State Fair of Texas

Traditions grew around the fair after 1904. World War I canceled the 1918 fair and turned Fair Park into a temporary army encampment. The Music Hall opened in 1925 and brought New York shows to Texas audiences for the first time, according to the Handbook of Texas. The Texas-Oklahoma football game began in 1929, and in 1930 the racetrack was razed for a stadium later called the Cotton Bowl. The fair paused again from 1942 to 1945. Big Tex first appeared in the 1950s, and midway accidents in 1979 and 1983 led to a ride safety program.

What the plaque says

State Fair of Texas Founded in 1886, the State Fair of Texas now ranks as the most largely attended State Fair in the U.S. It was begun as a private, nonprofit corporation for civic purposes by Capt. W. H. Gaston and other pioneer business and civic leaders of Dallas. Since 1904 the fair grounds have been owned by the city, which maintains them as a public park except during the annual two-week fair. The fair suspended operations for two years in order to permit the Central Exposition of the Texas Centennial Celebration to be held here in 1936. In 1937 the Pan American Exposition used the grounds. Over the years great names have appeared here, including wild west showman Buffalo Bill, Harry Houdini the magician, silver-tongued orator William Jennings Bryan, and Comanche war chief Quanah Parker. Federal, state, and city governments have erected a series of permanent buildings on the fair grounds, including the Hall of State, five other museums, music hall, livestock coliseum, and "Cotton Bowl." Originally 80 acres in size, the grounds have been successively enlarged to include the present 250 acres. Over 100,000,000 persons have entered its gates during annual expositions. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• African American Museum, Dallas — steps away
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Fair Park — 0.3 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 1.4 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 2.1 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.

More markers nearby

• Texas Centennial Exposition — steps away
• Texas Women in the Civil War, A Tribute to — 0.2 mi
• Steel Dust — 0.5 mi
• WRR Radio — 0.5 mi