Why does Oklahoma have the Oklahoma State Fair in Oklahoma City and another State Fair in Tulsa? The answer begins with agriculture, not Ferris wheels. In this episode of Red Dirt and Round Bales, Dave Deken traces Tulsa’s fair tradition from an early community fair through the International Dry Farming Congress, Oklahoma’s 1915 Free Fair Law and a statewide system that encouraged agricultural competition from township to county to state-level events. The history also includes segregated fairs created by Black Oklahomans excluded from white institutions. Tulsa’s fairgrounds later gained its Art Deco Pavilion, formal state-fair status and the giant petroleum exposition building alongside the Golden Driller. Beneath today’s midway is more than a century of Oklahomans gathering to compare what they raised, grew and built.