Paris has the Eiffel Tower.

London has Buckingham Palace.

Rome has the Vatican.

Iowa has the Iowa State Fair.

It all began in an open six-acre field in Fairfield in 1854. The snake exhibit, the grain-yield competition – a five-acre tract in Polk County won with an average yield of nearly 140 bushels per acre – and a women’s horse-riding competition were among the spectacles available to the first fairgoers. Attendance was heavy, with between 7,000 and 8,000 people reckoned to be in attendance, and the organizers knew they were on to something.

One hundred fifty-four years later, some things have changed, but much has stayed the same. After moving through a number of temporary homes in eastern Iowa, the fair was moved to Des Moines in 1878 and was granted its present home, on 400 acres at East 30th and University, by appropriation of the state Legislature in 1886. The fair is more popular than ever, now regularly attracting over a million visitors a year – a far cry from 1854’s attendance.

The fair’s progress is Iowa’s progress in many ways. What was once almost purely an agricultural expo has become a multi-faceted stew of ingredients from across the state. There are exhibits of everything from John Deere tractors and implements, to vacuum cleaners, to pianos, to universities and colleges.

One of the things that perhaps makes the fair so special in the hearts and minds of many Iowans, however, are the things that never seem to change. The corn dogs. The aroma wafting from the Pork Tent. A ride on Ye Olde Mill. Turkey legs the size of small children. The suburban family making its way through one of the livestock buildings, as the kids run from pen to pen in total amazement while mom or dad relates wistfully how “Grandpa used to raise those.”

Therein lies the key to understanding the mystique of the Iowa State Fair – its cosmopolitan character.

Stand on the corner of East Grand and Rock Island, watching the masses of people filter by, and behold a truly awesome thing: as the Israelites through the Red Sea, all the surprisingly vivid diversity of Iowa passes – old farmers, young city kids with their skateboards, suburbanites with strollers. All races, all creeds, all backgrounds: City people who’ve never seen a live pig; farm kids from places with funny names like Tripoli, Underwood, Kalona, Odebolt and Fontanelle; Vietnamese immigrants, Bosnians and Sikhs; bankers, factory workers, seed corn salesmen, clerks and teachers – they are all here.

To truly understand the State Fair is to understand Iowa: the complexities, the norms, the history, the geology – the experience – that is Iowa. From all across the state, from Cedar Rapids, Sioux City, Waterloo and the other cities; and from the small towns and hamlets – little-known places like Osceola, Alta, Decorah and Treynor – they come to this place, some almost as though on a pilgrimage.

Here, all the far-flung and seemingly dissident sectors of this place come together in one great microcosm, to partake in this great exercise which we do in a way and on a scale that few others in few other places can come even remotely close to matching. What else could a farmer from Rockwell, a machinist from Cedar Falls, a professor from Forest City and an insurance man from Norwalk really have in common? But yet here they are – doing and seeing the things that make Iowa what it is.

There are the farmers: some of them tough old men, worn down by years of hard weather and harder work; some young men in plaid button-up shirts with or without cowboy hats, hanging around Stockman’s, talking about the Board of Trade, their cattle or their girlfriends; some of them barely waist-high 4-Hers, chasing their pigs down an aisle in the Swine Barn.

There are the city folk: some of them inner-city kids from just a few blocks away, seeking a few hours or a day away from the house in the excitement and novelty of the fair; some young suburban families from a few miles away, wandering the barns and exhibits, perhaps mindful of their younger years, back when they were raised out among the corn and cattle, before the world of college and 9 to 5 jobs kicked in.

The question remains, though: Why are they here? What brings this great assemblage – more than one-third of the population of the state – to this place for 10 days? Is it the food? Is it the wide variety of entertainment available?

None of these.

At its very core, the Iowa State Fair is about just that – Iowa. We come to revel in it – in all our quirks as a people in this place at this time, in all our Iowa-ness. Despite the advance of modern America, the supposed demise of rural Iowa and the rise of popular culture, the state fair reminds us all of what we are and always have been: neighbors, friends – Iowans.

– Ryan Frederick is a senior in management from Orient.