East of the Albany-Hudson Electric Trail in the Village of Nassau stood the Nassau Fair, an annual summer fair held from the mid-1890s to 1944 on land purchased in the early 1890s by the Rensselaer County Agricultural and Liberal Arts Society, which created a southern Rensselaer County agricultural fair as an alternative to older county fairs to the north. Nassau, once a junction on the Albany-Boston stagecoach route, had mills on the Valarie Kill in the late 1700s and by the 1850s had become a busy commercial center with hotels, stores, and fine homes. The forty acre fairground charged twenty-five cents for single admission, with free entry for children under ten, and featured a carnival midway, commercial displays, agricultural exhibits, horse races, and live entertainment. Harness racing was a major attraction, with regional trainers running horses in races that drew thousands of dollars in wagers, and racehorses competing at Saratoga and other tracks were quartered year-round at Nassau. Fairgoers could pay an extra ten cents to sit in the grandstand for band concerts, equestrian exhibitions, and oxen pulls, while other amusements included acrobats, "Wild West" shows, a Ferris wheel, commercial-goods exhibits, and sheds displaying produce, chickens, cows, pigs, and sheep. The Albany-Hudson trolley line, opened in 1900, made travel to the fair easy, and electric lighting was added in 1925 as automobiles also changed how people arrived. For many years it was the biggest annual event in southern Rensselaer County, drawing thirty thousand people over three days in 1922. Its popularity declined during World War II, and the final fair was held in 1944 before it merged with the county fair in Schaghticoke, New York. Some fairground land later became house lots, racehorse training continued for a time, the grandstand and barns burned in the 1960s, and one original fair building survives near the Nassau Post Office, now used as a church.