Peru Fair ends but warm memories will live on Started in 1978, it grew to be a major southern Vermont attraction

By Shawn Cunningham and Cynthia Prairie*
© 2026 Telegraph Publishing LLC

After more than 40 years in, the annual Peru Fair’s 2025 edition was its last, organizers recently announced, much to the surprise of many vendors and fairgoers. The fair began as a tag sale in 1978 according to the organization’s website.

In a Jan. 22 email to vendors, the board of Peru Fair Inc. said there would be no fair in 2026 “and in future years at this time.” The highly anticipated September event highlighted local craftspeople, artists and musicians, food vendors and organizations and acted as a fund-raiser for college scholarships for Peru students and for the Peru Fire Department.

According to the email a “careful assessment” concluded “that financial constraints, transportation and logistical challenges, and ongoing difficulties in securing enough volunteers make it no longer feasible to host the Fair at the level our community deserves.”

“We have challenges that other towns don’t have” a Fair board member told The Telegraph on Monday.

Citing the lack of WiFi and parking, which meant hiring buses to move visitors to and from parking at the Bromley Ski Area, the board member said that the lack of volunteers was not the only reason for closing down. “If it was just volunteers, we would have managed.”

The board member also said that the fair is obliged to pay “up front” for so much including the buses.

The closing came as a surprise and disappointment to many, especially considering that last September’s event was substantially larger than previous years with more vendors and seemingly larger crowds. Asked if it was perhaps too large, the board member said no and that reducing the number of vendors would not reduce the expenses.

“It holds near and dear to many,” the board member said, adding, “but the Peru Fair has dissolved before and come back before.”

“Of all the comments (on the end of the Fair), vendors have been the most understanding,” the board member said.

And while the 2025 fair was a success, the board had “concerns about not being able to continue to deliver the Fair in a sustainable, safe, and successful way are real” according to its email to vendors.

Among that group of fair vendors is Andover potter Susan Leader, who began selling her pottery there more than 40 years ago. Leader says that when she thinks about Peru Fair, “I have warm feelings. Who else gives you love, money and community?” (You can read Susan’s 2020 column about the fair by clicking here.)

For a number of years, Leader’s husband musician John Specker,  opened the fair by playing his fiddle at the front of the morning  parade that officially opened the fair. That tradition had been carried on my their daughter Ida Mae.

“We have gone as a family,” recalls Leader. “John played there as a street musician in our 30s. It’s been a whole life, its been this wonderful local fair where we made lifelong friends. When we first started, it was in late September and (our) kids would come with kids of other local vendors (for) these long glorious days of community and friendship. We lived in a one room cabin and were trying to figure out if we could turn this pottery into a lifelong business.

“The Peru Fair actually made me feel like I could earn a living in pottery in Vermont. When I think of the Peru Fair I think of my life,” says Leader. “I might not think about it much till next September but it will be an empty space in my heart that I never expect to fill.”

Cynthia Prairie and Shawn Cunningham, under the banner of Fight Scurvy, Drink Lemonade, have been vending at the Peru Fair for at least 12 years. They too will greatly miss the Peru Fair.