A large oak tree marked the spot as between half a dozen to a dozen vendors set up their wares on a Sunday morning in 1970. Admission was a quarter. For dealers, it cost $2.50 to sell.
Customers slowly made their way into the Shawano Fairgrounds in Shawano, a small town of a little more than 9,000 people in northeastern Wisconsin, about forty miles northwest of Green Bay. And there, in the middle of all its humble glory, stood Bob Zurko, overseeing what would be the first Shawano Flea Market.
Now, 52 years later, Zurko has logged thousands of events in Wisconsin and throughout the greater Chicagoland area, his old stomping grounds. It took about five years before Zurko’s Shawano Flea Market took off, but when it did the sky was the limit.
“There were no flea markets per se in the upper Midwest, and the people didn’t even know what a flea market was when we got here,” Zurko said. “I’d seen them in the Chicago area, so we tried one up here and it worked.”
The man who forged a summer tradition in Shawano makes it sound easy.
