Updated: July 28, 2026
The Ohio State Fair has been running for more than 170 years. It started in 1850 as a modest agricultural show meant to promote Ohio farming, and the first one wasn’t even in Columbus. It ran for three days down in Cincinnati. Since then it’s grown into one of the biggest state fairs in the country, drawing more than a million people to the Ohio Expo Center for the rides, the food, the grandstand concerts, and the livestock barns that have always been its backbone.
From horse-drawn plows and prize hogs to butter sculptures and celebrity headliners, the fair has changed with the times and picked up plenty of memorable moments along the way. These old snapshots and postcards are the next best thing to a time machine.
In 1906, the fair’s star attraction was a man steering an airship over the crowd.
In 1906, Augustus Roy Knabenshue took to the skies in his Toledo II airship, circling the Administration Building and mesmerizing early 20th-century fairgoers.
A 1911 postcard captures fairgoers paying the fifty-cent admission.
Another postcard from 1907 shows the Cattle Pavilion. Fire has torn through the fairgrounds’ livestock buildings more than once. In October 1972, flames destroyed three connected cattle barns during the American Dairy Show, killing three head of cattle and nearly everything the exhibitors had brought with them.
The Grandstand, pictured in a 1906 postcard, and the Art Gallery from the 1908 State Fair, offer glimpses into the fair’s architectural history. These structures provided spaces for gathering and celebrating Ohio’s artistic talents.
These 32-foot-tall, 100-foot-wide letters went up in 1966 for $40,000, and they greeted everyone who drove in for decades. Along the way they even changed colors, repainted red-and-white for the 1976 Bicentennial and teal-and-magenta for Ameriflora in 1993, before coming down in 2002.
Next, check out the flags waving in the breeze, each one representing an Ohio county.
The flags carry a line most Ohioans know by heart. The state’s tourism office coined “Ohio, the Heart of It All” in 1984, and it stuck around long enough to end up on just about everything, the fair included.
Now, who could forget the thrills of the Giant Slide?
This towering yellow slide, standing three stories high, made its debut in 1969. The photo perfectly captures the joy and excitement as both kids and adults zipped down this iconic ride.
T-shirt vendors were always a hit, and this snapshot shows visitors browsing through a sea of tees, including gems like Andy Gibb and Grease shirts. Oh to be a fly on the wall of a booth of the fair in the 1970s.
The Sky Glider offered a bird’s-eye view of the fairgrounds, and this photo captures a unique perspective.
Spot the McDonald’s Grandstand, sponsored by the fast-food giant from 1986 to 1989, as well as the bustling activity below, with crowds weaving through food trucks and vendor booths.
An aerial shot of the Midway in 1979 has vendors slinging everything from lemon shakes to steak burgers, with the Grandstand and a Kentucky Fried Chicken sign anchoring the skyline.
One of the more unusual attractions was the horse diving show.
Imagine a horse, sometimes with a monkey on its back, diving from a 30-foot platform into an 8-foot tank of water. This act, part of Hall & Christ Showtime, sparked quite a bit of controversy and eventually led to scrutiny by the Capital Area Humane Society.
Smokey the Bear headlined the Natural Resources exhibit in 1972, doing his usual work of scaring a generation of kids straight about forest fires.
The fair has been a summer fixture in Ohio for more than 170 years. The 2026 run is July 29 through August 9 at the Ohio Expo Center, and when you go, keep an eye out for the pieces that have outlasted the decades, like the big yellow slide. Have fun out there.
To start planning your trip to the Ohio State Fair, head over to ohiostatefair.com.
