Iowa State Fair Trivia
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56 free Iowa State Fair trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
The Iowa State Fair draws more than a million people to Des Moines every August, which makes it the biggest event in the state and one of the most famous fairs in America. This quiz covers the whole thing: the 1854 beginnings in Fairfield and the wandering years before the fair settled on East 30th Street, the Butter Cow and the five sculptors who have built it since 1911, the Grandstand and its concert records, the Bill Riley Talent Search, the Des Moines Register soapbox where presidential hopefuls get their 20 minutes, and the deep-fried, on-a-stick food that the fair is known for. It also covers the fair on page, screen and stage — Phil Stong's 1932 novel about the Frake family and Blue Boy the boar, the Will Rogers film, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and the Broadway run whose tour opened at the real fair. Easy questions ask which city hosts it and what the Butter Cow is made of; hard ones ask which locomotives were crashed in front of the Grandstand in 1932 and which sculptor held the job for 36 years. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the Iowa State Fair, its fairgrounds, the butter sculptures, Norma Lyon, Phil Stong and the State Fair films and musical, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 56 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which month is the Iowa State Fair held each year?
August
August. It wasn't always a summer event: the first fair, in 1854, ran for three days in late October.
Q 02The fair's famous Butter Cow is displayed in a refrigerated case inside which fairgrounds structure?
The Agricultural Building
The Agricultural Building. It opened for the 1904 fair as a showcase for Iowa farm produce, which is why the butter cow stands there in a 40-degree cooler.
Q 03What do contestants hurl as far as they can in the Iowa State Fair's Cow Chip Throwing Contest?
Dried manure
Dried manure. Each thrower gets a single try, and a foot over the line or a chip out of bounds means disqualification.
Q 04In 1929, thousands of Iowa children sent in nickels and dimes to help the Iowa State Fair buy which animal?
An elephant
An elephant. More than 20,000 children turned out at the fair to meet Baby Mine, the young elephant their coins had helped buy.
Q 05The first Iowa State Fair, in October 1854, was staged in which town?
Fairfield
Fairfield. The fair spent its first decades rotating between towns, mostly in eastern Iowa, so that more Iowans could reach it.
Q 06Which Iowa State Fairgrounds building survives from 1886, the year the fair settled on its permanent site?
Pioneer Hall
Pioneer Hall. The first buildings were wooden, put up fast and on a tight budget, and nearly all were replaced in brick after 1900.
Q 07Why was there no Iowa State Fair in 1898?
An exposition in nearby Omaha
An exposition in nearby Omaha. That was the Trans-Mississippi Exposition, a world's fair, and the Spanish–American War was being fought the same summer.
Q 08During World War II the Iowa State Fairgrounds were used by the military as what?
A supply depot
A supply depot. The Army leased the grounds in 1942 as a storage depot for the Air Corps, and the fair did not return until 1946.
Q 09Which future fashion designer was named the Iowa State Fair's 'healthiest city boy' as a toddler in the 1930s?
Halston
Halston. The Des Moines native grew up to design the pillbox hat Jacqueline Kennedy wore to the 1961 presidential inauguration.
Q 10Which newspaper runs the Iowa State Fair's Political Soapbox, where candidates get 20 minutes each?
The Des Moines Register
The Des Moines Register. Mitt Romney was on its soapbox in 2011 when he told a heckler that corporations are people.
Q 11The author of State Fair wrote his novel of Iowa farm life in 1931 while working in advertising where?
New York City
New York City. His wife suggested he write about the fair back home, and he turned out the first 10,000 words in three days.
Q 12The Iowa State Fair's talent search for ages 2 to 21 has two divisions: Seniors and which younger group?
Sprouts
Sprouts. They are aged 2 to 12, and winners of nearly 100 local qualifying shows around Iowa earn a turn on the fair's stage.
Q 13In 1973 the Iowa State Fair board voted 4-3 to let performers from which Native nation appear after they protested?
Meskwaki
Meskwaki. Their singers and dancers went on to perform on nine of the fair's ten days; the tribe had bought back its first 80 acres in Iowa in 1857.
Q 21How do the young contestants race in the Iowa State Fair's Diaper Derby?
