Minnesota State Fair Trivia
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This MN State Fair trivia quiz has 48 free questions with answers and covers the Great Minnesota Get-Together from its territorial beginnings in 1854 to the two-million-visitor Augusts of today. It takes in the fairgrounds in Falcon Heights and how they were chosen, the six years the fair was cancelled, Teddy Roosevelt's big stick, Dan Patch Avenue, the Princess Kay butter heads, Sweet Martha's cookie buckets, Pronto Pups and cheese curds, the Giant Slide, Ye Old Mill, the Space Tower, the Grandstand and its cat video festival, Machinery Hill, crop art, Fairchild and Fairborne, and the bull that charged a fire hydrant. Early questions are for anyone who has stood in a Sweet Martha's line. Later ones are for the people who go every one of the twelve days: what the fair used to be called, when it stopped taking state money, and where the old carousel ended up. Use it for a Minnesota trivia night, a State Fair road-trip warm-up or a classroom unit on the state. Every answer has been checked against a documented source shown under the explanation.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the fair's famous slogan?
The Great Minnesota Get-Together
The Great Minnesota Get-Together fits: no US state fair draws more visitors per day, though one rival that runs twice as long beats its total.
Q 02The fairgrounds sit in which small city between Saint Paul and Minneapolis?
Falcon Heights
Falcon Heights gave the fair neutral ground: Saint Paul and Minneapolis each fought to be its permanent home, and the poster for the first fair there diplomatically promised a show 'between' the two.
Q 03The fair runs for twelve days each year and always ends on which holiday?
Labor Day
Labor Day closes the fair, the day before most Minnesota children go back to school; it opens twelve days earlier partly to stay clear of the county fairs that feed it.
Q 04Roughly how many people attended the 2019 fair, a record that still stood in 2026?
2.1 million
2.1 million (2,126,551) came through the gates in 2019; the next fair was cancelled outright, and the fairs of 2024 to 2026 each stopped short of two million.
Q 05The first fair was held in 1859, a year after which Minnesota milestone?
Statehood was granted
Statehood was granted in 1858, but fairs had already been held in Minnesota Territory, staged to show off its farms and lure new settlers.
Q 06Before its 1885 permanent site, the fair had been held in which of these Greater Minnesota cities?
Rochester
Rochester took several turns, and Red Wing, Winona and Owatonna hosted too: the early fair changed towns almost yearly, and the roaming shows proved hard to organise and often thinly attended.
Q 07What had the fair's permanent fairgrounds been before the fair moved in for good?
The Ramsey County Poor Farm
The Ramsey County Poor Farm was a gift: the county donated its 210-acre farm, ending decades in which the fair wandered from town to town.
Q 08Which vice president told a Minnesota State Fair crowd in 1901 to 'speak softly and carry a big stick'?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt, then vice president, delivered the "big stick" line at the fair on 2 September 1901; twelve days later McKinley died and Roosevelt became president.
Q 09Dan Patch Avenue on the fairgrounds is named for what?
A champion pacer horse
A champion pacer horse, Dan Patch never lost a race; rivals so often refused to face him that he mostly ran against the clock, pacing an unofficial record 1:55 mile at the fair in 1906.
Q 10Why was the fair cancelled in 1945 and then again in 1946?
Fuel shortage, then polio
Fuel shortage, then polio: wartime shortages and travel limits scrapped 1945 and a polio epidemic 1946, so the 1947 comeback fair doubled as the Pronto Pup's debut.
Q 11What title goes to the winner of Minnesota's statewide dairy ambassador competition, crowned at the fair?
Princess Kay of the Milky Way
Princess Kay of the Milky Way is crowned the night before the fair opens, when the outgoing princess hands her crown to one of ten county dairy princesses.
Q 12Each dairy finalist has her likeness carved from a 90-pound block of what?
Butter
Butter: each finalist sits for about six hours in a glass-walled cooler kept near 40 degrees while her likeness is carved, and the princesses take the finished heads home.
Q 13One long-running fair booth sells unlimited refills of which drink for a single price?
Milk
Q 21On the Giant Slide, riders slide down the fibreglass hill sitting on what?
Burlap sacks
Burlap sacks are the only vehicle: riders climb 100 steps to the top of the five-storey Giant Slide, a fixture since 1969, sit on one and let gravity do the rest.
