About Us
The St. Louis World’s Fare Heritage Festival was created to help keep alive the grand legacy of the City’s international past accomplishments, while finding new creative ways to support the City’s talented communities of today.
The Festival’s name is meant to have the word “Fare” in it as a pun, for two reasons, one this festival is not trying to be the event from 1904 as nothing will ever replicate it and two the Festival is a St. Louis Food Fare event. The City’s historical International cuisine identity dates back to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair where chefs and cooks were brought in from all corners of the world to showcase their traditional foods in a time of no TV, and no radio.
This event gave St. Louis a deep knowledge in the diverse foods from Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and other parts of the world. International Notoriety came to the city when many food fare inventions were made or claimed in St. Louis at the 1904 World’s Fair such as the hot dog bun, cotton candy, the ice cream waffle cone and many others.
Today, the St. Louis World’s Fare Festival features the region’s best Food Trucks with a focus on diversity being represented on an annual basis. Forest Park was the actual location of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, and was gifted the Art Palace now known as the St. Louis Art Museum, the only remaining building from the 1904 World’s Fair.
This Festival is designed to celebrate the City’s Heritage through educational programs while uplifting the Region's talent of today through art, food, music, and dance. The Festival averages over 25,000 visitors over 2 ½ days from across the region.These guests discover local artists, entertainers, and favorite food trucks while learning about the city’s heritage. All of this with the historic Forest Park background which has been voted “Best City Park in America” -USA Today, 2016 and is consistently voted in the top 5 annually.
- The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair was an established international event and St. Louis was competing to have it’s version of the Fair be larger than the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.
- The Louisiana Purchase Exposition took place to celebrate the golden achievement of the US Government’s purchase of the largest territory purchase in History from the notorious French leader Napoleon Bonaparte. The land was explored successfully by two of the country's biggest heroes of the time, Lewis & Clark.
- St. Louis was able to be the host to III Olympiad, the first Olympics ever to be held outside of Europe, which made it the first English speaking Olympics in History.
St. Louis World's Fare Departments
Staff & Volunteers
STLWF Crew
Departments
