Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, August 1980
Where would you see a parade of 1,200 traveling salesmen, the St. Cloud Bicycle Band, a purple cow and a chicken that dances the twist? At the Minnesota State Fair, that's where. Step right up and relive some of the great moments from Minnesota's greatest fair.
1855—The most popular attraction at the first Minnesota territorial fair was the ladies' equestrian competition which drew an unheard of crowd of 2,500. Unfortunately, the men present argued so fiercely over the day's results that the event was later discontinued.
1857—The advent of statehood sparked a bitter partisan rivalry in Minnesota with the last territorial fair being caught in the crossfire. Republicans boycotted the event because Henry Sibley, president of the Minnesota Agricultural Society which sponsored the fair, was a Democrat. Despite the sparse attendance, Sibley was elected the state's first governor a week later.
1862—The state fair was canceled because of a Sioux rampage and the Civil War.
1865—New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley delivered an address on what Minnesotans could expect for the future. Among his predictions: that the state's farmers would soon be able to control rainfall by firing heavy artillery into the upper air currents.
1866—The fair, held in Rochester, was generally conceded to be a bore. The only excitement occurred when a steed named Sleepy David dropped dead in the middle of a race.
1869—The state baseball championship drew many sports fans out to the fair to watch the St. Paul Saxons and the Rochester Gophers battle it out for a silver trophy. Neither took it home however. The game ended in a 54-54 tie.
1871—Horace Greeley was back at the fair and the welcoming committee hung a large banner bearing an excerpt from his 1865 speech: "I should like to live in Minnesota but for one thing, you will never be able to raise apples here." Beneath it was an exhibit showcasing over 100 varieties of Minnesota-grown apples.
1882—A great feast featuring an 1,800-pound barbecued ox was planned in honor of a delegation of visiting Midwestern governors. The ox never showed up, which was okay, because neither did the governors.
1885—After several decades of touring the state, the fair settled down at its present location. Ramsey County earned the honor of hosting the event by deeding its 200-acre poor farm, worth an estimated $150,000 at the time, over to fair officials free of charge. Presumably, the county's poor were left to fend for themselves.
1888—A unique attraction of the '88 fair was a parade of 1,200 traveling salesmen.
1895—The fair showstopper this year was the famous St. Cloud Bicycle Band. Band members played march music while pedaling around a dirt track.
1897—It was widely advertised that a dog would parachute from a balloon and land right in front of the fair's grandstand. Hearing of the event, the local humane society threatened fair officials with jail terms if any animals were mistreated during the fair. So it was a toy dog that floated down from the heavens and into the fairgrounds.
1898—One of the lowest attendances of any Minnesota State Fair was attributable to an outbreak of typhoid fever in July among a regiment of soldiers just back from the Spanish-American War. They were being quartered on the fairgrounds.
1899—A grand pageant and fireworks display reenacting the American Navy's attack on Manila during the Spanish-American War was staged. It was such a smashing success that subsequent fairs featured "The Burning of Moscow," "The Destruction of St. Pierre," "The Last Days of Pompeii," "The Fall of Pekin(g)," "The Siege of Jericho" and "Rome Under Nero."
1905—There were 120 arrests on the fairgrounds, with fines resulting in $614 for the agricultural society. The penalties were handed down in the fair court by the fair's own justice of the peace.
1906—Dan Patch, a harness race horse owned by M.W. Savage of Minneapolis, set a world's record for a mile in front of a cheering crowd of 93,000. The record stayed on the books for over 30 years.
1908—Minnesotans had become fascinated by the culture of so-called primitive peoples, and reconstructions of a Philippine Igorrot village and a Sioux village were big attractions at the fair. (For probably the same reasons, a replica of Greenwich Village was a hit at the 1930 fair.)
1910—Attendance at this year's fair was double that of any other state fair in the country. Included in the grand total of 318,264 admissions were William Howard Taft, Teddy Roosevelt and two wild men from Borneo.
1911—Official fair records show that there were exactly 55 minutes of sunshine from opening day until the morning of the final day. The fair lost $17,801.
1914—Railroad baron James J. Hill was the fair's featured speaker and he used the occasion to admonish the state's farmers for relying on antiquated agricultural methods. Meanwhile State Agricultural Society president John Furlong discovered a 14-inch ear of corn at an exhibit and mentioned it to Hill after the speech. Hill said such a thing was impossible and added that he was willing to bet on it. Furlong produced the mammoth ear and went home $1,000 richer.
1917—America was at war and the nation's patriotic fever swept even into the kitchen. Exhibited at the fair this year were liberty bread, flag pickles, Red Cross onions, war stew, war cakes and trench cakes.
1920—A big attraction on the Midway was a preserved corpse that was allegedly Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
1922—Vice President Calvin Coolidge, who is not remembered as a man of many words, visited the fair to deliver an address on economic conditions. Forty-five minutes into the speech, the crowd began clamoring for the horse races to begin. Coolidge graciously turned the platform over to the ponies.
1923—Hungry fairgoers discovered that a hearty meal could be had for only 50 cents at Batinger's Automatic Eater. There was one catch, however: The food was delivered on platters pulled along a track by an electric train. And folks who sat near the end of the line often found that the only freight left was cabbage.
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Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, August 1980
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Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, August 1980
1924—Among the fair's numerous sporting events was the international pushball championship between American and Canadian teams. The sport, which involved pushing a 7-foot inflatable ball around a football field with automobiles, had been invented several years earlier by a Crookston teenager. Its popularity, however, never spread much beyond the Red River Valley.
1925—On exhibit in the dairy building was an honest-to-goodness purple cow raised on a farm near Baraboo, Wis. Its father was believed to be a green bull that lived in the neighborhood.
