Does Texas Have a State Fair? A Guide to the Longest One in the Country

Texas has a state fair, and no other in the country runs as long each year.

The State Fair of Texas takes over Fair Park in Dallas for twenty-four consecutive days, September 25 through October 18. Most state fairs last ten or twelve days. This one occupies the better part of a month and draws more than two million people through the gates.

The organization traces its origins to 1886, though it hasn’t run every year since. Both world wars interrupted it, and the pandemic canceled the whole thing in 2020.

The Cowboy Started Out as Santa Claus

Big Tex stands 55 feet at a roundabout near the Tower Building, says “Howdy, folks,” and functions as the fairground’s default meeting point. Everyone has stood under him waiting for somebody.

He started out as Santa Claus. In 1949, merchants in the small town of Kerens had a problem: locals drove to Corsicana or all the way to Dallas for Christmas shopping. The chamber of commerce decided the fix was a 49-foot Santa Claus, and they made one out of iron-pipe drill casing, papier-mâché, cloth, and seven-foot lengths of unraveled rope for the beard. Two local farmers served as the models. One of their grandsons recalls the method: they measured him and multiplied everything by seven.

It worked for a season. Trains stopped so shoppers could look. By the following year the novelty had worn off, and in late 1951 the State Fair bought the whole thing for $750.

Dallas artist Jack Bridges took care of the conversion. He slimmed the face, added a wink to the right eye, and repositioned the right arm into a thumb-in-vest pose. Santa became a cowboy, and Big Tex debuted at the 1952 fair wearing size 70 boots and a 75-gallon hat. He found his voice the following year.

The Fire, and What Came Back

On October 19, 2012, during the fair’s final weekend, an electrical short at Big Tex’s base caught fire. Flames climbed the frame and took his clothes and face within minutes. His charred steel skeleton stood at the roundabout for hours while people cried, stared, and photographed it. They eventually covered it in canvas and removed it under police escort.

The rebuild went to SRO Associates and Texas Scenic Company, working from old photographs and 3D modeling. He returned the following September, and the current version is bigger than the one that burned:

• 55 feet tall, up from 52.
• A 95-gallon hat and size 96 boots.
• 33 feet 9 inches across the chest.
• 25,000 pounds all in.
• Clothes by Williamson-Dickie, the Fort Worth company behind Dickies.

The Food Is a Competition

Fried food here isn’t incidental. It’s an organized contest with judges, categories, and real stakes for entrants.

The Big Tex Choice Awards started in 2005 and have produced fried beer, fried peaches and cream, and a long list of things nobody asked for, but everybody tried. In 2025, fifty concessionaires entered seventy-six items, narrowed to fifteen finalists across four categories:

• Best Taste, Savory
• Best Taste, Sweet
• Best Taste, Sipper, a drinks category added recently
• Most Creative

Winners get a rush of attention that concessionaires describe as career-changing, and their creations sell hard for the rest of the run.

For anyone who’d rather not eat an experiment, Fletcher’s Corny Dogs have been on the grounds since the 1940s and remain the item most closely associated with the place.

One thing to know going in: food, rides, and games are paid for with coupons rather than cash or cards. Buy them at booths across the park or in advance online, and buy more than you think you need, because walking back across the grounds mid-meal is nobody’s idea of a good time. Unused food and midway coupons carry over to future years, so overbuying costs you nothing.

What Else Is Actually There

Admission covers more than 100 attractions, including concerts and exhibits, but the rides, games, and food require coupons. Check the daily schedule before arriving so you can build the day around included events rather than spending most of your budget on the midway.

The agricultural side is the part most visitors underrate. Around 5,200 students from every corner of Texas compete in livestock events and leadership contests each year, and the combined Youth Livestock Auction and scholarship programs have distributed more than $24 million in awards over the decades. Watching a teenager sell an animal they raised is a different experience from the midway, and it happens 50 yards away from it.

Beyond that:

• Seventy midway rides, headed by the 212-foot Texas Star, the 500-foot Top o’ Texas Tower, and a Dentzel carousel dating to 1914.
• Four music stages running free performances daily, from national acts to regional Texas bands.
• The Cotton Bowl, hosting college football inside the fairgrounds each fall.
• Fair Park, one of the largest collections of art deco architecture anywhere, put up for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition.

That last point gets lost. The buildings around you are a National Historic Landmark, and they’d be worth a visit on their own.

The Practical Basics

Gates open at 10 a.m. every day of the run, closing at 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

Single-day admission moves with the calendar rather than staying at a single price. Weekdays cost less than weekends, and separate rates apply to children aged three to twelve and to seniors sixty and over. Check the official listing when you buy, since the tiers shift year to year and older guides carry stale numbers.

Two things worth knowing:

• Adults are charged the children’s price after 5 p.m., every night, at the gate or online. Nothing about the fair changes at five. The ticket simply costs less, which makes an evening visit the cheapest way in.
• Season passes run $52 for the digital version and $62 for the hard card with extras, both including fees. The fair reckons a pass covers its own cost in under two visits, which tells you roughly what a single day runs.

Opening weekend draws the heaviest crowds of the season, so a weekday in the first two weeks is the calmer choice if you have flexibility. Fair Park sits a couple of miles east of downtown Dallas, close enough that it looks simple on a map and busy enough during the run that reaching the gates is worth settling separately.

How Much Time Should You Allow?

A first-time visitor should allow at least four to six hours. The grounds are large, and walking between Big Tex, the midway, livestock areas, food stands, and Fair Park buildings takes longer than the map may suggest. Families using rides or attending a Cotton Bowl game may need most of the day.

So, Yes, Texas Does Have a State Fair

You’ll find a 25,000-pound cowboy who began life as a Santa Claus in a small town east of Corsicana, a fried food competition that treats novelty as a discipline, an art deco park most visitors cross and never look at, and several thousand teenagers showing livestock a short walk from a Ferris wheel.

Whether that adds up to a great day out or a very strange one depends largely on your tolerance for crowds. Most Texans have decided it’s both.