Sixty years ago, the Tennessee State Fair bounced back with livestock, fireworks and shows featuring a “porpoise circus” and high-diving daredevils, one year after a fire started in a pancake and sausage booth and caused over $12 million in damage to the Nashville fairgrounds.
“We’re opening up strong,” Tennessean reporter Tom Ingram quoted fair manager Cliff Andrews as saying. “We’ve got everything we had last year and a whole lot more.”
The 10-day festival, which ran from September 17 through 27, featured time-honored fair traditions such as livestock shows, rides and deep-fried food.
A few of the free variety shows on the “Million Dollar Midway,” however, are harder to imagine showing up on a 2026 event program: racing monkeys (no further explanation
given), “exotic dancers” from Las Vegas, and a show called “Beauty and the Beast,” put on by a married couple who claimed to have recently escaped communist Cuba under gunfire and in which a woman was apparently turned into a gorilla.
“I can’t explain (that) one to you,” Ingram quoted Andrews as saying. “You’ll just have to see it to believe it.”
That opportunity, unfortunately, has come and gone.
Nashville dismissed its elementary and high school students to let them explore the fair, with half the student body visiting on Monday and the other on Tuesday.
Bob Major, a 10-year-old from northwest Nashville, was among the hordes of happy children who descended on the fair.
Armed with a $5 bill, a little over $50 in terms of 2026 purchasing power, Major tore across the fair with Tennessean reporter Frank Sutherland in tow.
“Bob’s first stop was a haunted house ride. The only time he slowed down was to get his change” Sutherland reported in the Sept. 20, 1966, issue. “Much to the dismay of the reporter, his photographer, and Bob’s relatives, the boy then bolted out of sight.”
One hour and seven minutes later, Bob had spent his $5, plus another $1 his parents gave him.
“Tired relatives and the reporter and photographer were glad it was gone,” Sutherland reported.
The state fair was held in Nashville from 1906 through 2019, when the Tennessee State Fair Commission, citing the need for more space, voted to move to the Wilson County Fairgrounds in Lebanon. With this shift, they also moved the traditional mid-September dates to mid-August.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: The Tennessee State Fair thrilled Nashville 60 years ago
