Steele's Amusements: Carnival Life on the Midway

Four generations of Steeles dragged carnival rides, machinery, and unusual employees across the Midwest throughout the 1940’s to the 1970’s. They had created the archetypical traveling carnival with a combination of guts, fear, and entrepreneurial spirit. Their carnival started with a pony ride and developed into a corporation moving scores of trucks and employees to county fairs throughout the upper Midwest. The Steele family raised kids on the midway and produced lawyers, engineers, and most of all honest and interesting people. Fun people. This is their carnival story.