Q 22Which sport ended a run of nearly a century at the fair's Grandstand in 2002?
Auto racing
Auto racing circled the Grandstand track from 1907 until 2002, when the bleachers came down in a remodel that left the venue to concerts.
Q 23Which Walker Art Center event did the Grandstand host in 2013?
The Internet Cat Video Festival
Milk, white or chocolate, pours without limit at the All-You-Can-Drink Milk stand: Minnesota's dairy farmers back it to promote what they produce, and most of the people filling the cups are volunteers.
Q 14Sweet Martha's, the fair's biggest vendor, sells its chocolate chip cookies in what?
Buckets
Buckets heaped as high as the cookies will stack are Sweet Martha's signature; so many topple off that the pavement nearby is soon dotted with trampled cookies.
Q 15Which Twin Cities landmark hosted the state fair in 1860 and again in 1863?
Fort Snelling
Fort Snelling was out of the army's hands when the fair came in 1860, sold off as surplus to a private buyer; by the fair's return in 1863 it was back in service, training Civil War recruits.
Q 16The fair's Pronto Pup was invented in the 1930s at rainy Rockaway Beach, a seaside town in which state?
Oregon
Oregon: the story goes that a downpour ruined vendor George Boyington's hot dog buns, so he devised a batter 'bun' that could be cooked on the spot around a dog on a stick.
Q 17What are fresh cheese curds nicknamed because of how they feel against the teeth?
Squeaky cheese
Squeaky cheese earns the name from the springy protein structure of fresh curds, which rubs against the teeth; the squeak fades within about a day, so it doubles as a freshness test.
Q 18Which Minnesota comfort food went on a stick as a new fair food in 2006?
Hotdish
Hotdish, the Upper Midwest's church-supper casserole, went on a stick in 2006 and has stayed: it is one of about 80 fair foods now sold skewered.
Q 19Which insects were blamed for thinning the fair's exhibits and crowds in the mid-1870s?
Grasshoppers
Grasshoppers devoured Minnesota's crops from 1874 to 1876, leaving farmers with little to exhibit, and were blamed for keeping crowds away from the 1875 fair.
Q 20The fair's oldest existing ride, opened in 1915, is a 'tunnel of love' style boat ride called what?
Ye Old Mill
Ye Old Mill has drifted boats through its dark tunnel since 1915, and four generations of the Keenan family worked it, helping riders in and out of the boats.
The Internet Cat Video Festival, begun by the Walker Art Center in 2012, moved to the Grandstand in 2013 with Grumpy Cat among the guests and a Golden Kitty as top prize.
Q 24For decades Machinery Hill, now the fair's North End, was given over to displays of what?
Farm equipment
Farm equipment once covered 80 acres of Machinery Hill, shown by 100 manufacturers, until implement dealers left for specialist farm shows and the area was reborn as the North End.
Q 25The fair's crop art competition requires artwork made from what?
Plant matter that grows in Minnesota
Plant matter that grows in Minnesota is the only medium allowed, so artists glue seeds, stems and petals to a board, grain by grain, to build up their mosaic pictures.
Q 26The fair's mascot Fairchild is what kind of animal?
A gopher
A gopher suits the Gopher State and nods to the University of Minnesota's Goldy; Fairchild has worn a barker's straw hat and striped jacket since his 1966 debut.
Q 27Which body governs the fair and has care and control of its fairgrounds?
The Minnesota State Agricultural Society
The Minnesota State Agricultural Society runs the fair: delegates from county fairs and statewide farm groups meet each January to elect its board of managers.
Q 28For decades the fair's livestock arena, the Coliseum, spent its winters as a venue for which sport?
Ice hockey
Ice hockey took over the Coliseum each winter from the mid-1970s, when a rink went in, until falling demand and worn-out ice-making gear ended it in 2014 and left the arena to its livestock shows.
Q 29The Hippodrome, replaced by the Lee & Rose Warner Coliseum, was damaged in World War II while used as what?
A propeller plant
A propeller plant run by the A.O. Smith Corporation filled the Hippodrome for two years of the war; afterwards the building was judged not worth restoring and torn down.
Q 30In June 1910 the fairgrounds hosted Minnesota's first what?
Airplane flight
Airplane flight reached Minnesota at the Twin City Aviation Meet on the fairgrounds, and flying exhibitions stayed on the fair's bill for years afterwards.