The first bite cracks like kindling.
The cornmeal crust shatters, the hot dog inside snaps, and a stripe of yellow mustard slides down my wrist before I can catch it. Above me, 55 feet of cowboy in boots and denim leans over the crowd, and when that big drawl rolls out of him, “Howdy, folks!” I swear the corn dog flinches in my hand.
This is the State Fair of Texas in Dallas, where the air smells like fryer grease, powdered sugar and cattle barns all at once, and it all combines into a perfume that smells like America’s heartland.
I have been to my share of state fairs. I stood in sawdust at county livestock shows while teenagers coaxed stubborn steers around a ring. I once danced with a local troupe at a State Fair in a downpour that never let up. I once drove home from a state fair as the surprised owner of a hot tub. My ex and I swore we only went for the funnel cake.
Heartland Hijinks
Americans have been gathering like this for a long time. The nation’s first state fair opened in Syracuse, New York, on Sept. 29, 1841, and drew 10,000 to 15,000 people to watch plowing contests and size up livestock. Nearly every state now holds one, and each fair wears the personality of its home.
In Iowa, a life-size cow sculpted from hundreds of pounds of local butter has been a fixture in the Agricultural Building since 1911. Out in Puyallup, the Washington State Fair stages bull riding and steer wrestling in the shadow of Mount Rainier. The State Fair of Texas draws more total visitors than any other state fair in the nation, more than 2 million people last year, and ranks among the most beloved fairs in the country.
Texas has never been accused of moderation, and its fair proves the point. Spread across 277 acres of Fair Park, the State Fair of Texas runs 24 days this year, from Sept. 25 through Oct. 18. For anyone who has never seen an American state fair, picture a county fair, a rodeo, a carnival, a concert series, a farm show and a church bake-off, all shaken up in a paper sack and fried in peanut oil. Then put a 55-foot cowboy in the middle of it.
I came for the corn dog. I stayed for everything else.
A meeting place, 140 years on
Long before deep-fried food on a stick and sugar-coated funnel cakes, the fair was about dirt, seed and livestock.
“The State Fair of Texas started as a meeting place for folks in the agriculture and livestock industry to come and share best practices in person,” says Director of Communications Taylor Pulfer, who is working her 10th fair this year
A group of Dallas businessmen chartered the Dallas State Fair & Exposition on Jan. 30, 1886, according to the fair’s official history. The founders squabbled over where to build the fairgrounds, and a breakaway faction staged a rival fair across town that same fall. Neither one made money. The two merged in 1887, and in 1904, the fair sold its land to the City of Dallas under an agreement that saved a stretch of every autumn for the exposition.
The fair survived fires, a grandstand collapse, a ban on horse-race gambling and two world wars. Fair Park hosted the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition, which drew more than 6 million visitors, and the grounds became a National Historic Landmark in 1986. The Texas-OU (University of Oklahoma) football game has been a state fair fixture since 1929.
Big Tex arrived in the 1950s as a 52-foot cowboy. An electrical fire destroyed him on the final Friday of the 2012 fair, and Texans mourned him like a kinfolk. He came back the next year, bigger, and said “Howdy, folks” like nothing had happened.
“He is truly iconic to not just the State Fair, but the entire Lone Star State,” Pulfer says.
Gluttony Ascendant
Pulfer does not pretend people come mainly for agricultural education though. The food is one of the biggest reasons people like me venture out on a hot late summer day to battle the lines.
“That is honestly the number one reason that people come to the fair now,” Pulfer says of the food.
The fair’s more than 80 food concessionaires are small businesses, and since 2005, they have competed in the Big Tex Choice Awards, a contest for dishes never before served at the fair. The winners read like a mouthwatering fever dream. Fried Coke took Most Creative in 2006. Deep Fried Butter won in 2009. Fried Beer followed in 2010.
In 2017, the Funnel Cake Bacon Queso Burger swept both Best Taste Savory and Most Creative. The buns are funnel cakes. The burger wears queso and bacon.
“It sounds ridiculous,” says Crystal McDermott of Bedford, Texas. “It is, but it’s absolutely delicious.”
