State Fair

Arizona goes on parade next month, and people numbering into the hundreds of thousands will come to see and marvel.

It will be the annual Arizona State Fair, scheduled this year in the state capital city of Phoenix from November 7 to 16, inclusive.

There were 14,000 exhibitors when the huge exposition was resumed last year for the first time since Pearl Harbor, and almost 200,000 persons who passed through the turnstiles were enthusiastic in their praise of the number, variety and beauty of the exhibits, the attractiveness of the spacious grounds, and the quality of the daily horse racing program.

Educational as well as entertaining, Arizona's great state fair is a gala celebration where every person meets on common ground. The farmer comes to display his finest agricultural products; the prospector can glory over the wealth of minerals displayed from the state's mines; the housewife shows prize-winning artistry from her home, and the businessman, the manufacturer and the industrialist present the latest in scientific and mechanical marvels.

Roosters crow their stuff and purebred cattle low in reply. For Arizona folk and their visitors this is "the biggest little show on earth."

Agriculture's bountiful products of field and animal husbandry primary reason for holding a fair are on That typically American institution, "State Fair," is an Arizona highlight in November. A year of preparation goes into the show.

Color, confetti and crowds! Music, minerals and merry-go-rounds! Pies, poultry and parades! Peaches, pumpkins and paintings! Bees, biscuits and barley! Horses, horse racing and horse play! Citrus, cattle and copper. That's the Arizona State Fair coming November.

display in impressive profusion.

Displays in the agricultural building during the 1946 fair were the best prepared in the long history of Arizona's fair, and livestock entries were on a higher level of quality than ever before, topping former records in the number of animals shown in several breeds.

There is out-of-state interest, too. In the poultry show alone seven states were represented. Among exhibitors were representatives from nearly every section of the country, from New York to San Francisco.

More than $30,000 in prizes were distributed to exhibitors.

This year there'll be "something doing every minute."

An expanded building program, accomplished through rental revenue and admissions returns with no cost to taxpayers, makes possible a new industrial building and a 20-acre automobile parking lot, and prompted Harry L. Nace, fair commission chairman, to declare: "The 1947 Arizona State Fair will be abundantly educational and entertaining, and it is an opportunity to renew one's enthusiasm for and belief in our great state. In welcoming visitors, the fair commission pledges its continued service in the interests of the agricultural and industrial progress of our state, striving always to merit continued support and encouragement."

Chairman Nace termed last year's fair "an excellent exposition, demonstrating once more that the friendly competition in exhibiting the wares and products of our soil, our forests, and our people, results in great good will and greater effort to produce the best."

Some special occasion will be celebrated during every one of Arizona's 1947 state fair days.

Opening day, November 7, has been designated Governor's Day, for the state's chief executive officially opens the exposition in a colorful ceremony.

Among other special days are: November 8, Teachers' and Fraternal Day; November 9, State Legislative Day, Indian Day, Arizona Miners' Day; November 10, Women's Day, honoring members of all women's organizations; November 11, Armistice Day and National Defense Day for all military organizations; November 12, Chambers of Commerce and Civic Clubs Day; November 13, Arizona Stockmen's and Arizona Sheriffs' Day; November 14, Arizona Pioneers and Farmers' Day; November 15, Children's Day; November 16, Parent-Teacher Association and Labor Organizations' Day.

Arizona's 14 counties each are honored on certain days.

Last year, on Yuma Day, that southwestern Arizona city sent by automobile and special train a delegation of about 1,000 persons. They took in the fair during the day, enjoyed an evening barbecue dinner, and that night whooped things up at a Yuma-Phoenix football game.

Fraternal Day was highlighted by presentation by the Woodmen of the World of a new national emblem to the Arizona Bushmasters, a fighting World War II outfit, to replace a battle flag it had given to the state as an historic memento.

Such ceremonies generally are held in front of the huge fairgrounds grandstand.

High schools throughout Arizona send their school bands to the exposition, and from one to three or four will be featured in each day's program.

Yuma and Yuma County, among the state's most enthusiastic sections in backing the annual exposition, last year had in the agriculture and horticulture building one of the finest of the agricultural displays. It featured a huge color photograph of the reclamation works on the Colorado river near Yuma which has turned thousands of acres of desert into lush farming land, as well as other large photos of Yuma Valley crops and many actual agricultural products.

Young women in charge of the Yuma display served over 100,000 cups of grapefruit juice free to visitors, for citrus is one of the Yuma area's big crops.

Exhibits, so numerous even in the industrial and commercial sections that a visitor could spend almost a day looking them over, ranged from a new, completely furnished home and a $25,000 trailer house to airplanes and motor scooters, from farm equipment to Quonset huts, from the newest of household furniture and appliances to diamonds valued at thousands of dollars shown in a jewelry store's display, and from fresh frozen foods to kitchen knick-knacks.

Many exhibit booths had an attendant available, anxious to explain and boost his firm's products, and some even featured "live talent," such as a leather worker busily stamping out attractive designs.

One of the most fascinating of the fair's exhibits again will be the Indian arts and crafts.

Last year visitors saw two Navajo sand painters, squatting on the floor and meticulously fashioning with colored sand the intricate designs which along with the patience with which they work-have been handed down from generation to generation.They saw Geneva Crawford, one of the finest weavers from the Navajo reservation, skillfully fashion an exquisite rug with black and white and grey yarn.

They saw a Hopi weaver, David Monangyie from Hotevilla, his shell-rimmed shell-rimmed glasses perched on the tip of his nose, producing a bright-colored belt that seemed magically to take shape from the mass of threads through which his hands moved as swiftly as though they were the strings of a harp.

They saw bright-colored Kachina dolls, some of the finest examples of turquoise-studded Indian jewelry, and the largest Indian rug in the world a creation 26 by 37 feet in size which required 21 months to complete after it was started in 1933 by a diminutive Navajo woman named Many Horse, her daughter and 15 other women. Now property of the Lorenzo Hubbell Trading Post in Northern Arizona, the rug originally was purchased fromthe Navajo for $6,000.

An expanded building program and substantial increases in premiums for the 1947 exposition prompted Paul F. Jones, fair commission secretary, to say: “It is only through friendly competition that we stimulate interest in bettering our products, and in so doing we will be able to tell the rest of the world that though ours is the 'Baby State,' it has taken great strides in making this a wonderful state to live in.” For success of the 1946 exposition and the great program mapped for the 1947 fair, Mr. Jones pays high tribute to fair commission members, headed by Chairman Nace and including: G. F. McDonald, Phoenix, vice chairman; J. A. Phillips, Miami; H. B. Thurber, Sonoita; Fay Rabb, Safford and Jack Kleck and W. L. Smith, both of Phoenix.

So when the big gates swing open this month for the 1947 Fair the beautiful flowers in the horticulture building, mouth-watering pastries and foods and fine needlework and other household crafts in the domestic arts and sciences, apiary and dairy displays, fish and game exhibit, agricultural and horticultural products, fine arts and photography, beef and dairy cattle and poultry displays all will attract their quotas of visitors.