Crawling
Crawling. Each baby must get from one parent to the other unaided, though toys, bottles and keys are all fair game as bribes.
Q 22The Iowa State Fair is famous for serving dozens of different foods in what signature way?
On a stick
On a stick. The list runs from pork chops to salad and hard-boiled eggs, and in 2011 a stick of butter, battered and deep-fried, joined the menu.
Q 23What did contestants throw in the Iowa State Fair contest that now uses rubber chickens?
A rolling pin
A rolling pin. The heavy old pins flew a long way, and by the fair's telling one went through a police car's windshield before the rubber chickens came in.
Q 14The Iowa State Fair's steel Grandstand of 1909 replaced an earlier stand built of what?
Timber
Timber. The steel stand then stood bare for 18 years: its familiar red-brick front was only added when the Grandstand was enlarged in 1927.
Q 15Which act drew the largest Grandstand crowd for a single performance, 25,402 people in 1975?
The Beach Boys
Sonny and Cher's 1972 crowd of 26,200 is the biggest overall, and Johnny Cash sold 23,500 tickets across two shows in 1970.
Q 16What names were given to the two old locomotives crashed head-on for the crowd at the 1932 Iowa State Fair?
Hoover and Roosevelt
Hoover and Roosevelt. The engines were named for that year's presidential rivals, and it was the fair's third staged train wreck, after 1896 and 1922.
Q 17In 1954 which two men became the first US presidents to visit the Iowa State Fair?
Eisenhower and Hoover
Eisenhower and Hoover. The sitting president was joined by Hoover, the only president born in Iowa, on a homecoming two decades after he left office.
Q 18The Iowa State Fair's soapbox draws presidential hopefuls because it precedes which traditionally first nominating contest?
The Iowa caucuses
The Iowa caucuses. Jimmy Carter campaigned at the fair in 1976 on his way to the White House, and presidential hopefuls have followed ever since.
Q 19The Iowa State Fair Police, formed in 2018, wear blue uniforms with what headgear?
A white cowboy hat
A white cowboy hat. The fair once hired private guards to work beside local police; its own officers, unlike those guards, can make arrests.
Q 20The 1962 film remake of State Fair moved the story from Iowa to which other state's fair?
Texas
Texas. Much of it was shot at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas, with Pat Boone and Ann-Margret among the stars.
Q 24The Iowa State Fair holds calling contests for hogs, chickens, ducks, turkeys, moms and which other family members?
Husbands
Husbands. Entrants get one minute to holler for a real or imaginary spouse, and the winner of each calling contest takes home $5 and a blue ribbon.
Q 25Which Leonardo da Vinci painting became Norma Lyon's most ambitious butter sculpture, shown at the 1999 Iowa State Fair?
The Last Supper
The Last Supper. Friends warned her it was too much, but Lyon sculpted Jesus and all twelve disciples life-size and later called it her proudest work.
Q 26Which 2008 presidential candidate received a 23-pound butter bust from Norma Lyon, who also recorded a radio ad for him?
Barack Obama
Barack Obama. With the bust on show at an Iowa campaign stop, he told her he was worried she had made his ears too big.
Q 27J.E. Wallace, the Iowa State Fair's butter sculptor until the 1950s, also worked in what other trade?
Taxidermy
Taxidermy. Wallace supplied butter cows and milkmaids to fairs from Wisconsin to Florida, and once carved Andrew Jackson on horseback for Tennessee's.
Q 28Butter Cow sculptor Norma Lyon once carried a small cow carved from cheddar onto which late-night host's show?
David Letterman
David Letterman. She said she had swapped her usual butter for cheddar simply to make the cow easier to carry.
Q 29Butter Cow Lady Norma Lyon was the niece of which novelist, the author of State Fair?
Phil Stong
Phil Stong. His novel shocked some readers: the library in his hometown of Keosauqua kept it off its shelves for 25 years.
Q 30Norma Lyon studied animal science at Iowa State University for what reason?
Women were barred from the vet programme
Women were barred from the vet programme. So she took animal science instead, and while there learned sculpture from artist-in-residence Christian Petersen.