This year’s finalists include Burger Chop Tater Tacos, built on a shell of cheddar tater tots, and a Fletcher’s Chocolate Corny Dog, milk chocolate fudge dipped in the famous corny dog batter and fried golden. I have questions. I also have a fork.
Texas does have a fair food culture so deep it has its own competitive circuit, and people drive from other states just to taste the finalists.
“We like to say calories don’t count at the fair,” McDermott says. “You’re walking plenty.”
Then come the rides. The Texas Star Ferris wheel turns slow and stately over the midway, a fixture of the Dallas skyline. Other rides are less polite. Climb aboard one after a funnel cake burger and you will feel that queso reconsider its life choices somewhere around the third loop.
Raised by hand
Aaren Rivera did not grow up showing animals. Neither did his parents.
The 17-year-old senior at Coahoma High School, a small town in West Texas, started with rabbits five years ago because rabbits were what his family could afford. His grandfather ran a 300-head commercial cattle ranch, Rivera said, and dreamed of seeing his grandson in the youth livestock show ring. Rivera worked his way up to goats and brought one to the State Fair of Texas in 2023.
This is the part of the fair most visitors walk right past on their way to the funnel cakes. Kids from ranches and kids from cities spend a year feeding, walking and worrying over an animal for a few minutes in the ring and a shot at college money. The Big Tex Scholarship Program has awarded more than $20 million in its history, Pulfer says.
This year he tried something new. His mentor, Ruben Velasquez, told him he was going to get Rivera a sheep. Rivera rolled with it.
“He told me showing sheep and goats are a lot different,” Rivera said. “So, it was kind of a new thing to me.”
That first lamb, named Parker, won Grand Champion Market Lamb at this year’s State Fair of Texas.
Rivera said his connection with the young sheep is what made all the difference when he paraded the animal around for the judges.
“Some people don’t really have a good connection with their animals,” he said. “But ever since the day I got him, I treated him nicely. I sat in his pen, petted him and made him trust me.”
He practiced with Parker in front of mirrors to learn how to position the lamb and which side he showed the best. When the day came, Parker listened.
“I always wanted to win State Fair,” Rivera said. “Ruben telling me we have a good sheep, we have a good shot at winning, just made me want to work harder.”
The win carried Parker and Rivera to the 78th annual Big Tex Youth Livestock Auction on Oct. 2 at the Briscoe Carpenter Livestock Center, where donors bid premium prices on the champions. Every dollar raised on auction day goes to the young exhibitors, and the rest feeds the Big Tex Scholarship Program, according to the fair.
The night before the sale, Rivera sounded steady.
“I just hope everything runs smoothly,” he said. “I’ll be grateful whatever I get.”
The hard part of a market show is the ending. Champions sell. Rivera admitted he was sad to let Parker go.
“He was always a weird character in the barn,” he said. “He’s definitely a sheep I’m gonna remember.” .
What he received made up for the loss of his fleecy friend. Rivera’s Grand Champion Market Lamb went for $43,000. The Grand Champion Market Steer presented by Jett James of Wise County 4-H broke a record selling for $227,000.
His favorite fair food, by the way, are fried Oreos.
Blue ribbons and bragging rights
The fair’s history lists “contests for the ladies” among its earliest draws in the 1890s. Those contests never left. They just let the men in.
Inside the Creative Arts Building, grandmothers, retirees, hobbyists and a few dead-serious bakers battle for blue ribbons with quilts, pies, cakes, canned preserves and handmade crafts. Wandering the displays to see who won has become its own family ritual. Walk the cases slowly and look closely; somebody spent a year on that quilt.
Car people get their own fair inside the fair. The Texas Auto Show dates to 1913, when 175 vehicles filled the fair’s first Automobile Building, and the State Fair of Texas remains the only fair in the country to host a full auto show. These days, the show spreads across the Automobile Building, the Centennial Building and an outdoor Truck Zone for all 24 days. Fairgoers kick tires on the newest models from Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, Ram, Kia and more, then wander back out for another round of something fried.
Out in the barns, visitors who have never touched a cow can learn the basics at Livestock 101 or watch new life arrive at the Big Tex Birthing Barn, where mother animals deliver their young in front of the crowd. Pulfer watched a calf born there last year.
“It’s just truly incredible to see all that goes into the life cycle of animals,” she said.
