The Minnesota State Fair draws around 2 million fairgoers each year, more per day than any other fair in the nation. But how did it get started in the first place?

In this episode, we'll explore the origins of the Great Minnesota Get-Together and track the fair's growth and evolution over its first fifty years.

We'll see how a small territorial agricultural show grew into one of the state's most hallowed annual traditions in spite of repeated bankruptcies, a Civil War, a tornado, scandal and controversy, and how it was almost destroyed by the bitter rivalry between Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Along the way we'll meet giant produce, "female equestriennes," hucksters and hustlers, dueling state fairs, illicit gambling, problematic carnival games, and find out why the "Temperance Tent" at the 1904 fair was actually a covert den of iniqu ...