A Short History of Hayrides
- mooreacorrigan
- Sep 8
- 2 min read
Curiosity #9
Reposted from Substack September 8, 2025
I’m getting in the holiday spirit, and by holiday, I mean Halloween. Every year, my husband and I compile a list of movies to watch for the season ranging from cozy (Over the Garden Wall and Practical Magic), to campy (The Company of Wolves and Hocus Pocus), to terrifying (Weapons and Nope). We decorate our house inside and out, and we wrangle our cats into outfits for about ten seconds before they shake them off.
In celebration of the spooky season, I am tailoring my curiosities this month to fall related themes, the first being the hayride. My memories of hayrides as a child consisted of poked hands and scratching loose straw (apparently farms rarely use hay now)1 out of my clothes, but I still long for them despite these middling experiences. I still go to pumpkin patches every year and I never pass up a corn maze, but hayrides seem to have gone the way of apple bobbing. Perhaps the farms I am going to are not large enough for the proper vehicles.
The first cited use of the word hayride appeared in 1878, so we can assume that the activity has been around since then, more likely before2. According to the usage graph on the Eteymonline website, the word reached peak popularity in 1944 and has tapered off significantly since. This may reflect a dip in popularity of the activity as well as the word.
Hayrides originated in the United States and Canada, when farmhands would transport hay to and from barns. Allegedly, the children on these farms started to ride along, creating the traditional fall activity.3
Despite the slow rides and the open air, hayrides are historically a more dangerous activity than one would expect. In the 1989 Cormier-Village hayride accident, 13 people died and 45 were injured when a trailer tractor lost control of its load 6 ton load of logs while passing a hayride.4 Hayrides are also known to flip, which can also injure or kill riders. 5
See you next time for a short history of seances!
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