Half a man, a dinosaur and a mattress
Every fair has its oddballs. Texas collects them.
At the entrance to the midway, a barker greets visitors from atop a pole, appearing to be half a man. Nobody I asked could explain the trick, and he will roast you with jokes as you pass.
“It’s one of those eccentric fair activities that you just have to see,” McDermott says.
The pig races draw loyal crowds. Mighty Mike, the fair’s strongman, bends horseshoes with his hands. At the lagoon, life-size dinosaurs loom among the trees, one of them nearly as tall as Big Tex himself, and families now return every year to see them.
Then there is the mattress. Mattress Firm, one of the fair’s biggest sponsors, sets up booths where tired fairgoers can stretch out on a bed and test the springs, Pulfer said. You can’t carry one home that day, but plenty of people order one. On 277 acres, a horizontal break counts as an attraction. Pulfer said she knows some people who have even bought hot tubs at the fair.
I kept my mouth shut about mine.
Politics Free Zone
State fairs today compete with streaming services, phones and the deep gravity of a couch. Keeping the crowds coming becomes more and more of a challenge each year in the U.S.
“I think our competition, when people ask us, is not other fairs,” Pulfer said. “It’s hanging out at home and relaxing.”
The fair fights back by keeping its old traditions and stacking new ones on top. Admission includes the concerts, shows and attractions. Fireworks fill the sky every night, and a drone show joined the lineup this year. The main stage moved indoors in 2026, a mercy to performers who remember 2018, when rain fell on more than half the fair’s days.
But Pulfer believes the real draw is simpler than any drone.
“There’s not a lot of events these days where you can go and see people from all walks of life just having fun,” she says. “We love to say, ‘Leave all of the noise at the gates. Any politics, any hard things that you might be dealing with, and just come out to the State Fair and have fun. Be a kid again.’”
People-watching may be the best free show on the grounds. Grown men in cowboy hats eat cotton candy without shame. Toddlers sleep through rides. Teenagers in matching shirts lead show heifers past couples on dates. Every kind of Texan walks the same midway, sticky-fingered and sunburned, and for a few hours, nobody argues about anything except where to eat next.
Calories for Charity
Most visitors don’t realize the State Fair of Texas is a nonprofit, Pulfer said, and those 24 days are its biggest fundraiser of the year.
“We have 24 days to make as much money as we can to then be able to pour that back into the community,” she said.
That money goes into scholarships, grants to other nonprofits and Big Tex Urban Farms, which grows fresh produce year-round in a greenhouse right on the midway and donates it to South Dallas, a hardscrabble neighborhood considered a food desert. Fairgoers can walk inside the greenhouse and see how it works.
The fair generates up to $600 million for the North Texas region, Pulfer says, citing the organization’s most recent economic impact study.
So that second corny dog? Call it charity.
One day is never enough
Shawn Lindsay of Dallas has advice for first timers, and she gives it with the patience of someone who has watched a lot of people wilt by 3 p.m.
“You can’t do it all in one day,” he says. “Plan ahead. Pick your shows. Share your food so you can taste more of it. Come twice if you can. Wear comfortable shoes and dress for the heat, because October in Texas still runs in the 80s and 90s. The fair is mostly outdoors.”
And remember who you are feeding.
“By coming out to this event and having fun, you’re helping do good the rest of the year,” smiles Pulfer.
I think about that as the sun drops behind the Texas Star and the first fireworks crack open over Fair Park. Somewhere in the barns, a kid is sweeping out a pen, already thinking about next year. Somewhere on the midway, a vendor is dropping something unholy but delicious into hot oil. Big Tex stands over all of it with his arms out, saying “howdy” to a world that keeps trying to stay home.
“We’re moving so much towards a world of AI and technology,” Pulfer said. “I think it’s so important that we hold on to these in-person community events that connect us all together.”
I lick the last of the mustard off my thumb and go looking for fried Oreos. Aaren Rivera says they’re the best thing here. I believe him.
Come on Down, Y’all
If you go: The State Fair of Texas runs through Oct. 18 at Fair Park in Dallas. Hours run 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Daily admission starts at $10 online, plus fees, with prices varying by day. Details at bigtex.com.