Cartoon about the Ludington Steer    cartoonist Irvin Dugan

 

The West Virginia State Fair had its beginnings in Lewisburg in the 1854.  At that time it was called the Greenbrier Agricultural Society Fair which had one building for exhibits on land near the future site of Greenbrier Military School, now the campus of the School of Osteopathic Medicine.   It was at this fair that folks got to see the first sewing machine, which had been invented in Mill Point in neighboring Pocahontas County.  Later, in 1858, General Robert E. Lee’s iron gray warhorse, Traveler, won a blue ribbon as a yearling colt and, in 1869 the famous Ludington steer was exhibited.  The steer weighed 4000 pounds and was reported to be the largest in the world.  It was, for certain, the largest steer in West Virginia!