The Greatest, Most Interesting Moments In Ohio State Fair History

Updated: July 7, 2026

Ohio has held a state fair for more than 170 years now, so it’s steeped in history and nostalgia.

Cincinnati hosted the first fair in 1850. The state’s Board of Agriculture wanted to have it the year before but had to cancel their plans due to a cholera epidemic. The fair’s location hopped around until 1874, when the Board made Columbus its permanent home; it moved to the present Ohio Expo Center grounds in 1886.

Let’s dive in and take a look at the best scenes and moments from the Ohio State Fair:

Ohio shows you can actually deep fry anything.

Seriously, anything.

The butter cow name game comes back!

In 2014, the fair brought back the naming contest for the infamous butter cow sculpture after 15 years. The naming contest goes back to the 1980s, but the butter cow itself dates back to 1903. Other butter sculptures joined the cow over the years, and they change each fair, with a big reveal right before opening day. Ohio Magazine explored the history of the beloved butter cow in the most Ohio profile ever.

The fair flips the switch on the future.

In 1896, the Ohio State Fair lit up with electric lighting and showed off a horseless carriage, putting the future on display years before most Ohioans had either one at home.

The fair goes dark for the war.

The fair has run nearly every year since 1850, with one big exception. From 1942 to 1945 the Board canceled it and handed the fairgrounds to the U.S. War Department, which used the site to repair aircraft and store equipment until the war was over.

A view of the SkyGlider in 2010 as the evening sets in over the fairgrounds.

The SkyGlider at the Ohio State Fair is one of the longest portable sky rides in the world, and it stretches for half a mile. The Huffington Post named the Ohio’s fair one of “America’s Best State Fairs” in 2014, noting the SkyGlider as a selling point.

The Giant Slide majestically towers over fairgoers.

This slide stretches 144 ft. long. You have to climb 105 steps to top. After making the climb with your burlap sack, the fun begins.

A baby lamb lounges on its throne of hay.

The fair has a variety of competitions, including for agriculture and livestock. You can see sheep, rabbits, cattle, and even dogs. This lamb looks pretty confident.

Christina Aguilera comes on over to the fair.

Christina Aguilera performed at the fair in 2000, a sold-out show at the Celeste Center on her debut tour. By then she’d already put out “Genie in a Bottle,” “Reflection,” and “What a Girl Wants.”

The head honcho tries to save our youth from the gay agenda.

Gov. George Voinovich appointed Billy Inmon to run the fair in 1992. Inmon tried to prevent the Stonewall Union from having a booth at the fair, where the LGBTQ rights group had set up for years. On religious grounds, he’d decided they’d corrupt the fair’s youth. (The attorney general’s office stepped in and the booth stayed.) The rest of his run went about as badly: prices up, concessionaires slashed, the whole fair millions in the red. The fair board fired him days after the gates closed, on an 8 to 1 vote.

Wheel of Fortune brings its high-stakes game to Ohio.

The popular game show taped at the  Ohio State Fair in 1983. The first show aired in 1975 and aired solely as a daytime show for years. The night time syndicated version of the show debuted in September 1983. 

The Ohio EPA has an oil spill exhibit because of all the pollution.

In 1977, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency set up an exhibit to publicize their clean-up program, so people would know they could report spills, and the EPA had the equipment to respond. The Columbus Dispatch reported the EPA had responded to more than 1,000 spills the previous year, nearly 500 oil spills and 560 other hazardous chemical spills, throughout Ohio. Remember, the Cuyahoga River literally caught fire in 1969. 

 The 1970s served as the EPA’s formative years. President Nixon created the EPA in 1970, and Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972.

Ohio Gov. James Rhodes gets pied by a protester.  

Gov. Rhodes loved and regularly attended the state fair. But in 1977, someone managed to pull a banana cream pie out of a brown paper bag and throw it at the governor, hitting him in the face and shoulder.  

The pie-thrower belonged to a group of protesters who “disrupted” the fair’s opening, the New York Times reported. The demonstrators opposed plans to build a gymnasium at Kent State University near the area where four students were killed, and nine wounded, after the Governor sent in the National Guard to break up anti-war protests.

John Glenn signs autographs for his Ohio fans.

Former NASA astronaut John Glenn stopped by the fair in 1974 during his campaign for the U.S. Senate. He tried to run in 1970 but lost in the Democratic primary. He won in 1974, though, and went on to serve four consecutive terms as one of Ohio’s senators. Before he became an astronaut with NASA, he served as an aviator in the Marines Corps. 

The Jackson 5 comes to Columbus to teach us the ABCs.

Before Michael Jackson became the King of Pop and shed his afro for his signature mane, the family came to entertain at the fair. The Jackson 5 performed at the fair on August 31, 1973.

Ohioans narrowly avoid a folk band’s evil communist agenda.

The Weavers were set to appear at the Ohio State Fair in 1951. Then Governor Frank Lausche asked the FBI for information on the band. The band got caught up in the “Red Scare,” as anti-communist sentiment targeted them, and television and radio blacklisted them. A “Red Channels” pamphlet released in 1950 listed band member Pete Seeger as a communist. 

Smokey Bear comes to the fair.

The U.S. Forest Service created Smokey the Bear in 1944, making him the mascot for a campaign to prevent wildfires. In 1959, Smokey became a permanent fixture at the Ohio State Fair. 

The “real” Smokey came about in the 1950s, after the creation of the fictional character. After firefighters rescued a bear cub from a forest fire in New Mexico, they named him Smokey. They found the little cub clinging to a tree. The cub initially went by “Hotfoot Teddy,” but they renamed him in honor of the fictional Smokey. 

Smokey ended up at the National Zoo in Washington D.C., and the folks at the Forest Service capitalized on the attention the little guy received to promote its campaign.

A day the fair will never forget.

On opening day in 2017, the Fire Ball ride broke apart mid-swing. Eighteen-year-old Tyler Jarrell was killed and several other riders were hurt. Then-Gov. John Kasich called it the worst tragedy in the fair’s history, and the ride type was pulled from fairs across the country while investigators looked into what had failed. It remains the fair’s darkest day.

The fair has carried on, as it has since 1850. The 2026 run is July 29 through August 9 at the Ohio Expo Center. For a look further back, our vintage Ohio State Fair photos are a trip through the decades.

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