The Lone Star Fair of 1852

The First State Fair

Henry Kinney, founder of Corpus Christi, made a fortune when Zachary Taylor's army was here. But in 1851, he was looking for a way to attract immigrants who would buy some of his thousands of acres. He decided to hold the Lone Star Fair, partly to honor Corpus Christi's incorporation as a city.

Kinney distributed thousands of handbills advertising the fair; he expected 20,000 people to attend. The fair opened on May 1, 1852. A reporter wrote that 2,000 strangers were in town to see horse races, bull fights, and cock-fighting. Maltby's Circus put on nightly performances to an audience of frontiersmen, Indians, vaqueros, gamblers, and gun-slingers.

An exhibition hall displayed saddles, bridles, blankets, agricultural and livestock exhibits. An award for the finest cotton went to Kinney's wife Mary, for cotton grown on the Oso. Gail Borden (who would later invent condensed milk) won a prize for his meat biscuit. People who would become famous in Texas history attended the fair, such as Rip Ford, Sally Skull, Legs Lewis, and Capt. Richard King.

Still, the fair and its promotion had a lasting impact. Immigrants attracted here in 1852 became some of this region's most influential settlers, here in Corpus Christi, and especially in the sheep country of the Nueces Valley. Richard King, who owned a string of riverboats on the Rio Grande with his partner Mifflin Kenedy, came north to attend the fair, riding over a sea of rich knee-high grass that stretched as far as he could see. King got the idea of starting a ranch, it is believed, while he was camped one night by a little stream called the Santa Gertrudis.

Now the state fair is held in Dallas every October.

Materials on this site are provided for the free use of persons who are researching their family history. Data may be freely used by non-commercial
and/or completely free entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. Any commercial use, without the prior consent of the
host/author of the materials provided on this site, is prohibited. The electronic pages on this site may not be reproduced in any format for profit.
** Notice to Webmasters: You may NOT copy and paste information from this site on another website without first obtaining permission and
without copyright notice. Contributions to this site remain the property of the submitter and will not be sold nor distributed without prior consent.
Persons wanting to use information from this site onto another should get written permission from the original submitter .**


Website maintained by, Nueces County Coordinator
TXGenWeb State Coordinator:

Copyright © 2008-Present. , The TXGenWeb Project & contributors. All rights reserved.
USGenWeb Copyright Regulations

Back to Main Page