a fairground where people gathered for exhibits and events became a place where soldiers drilled, organized, and left home.
Why the site still matters now
The reason this story endures is that the site never stopped being useful to the county. The 2025 People’s Defender archive item on the history of the Adams County Fair includes an early view of the show ring, photographed about 1910 from the grandstand, and it shows the old bandstand that originally graced the fairgrounds. That image reinforces the idea that the grounds were not just a temporary Civil War encampment. They remained a focal point for community life long after Camp Hamer disappeared.
That layered identity gives Adams County a concrete asset for teaching and heritage travel. School groups can stand on the fairgrounds and connect a current landmark to Judge George Collings, the October 1853 fairgrounds donation, the 70th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and the Christmas Day 1861 march to Ripley. Heritage visitors get the same advantage: one place, several eras, and a story that links local land use to national crisis.
The marker’s value is that it turns an everyday landmark into a readable public record. West Union’s fairgrounds still operate as the Adams County Agricultural Society’s fairgrounds, and the current fair dates keep the site in regular use. That living continuity is what makes Camp Hamer more than a footnote. It is a reminder that the county’s most familiar gathering place also helped send Adams County men into the Civil War.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
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