COLUMBUS, Ohio – One Ohio icon shares space with more than a dozen others at the State Fair butter cow display this year.
EXTRA: Ohio State Fair
The 2014 version of the popular feature of the Ohio State Fair, which opens tomorrow, includes 15 symbols that designers of the display hope showcase the “character and spirit of the Buckeye State.”
The collage of images, which shares the space with the life-size butter cow and calf, includes a trilobite fossil, cardinal, paw paw fruit, spotted salamander, an Adena pipe and a whitetail deer, each representing the state’s history and culture, according to the American Dairy Council Mideast, which sponsors the sculpture every year.
A team of sculptors, several of whom work primarily in the toy industry, crafted the display from more than a ton of butter over the course of about 540 hours, association officials said.
The individual sculptures represent an aspect of the state’s history, culture or economy:
The state bird, a cardinal also perches proudly on a Buckeye branch.
A scarlet carnation, the state flower, serves as a tribute to President William McKinley, an Ohio native who always wore a carnation in his lapel.
A tomato spotlights the fact that Ohio is one of the nation’s largest producers of the fruit.
Other sculptures include the bullfrog and whitetail deer, animals that are plentiful in the state.
The ladybug and black racer snake are known as “friends of farmers” for eating rodents and insects harmful to plants and are found in almost all 88 counties.
The display also includes a trilobite fossil of a now-extinct sea creature which existed in the state 440 million years ago, and flint, a hard rock used by Native Americans to make knives, spear points and arrowheads.