Star Tribune
Why is the Minnesota State Fair 12 days?
The Wisconsin State Fair is 11 days long. So is the Iowa State Fair. In North Dakota, the event lasts nine days. In South Dakota, just five.
So how did Minnesota come to outdo its neighbors, with a get-together running a full 12 days?
Reader Jasmine Snow asked Curious Minnesota, the Star Tribune’s reader-powered reporting project, to figure out why the Minnesota State Fair is so long. Snow, a former Star Tribune intern, said the question came to her while she was working at the newspaper.
“I’m from South Dakota, actually, and so the state fairs that we have here aren’t as cool,” Snow said. “And looking into it, I hadn’t found other state fairs that were as long.”
(Yes, the State Fair of Texas is 24 days long — that’s another story.)
Minnesota didn’t have a 12-day State Fair until 1975. Until that year, the fair lasted between three and 11 days, said Keri Huber, an archivist with the Minnesota State Fair.
As the fair’s popularity grew, so did the length of the event.
“There was a request for more and more days to extend it, especially for it to last two weekends,” Huber said.
The Minnesota State Fair began as the Minnesota Territorial Fair in 1855, and lasted two or three days until 1857. The fair was governed by the Minnesota Territorial Agricultural Society and included agricultural exhibits such as grain, vegetables and livestock, as well as competitions. About 2,000 people attended each year, Huber said.
At that time, agriculture was just getting established in Minnesota, said Kate Roberts, director of exhibits for the Minnesota Historical Society.
“It was important for the movers and shakers of the Twin Cities to try to convince immigrants and folks to move to Minnesota because it is a great place to be a farmer,” Roberts said.
Over time, other features were added to the fair, including live entertainment, retail, rides and other attractions.
But agriculture is still featured throughout the fairgrounds, in spaces such as the livestock barns and the Agriculture Horticulture Building, which hosts the popular crop art competition.
“I think the key to the fair’s success over time is that it has stayed true to its roots,” Roberts said. “But it is also adapted as trends changed over time.”
After a one-year hiatus due to a lack of funds in 1858 — the year Minnesota became a state — the fair returned in 1859 as the Minnesota State Fair. In 1885, the first year it was held at the permanent fairgrounds in Ramsey County, the fair ran for six days. Over time, the length gradually increased until it reached 12 days.
The fair didn’t end on Labor Day until 1939. Huber said that having the fair last until the September holiday gave more opportunities for children to attend before heading back to school.
Labor Day weekend has become an increasingly popular time to attend the fair, and Huber said it’s the “unofficial end of the summer for Minnesota.”
Although there have been requests to extend the fair past 12 days, she said, it isn’t feasible because vendors participate in other state fairs and need time for travel and setup.
The change in the fair’s length has also changed the planning process. Huber said once the fair ends, officials start to look ahead at what to do better for the next year’s fair. From contracting entertainment artists to renting buildings, it takes a whole year to plan the highly-anticipated event.
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“I honestly think he used to understand how tariffs work,” Cuban said. “Back in the 90s and early 2000s, he was a little bit coherent when he talked about trade policy and he actually made a little bit of sense. But I don’t know what happened to him.”
Speaking in Pittsburgh on Thursday, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, pushed back against the Harris campaign’s claims that tariffs would hurt the economy. Vance described the tariffs as a way of discouraging imports and boosting American manufacturing.
“If you are a business, and you rely on foreign slave labor at $3 a day, the only way to rebuild American manufacturing is to say, if you want to bring that product made by slave labor back into the United States of America, you’re going to pay a big fat tariff before you get it back into our country,” Vance said.
Back in Wisconsin, Amara Marshell, freshman at UW-La Crosse, said she showed up to support Harris because she is concerned about what a second Trump presidency could mean for reproductive rights. Like her friend, sophomore Avery Black, Marshell is also excited about the possibility of electing the nation’s first female president.
“Women deserve to have power over their own bodies,” Marshell said. “We shouldn’t have to not be able to get an abortion just because of a president.”
Mary Holman, an 80-year-old retiree from Fort Atkinson, Wis., said she hasn’t been to a rally since former President Barack Obama’s first campaign in 2008. But Holman said she decided to get off the sidelines this cycle because she views the election as a fight to preserve democracy.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will auction off state lands in popular northern counties next month.
The public land — in Aitkin, Cook, Itasca, and St. Louis counties — will go up for sale during the Department of Natural Resource’s annual online public land sale from Nov. 7 to 21.
“These rural and lakeshore properties may appeal to adjacent landowners or offer recreational opportunities such as space for a small cabin or camping,” the DNR said in a statement.
Properties will be available for bidding Nov. 7 through Nov. 21.
This all can trim for print: The properties include:
40 acres in Aitkin County, with a minimum bid of $85,000
44 acres in Cook County, minimum bid $138,000
1.9 acres in Itasca County, minimum bid $114,000
Minneapolis city officials say razor wire, concrete barriers and fencing will be removed from around the former Third Precinct police station – which was set ablaze by protesters after George Floyd’s police killing – in the next three weeks. The burned-out vestibule will be removed within three months with construction fencing to be erected closer to the building.
This week, Minneapolis City Council members have expressed frustration that four years after the protests culminated in a fire at the police station, the charred building still stands and has become a “prop” some conservatives use to rail against city leadership. Most recently, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance made a stop outside the building and criticized Gov. Tim Walz’s handling of the 2020 riots.
On Thursday, the council voted 8-3 to approve a resolution calling for “immediate cleanup, remediation, and beautification of the 3000 Minnehaha site including but not limited to the removal of fencing, jersey barriers, barbed wire, and all other exterior blight.”
Council Member Robin Wonsley said the city needs to acknowledge that many police officers stationed in the Third Precinct “waged racist and violent actions” against residents for decades.
Council Member Aurin Chowdhury said the council wants the building cleaned up and beautified “immediately.”
“We cannot allow for this corner to be a backdrop for those who wish to manipulate the trauma of our city for political gain,” Chowdhury said.
Council Member Katie Cashman said the council shouldn’t be divided by “right-wing figures posing in front of the Third Precinct and pandering to conservative interests.”
“It’s really important for us to stay united in our goal, to achieve rehabilitation of this site in a way that advances racial healing and acknowledgement of the past trauma in this community, and to not let those figures divide us here,” she said.
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