The 2019 Wisconsin State Fair is officially in the books – literally, as this year's edition scored the second highest attendance in the event's history.

As reported by the Wisconsin State Fair today, the late summer tradition totaled 1,130,572 attendees in 2019, including record-breaking days Aug. 4-5 as well as Aug. 8-10. In the end, the State notched its seventh straight year with a total attendance over a million.

"The Wisconsin State Fair has long been considered one of the top ten fairs in the country, and achieving this record number puts us in the top five in terms of attendance," stated Kathleen O’Leary, chief executive officer of Wisconsin State Fair Park, in a release. "However, attendance isn’t the only thing that makes us one of the best; it’s about the experience that our loyal fairgoers come back for year after year, as well as the ‘first-timers’ who, once they experience it first-hand, are in awe of all there is to enjoy. The Wisconsin State Fair is an 11-day celebration and showcase of everything we should be so proud of in Wisconsin. I’d like to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who came out to enjoy the event, as well as our sponsors, vendors and partners who helped make this a record-breaking year." 

"We are aware that great weather helped us reach record-breaking attendance, but beautiful weather does not necessarily mean people want to attend your event," said John Yingling, Chairman of the Wisconsin State Fair Park Board, in the release. "There are many things to enjoy on a beautiful summer day in Wisconsin, and the fact that more than one million people again chose to spend their time at the Wisconsin State Fair is a testament to the quality of the event and the memorable experiences that our visitors have each year. Thank you to the staff, board and all of our partners for helping to make this year’s Fair a tremendous success."

The final tally represents the highest overall attendance number since 1948 – which was twice as long at 23 days in order to celebrate Wisconsin's centennial year. While that edition brought in an average of 77,688 people per day, this past year's Fair averaged a daily attendance was 102,779. Plus, the State Fair estimated attendance numbers before 2002, making the 2019 numbers the highest attendance total that can be verified with ticketing technology. That's a whole lot of deep fried stuff on sticks!

Unfortunately, the State Fair doesn't tally up that number – but they do have several other crazy totals to share, including that attendees took more than 120,000 slides down the Giant Slide and zipped more than 115,00 trips along the Sky Glider. Even crazier, Fair goers noshed more than 400,000 cream puffs, more than 41,000 baked potatoes, almost 60,000 grilled cheese sandwiches, 20,000 of the Sporkie-winning buffalo chicken cheese curd tacos and more than 20,000 pork chop sandwiches – all hopefully after, not before, they slid down the Giant Slide. 

You'll probably need all year to work off all that tasty Fair food – and now you'll get it. But cut to 365 days or so from now, you'll be back as the Wisconsin State Fair returns Aug. 6-16. Here's to breaking more records in 2020!