For more than 150 years, the Minnesota State Fair has been a staple of Minnesota life.
Today the state fair experience is irrevocably tied to its Midway location, but the route to that permanent home included years of wandering fairs, financial woes and intense rivalry between Minneapolis and St. Paul.
The first state fair, organized by the Minnesota State Agricultural Society, was held in 1859 in Minneapolis. In its early years, the location changed, with state fairs held at Fort Snelling, Rochester, Red Wing, Winona and Owatonna.
But in 1871 when it settled at Kittsondale, a million-dollar stable and racetrack in St. Paul, Minneapolis members of the Agricultural Society balked. They feared St. Paul would become the fair’s permanent home.
Minneapolis leaders responded by holding the Hennepin County Fair two weeks before the state fair with popular New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley as the official orator.
William S. King, a Minneapolis newspaper editor and Agricultural Society member, added to the insult by showing his thoroughbred cattle in Hennepin County – and then sending them to the Illinois state fair, bypassing St. Paul.
Minneapolis snagged the state fair for itself in 1877. With King at the helm, the state fair was a bevy of beer stands, sideshows and horse races, including a 20-mile race between a man and a woman rider that caused a stir.
With record attendance and a profit of more than $6,000, Minneapolis thought it had won the state fair forever. But when the Agricultural Society returned the fair to St. Paul in 1878, King was livid. He declared Minneapolis would hold its own fair the same week as the state fair.
And so it went: Thousands attended both fairs, but Minneapolis earned more than $30,000 while St. Paul produced only a $1 profit.
President Rutherford B. Hayes spoke at each fair and urged fairgoers to remember that they were “one great city.”
In 1880, the Agricultural Society moved its fair to Rochester rather than compete with Minneapolis. By the mid-1880s, the two cities began talks about finding a permanent location they could share. Minneapolis was tired of an open-air exposition, and St. Paul no longer wanted to host a fair so far away.
When Ramsey County agreed to donate land at the Ramsey County Poor Farm at Como and Snelling avenues in Hamline Township – midway between the cities – both sides decided it was the best option.
In 1885, with money from the state legislature, St. Paul architect James Brodie went to work on the site, including constructing a main building with a 120-foot dome, which could be seen for miles. In September, more than 74,000 attendees flocked to the fair’s six-day run.
The Minnesota State Fair still calls Midway home 140 years later, drawing millions of fairgoers every year. While structures have changed, the grandstand, Machinery Hill, animal barns and agricultural buildings are still in the same locations today as their 19-century counterparts.
Lauren Peck was media relations and social media associate for the Minnesota Historical Society. This article first appeared in the September 2015 issue of Minnesota Good Age.