Midway memories
Old State House Museum celebrates 80 years of the State Fair by giving it its own exhibit.
It’s a Thursday afternoon in late September, and Old State House Museum director Bill Gatewood and curator Jo Ellen Maack are sifting through items in the museum’s storage facility off LaHarpe Boulevard in Little Rock.
This place is like Arkansas’ attic, albeit with better lighting and no cobwebs. Furniture, documents, paintings, posters, an electric chair or two … if it has to do with Arkansas history it’s probably around here somewhere.
Gatewood and Maack are perusing some of the ephemera that will make up “80 Blue Ribbon Years: Cotton to Cattle,” an Old State House Museum exhibit that opened Saturday and is dedicated to the Arkansas State Fair, which turns 80 this year and runs from Friday-Oct. 20.
The show takes visitors from the early days of the fair to the construction of Barton Coliseum and serves as a sort of precursor to a much larger 2020 Old State House exhibit featuring memorabilia from the coliseum.
“We wanted to commemorate the 80th edition of the State Fair, so we are having what is essentially a preview of a bigger show that is coming in 2020,” Gatewood says. “We’ll have artifacts from the collection including printed materials and photographs. It’s all really neat.”
The exhibit, guest-curated by Jim Ross, University of Arkansas Little Rock associate professor of history, will also tell the story behind the Arkansas State Livestock Show Association, Maack says.
Right alongside the current fair exhibit, “Our Fair Ladies,” featuring gowns and pageant attire worn by rodeo and fair queens, will
open for its second year. Both exhibits will be up through next spring.
The “80 Blue Ribbon Years: Cotton to Cattle” exhibit began to take root when Old State House officials approached Doug White, the new president and general manager of the Arkansas State Fairgrounds, about taking over that organization’s collection, which includes memorabilia and artifacts from a small display at Barton Coliseum.
It’s nothing unusual for the State House crew, who have done similar takeovers for the Arkansas State Police Museum and the museum of the Arkansas Department of Correction.
White had heard about the Old State House’s work from Joan Warren, a longtime volunteer and fair pageant director.
“She mentioned how wonderful the Old State House Museum had been for her in working on the ‘Our Fair Ladies’ exhibit,” White says. “Joan had established a relationship with them and thought it would be great if we could do an entire exhibit on the rich history of the State Fair. I thought it was a great idea. The gravitas of being associated with the Old State House was not lost on me.”
At the same time, White wanted to do something with items in the small museum space inside Barton Coliseum dedicated to the history of the venue.
“It was 400 square feet,” he says. “It couldn’t possibly incorporate all of the things that had happened at the State Fair, and it primarily focused on the music acts and concerts that had been there. I always thought there needed to be something bigger and better than that.”
Once all the paperwork was in place and the various boards gave their approval, Maack and her staff of three began hauling items from the coliseum at the State Fairgrounds over to the Old State House storage space.
“We were out there crawling under the bowels of Barton Coliseum,” Maack says with a laugh.
Gatewood describes the storage area at the coliseum as “a series of rooms under the seating. It was like a dungeon, with concrete walls, storage shelves and whatnot. That’s where they kept their supplies as well as the artifacts.”
The move took place over the summer, by the way.
“We had to do it in June, July and August,” Maack says. “It was hot and humid and not the best time to do anything, really.”
By the end, they had moved more than 2,000 items.
“We had no idea there were this many artifacts,” Maack says.
★★★
The first Arkansas State Fair was organized by the Arkansas State Agricultural and Mechanical Association and held in Little Rock on Nov. 17-20, 1868, according to The Central Arkansas Library System Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
The State Fair Association was incorporated in 1881, and the fair was held on East Ninth Street in Little Rock. In 1906, the fair moved to Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs and stayed there until 1914, according to a timeline from the Old State House. There was no fair from 1915-1917, but it did resurface in 1918 for one year in Jonesboro. By the ’20s, it was back in Little Rock. The Great Depression kept the fair shuttered from 1931-’37.
The fair as we know it today was started because of livestock.
By the late 1930s, a study by the University of Arkansas Agricultural Cooperative Extension Services showed that raising livestock would help the state’s farm economy grow. To promote the idea, the first Arkansas Livestock Show was held Nov. 9-13, 1938, on 20 acres at what was then Fifth and Smothers streets in North Little Rock. The Arkansas Livestock Show Association was also formed by El Dorado oilman Thomas H. Barton.
The next year, with the date moved to October, organizers brought in cowboy movie star Roy Rogers to boost attendance, which began a tradition of featuring celebrities that continues today (Rogers returned several times, and appeared with his wife, Dale Evans, in 1967 and 1970).
A fire destroyed the North Little Rock fairgrounds in 1941, and the next fair wasn’t until 1944 in Pine Bluff, according to the Old State House timeline. World War II forced the fair’s cancellation in 1945.
In 1945, a permanent site was established south of Roosevelt Road in Little Rock. Today the fairgrounds, which include Barton Coliseum, have spread to 135 acres.
Construction began on the 6,750-seat coliseum, named for Thomas H. Barton, in 1948. The 1949 rodeo was held there, even though the roof wasn’t finished, according to the Old State House. The coliseum was completed in 1952.
Photos of the building under construction are part of the current show, Maack says.
★★★
Maack is flipping through fair programs from over the years.
“I love this,” she says, selecting one from the ’50s with an ad for the musical Goin’ Places. “Back then, the entertainment was Broadway musicals.”
Later, she is standing in front of an ornately engraved leather saddle presented to the 1966 Rodeo Queen. The same saddle has been awarded to the new queen every year since then, Maack says.
(Not this year, however, as there is no rodeo on the fair schedule.)
Maack and Gatewood are still combing through the concert posters, signed instruments and other memorabilia from the coliseum and the State Fair, but they are also on the lookout for any other fair or Barton Coliseum-related goodies that might be shoved
in a drawer or stashed in a closet.
“We would love to use this opportunity of this exhibit to solicit additional donations of artifacts to augment this already substantial collection,” Gatewood says.
And there could easily not have been a collection at all, Maack says, but the fair association thankfully had an eye toward posterity.
“We’re really appreciative for what they have saved so far. You have got to admire them. There is so much history out there. It’s such a large part of the lives of so many people.”