1926—A long debate over whether the fair should extend its run to include Sunday was finally settled with a clever compromise. The fairgrounds would be open on the Sabbath but no machinery would be operated.
1927—The star of the fair was bandmaster John Philip Sousa who traveled to the Twin Cities to personally deliver a composition he had written for the University of Minnesota. When the university president refused to meet him at the fairgrounds, he presented the march to fair officials instead.
1932—Although it was the first fair to have four Ferris wheels in one spot, the '32 event was a bust at the admission gate. Adding insult to injury, Phil Stong's novel State Fair also appeared and credited Iowa with having the nation's best state fair.
1933—The climax of Thrill Day was a collision between two locomotives, one marked "NRA" and the other "Old Man Depression," before an overflowing grandstand crowd.
1936—The Republican Party brought in a bandwagon filled with 10 tons of imported agricultural products that had been allowed in the country under FDR's new tariff. Despite the effort, the Republicans lost Minnesota that fall, but did win Vermont and Maine.
1936—Thousands looked on as the fair's Thrill Day was capped by a dirigible balloon exploding above the infield. Less than a year later, thousands would look on in horror when the German dirigible, the Hinden-burg, exploded at Lakehurst, N.J., killing 36 people.
1938—On hand in the agri-cultural exhibit were: a replica of a country church made from beeswax, a cow and milkmaid sculpted from butter, and cloven-hoofed versions of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy created from lard.
1943—Many of the fair's perennial favorites such as the horse races and livestock show were canceled and replaced by programs stressing civilian contributions to the war effort. One of the most popular was an exhibit called "Soy Beans at War."
1944—Bingo was reinstated on the Midway by the fair board, which termed it "a childish, innocent recreation." At least one fairgoer didn't agree and organized a cleanup squad that forcibly closed 20 of the games. He, in turn, was arrested for malicious libel and slapped with a 60-day suspended sentence by the fair's justice of the peace.
1946—A war-time fuel shortage had suspended the 1945 fair and everyone was set for a gala victory celebration this year. But a polio epidemic hit the state in July and the board of health suggested that the fair again be canceled. The Fair Board acquiesced.
1947—A poll in the Minneapolis Tribune, which showed that only 7 percent of fairgoers named the Midway as their favorite attraction, sparked a crusade to banish the carnival from the fairgrounds. The fair's bookkeepers had some figures of their own, however. For every dollar spent at the admission gate, 77 more cents were spent on the rides, sideshows and games of chance.
1948—Sally Rand, a dancer famous for her wardrobe of fans and bubbles, was the toast of the town during fair week. Between shows and posing for newspaper photographs, she even found time to address the St. Paul Rotary Club. Her topic: "The Importance of 4-H Clubs."
1951—Stunt pilot Carl Ferris, with costar Kitty Middleton riding on his wing, failed to pull out of a steep dive and crashed, in full view of 18,000 people watching from the grandstand. Both were killed and it was the last aerial thrill show presented at the fair.
1958—It was clear that attendance would hit seven digits for the first time in history and a special reception was planned for the millionth visitor. As the turnstiles kept clanging, fair officials grew worried that Number One Million would be a married person out on the town with someone other than his or her spouse. Everything was on the up-and-up with Robert Karklin of St. Paul, however, and he seemed rather excited to get a new wristwatch along with free admission to the fair.
1961—A longtime fair favorite, Leon Claxton's Havana Revue featuring "scads of sultry sepia sirens," showed up with a new name-the Harlem Revue. No explanation was given.
1962—A woman inquired at the fair police station if anyone had turned in a set of false teeth. The officer on duty routinely asked her when she had first noticed they were lost. Two years ago, she said.
1962—On the Midway this year could be found a baseball-playing chicken, a kissing rabbit, a drumming duck and a second chicken that danced the twist.
1964—The first fair-within-a-fair for teenagers was held. It contained many of the same events found in the regular fair, including an art show which featured a replica of Mount Rushmore with the heads of Paul, George, Ringo and John molded in pink clay.
1965—Top billing at the teen tent went to the hot English recording group, Chad and Jeremy. But Chad and Jeremy weren't prepared for the goings-on at a state fair and walked off the job on the first day. In revenge, fair officials put out a news release that the duo had mysteriously disappeared. For the next two days the fair office was swamped with frantic calls and wires from English music fans inquiring about the pair's fate.
1966—Fair officials estimated that 80,000 pounds of meat were consumed over 10 days, including a quarter of a million hot dogs.
1967—The fair had always been touted as a forum for new mechanical and engineering innovations, so officials were rather embarrassed to discover one February morning that the 18-month-old Education Building had collapsed overnight.
1969—Bob Lintelman, a 16-year-old 4-H member from Fairmont, Minn., demonstrates how to prepare French fried grasshoppers in the Home Activities Building.
1973—The Flying Cross Award, given by fair employees to their fellow worker who had fouled things up most during the preceding week, went to Cliff Robinson. To earn the honor, he had got his tongue stuck in a pop can, pushed a lawnmower under a moving truck and fell backwards into a manhole while sweeping a driveway.
1975—Legislative hearings on the fair conducted by State Senator Bruce Vento revealed that one person owned 18 of the fair's ice cream stands and that another individual controlled 13 of the Pronto Pup concessions along with the beer garden and a share of the Space Needle and Skyride.
1979—Nineteen Christmas tree growers, 50 winemakers, 57 fiddlers, 72 beekeepers, 235 sheepherders, 642 artists, 653 horsebreeders and 3,585 4-H members competed for prizes at this year's fair.
From Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, August 1980
