BIG TEX, BIGGER STAR

Fair Park, home to the 1936 Texas Centennial and the annual Texas State Fair, offers visitors eight museums, six performance facilities, the country’s largest collection of Art Deco exposition buildings, and a year-round schedule of festivals, fairs, markets, and sporting events. The two hundred and seventy-seven acre complex just east of downtown Dallas has attained National Historic Landmark status. Broadway shows play at Fair Park’s Music Hall and rivalries like the Texas-Oklahoma college football games battle it out at the Cotton Bowl. The Museum of Natural History with its dinosaurs displayed in realistic dioramas, the Women’s Museum, the Age of Steam Railroad Museum with its 27 restored train engines and cars, and the African American Museum are all located on Fair Park grounds. The Texas State Fair, held every year, brings with it over three million visitors, food, livestock shows, entertainment, the 52-foot-tall cowboy figure known as “Big Tex”, and the largest Ferris wheel in this hemisphere – the Texas Star.

The Fair Park Texas Centennial Buildings were designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.