Everything on a Stick: The Magic of the Minnesota State Fair

Fried food on a stick, carnival rides, concerts, and community—you can find these at just about every state fair across the country. But all-you-can-drink milk, a butter sculpture of Princess Kay of the Milky Way, and mosaic art crafted from local seeds and grains? This can be none other than the Minnesota State Fair.

While Minnesota may fly under the radar nationally (perhaps vaguely familiar for its frigidly cold winters or for being the home state of Prince), its defining annual event, the State Fair, is worth getting to know. Held in St. Paul every summer for the 12 days leading up to Labor Day, it draws around two million visitors each year and celebrates all things uniquely Minnesotan—its farming heritage, its hearty Midwestern fare, and its creative and entrepreneurial residents. As a native Minnesotan, I’ve come to appreciate the repeat highlights of the fair—those things worth visiting year after year (and now worth introducing to my children). If you’re not able to make it for a visit this year, read on for a taste of the Great Minnesota Get-Together.

Fair Fare

For starters, no fair trip would be complete without sampling the perennial food highlights: roasted sweet corn, fried cheese curds, the corn dog-adjacent Pronto Pup, and a bucket of hot, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies–stacked as high as the laws of physics allow–from Sweet Martha’s Cookie Jar.

The perfect accompaniment for chocolate chip cookies is milk, and it should come as no surprise that the beverage of choice at the State Fair is all-you-can-drink milk. It’s just $3 for a 12-ounce cup: choose either white milk or chocolate milk and have it refilled as many times as your stomach will allow. The stand is celebrating its 70th year at the fair, showing just how deep Minnesota’s dairy roots run.

Another quirky celebration of Minnesota’s dairy obsession—the annual live butter carving in the Dairy Building, wherein a 90-pound block of locally produced butter is carved into the likeness of the yearly-crowned Princess Kay of the Milky Way (who serves as a Minnesota dairy ambassador during her reign). The butter sculpting takes place inside a rotating refrigerated case, and is worth seeing in person—because why else are you at the Fair if not for live butter sculpting (perhaps while enjoying a malt from the nearby Dairy Goodness Bar)?

Fair food is a main event for most, with the hotly anticipated list of new fair foods dropping in July—enough time for diehard fans to strategize how to allot their budget and stomach space. This year’s most oddball new foods included dill pickle iced tea, chicken fried bacon fries, hot honey jalapeno popper donuts, and the Uncrustaburger (a cheeseburger sandwiched between deep fried peanut butter and jelly Uncrustables). Past concoctions have included deep fried ranch (2024), lutefisk steamed buns (2023), and a deep fried pickle stuffed bratwurst (2019).

Farm Fun

In between bites, there’s also plenty to explore. The Fair, which first started in 1859, was originally intended to highlight the state’s farming and agricultural industries, and it still honors that heritage today. The Miracle of Birth Center gives visitors an up close and personal look at baby animals —visitors might catch a live animal birth, pet a newborn farm animal or watch just-hatched chicks get their bearings. For additional animal immersion, there are educational exhibits on pigs, cows, goats, and sheep and daily animal exhibitions, including bull riding and horse jumping. If visiting the livestock buildings on a hot summer day seems too pungent an experience, perhaps the Agriculture Horticulture building, which houses the longest green bean, largest rutabaga, and finest specimens of Savoy cabbage (among many other plant superlatives) might be worth a peek.

Blue Ribbon Talent

The fair also honors Minnesotans’ creative and artistic sides, with blue ribbons awarded for fine arts like painting, print making, and photography, creative activities like quilting, jam and pickle making, and baking (including uber-specific categories like dark bundt cakes, lemon poppyseed muffins, or beer bread made with Minnesota craft beer), and the rather niche crafty categories of decorated Christmas trees, scarecrows, and crop art using seeds, stems, and grains (only from crops grown in state, of course).

While a day spent at the fair is an invitation for sensory overload—there are jostling crowds, flashing carnival lights, and an overabundance of fried food—it’s an unforgettable experience, and a timeless tradition for those lucky enough to experience it.