Big Tex has greeted fairgoers at the State Fair of Texas since 1952, but his story starts three years earlier in Kerens, a small town about an hour east of Waxahachie on Highway 31. In 1949, Kerens Chamber of Commerce manager Howell Brister proposed a 50-foot Santa Claus to draw travelers into town. Local welding crews, agriculture students, and dress factory workers built the figure in just two weeks using tubing, chicken wire, and fabric.

The giant Santa worked. Drivers on Highway 31 could not miss him, and for two years he served as the town’s roadside claim to fame. Then the State Fair of Texas came calling and bought him for $750. The fair gave the figure a new identity, transforming him into a talking cowboy who debuted as Big Tex in 1952. The rest is Texas history.

Kerens still proudly calls itself the birthplace of Big Tex, and honestly, they have earned that title. It is a reminder that some of Texas’s biggest legends start with small-town ingenuity and a couple of weeks of hard work. Have you ever made the drive out to Kerens to see where it all began?