Texas Star Ferris Wheel
Height	212 feet (64.6 m)
Weight	678,554 pounds (308,434 kg)
Cost	$2.2 million

Texas Star is the tallest Ferris wheel

Ferris wheel

A Ferris wheel is a nonbuilding structure consisting of a rotating upright wheel with passenger cars attached to the rim in such a way that as the wheel turns, the cars are kept upright, usually by gravity.Some of the largest and most modern Ferris wheels have cars mounted on...

 in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. It is located at Fair Park

Fair Park

Dallas Fair Park is a recreational and educational complex located in Dallas, Texas . The complex is registered as a Dallas Landmark, National Historic Landmark and is home to nine museums, six performance facilities, a lagoon, and the largest Ferris wheel in North America...

 in Dallas, Texas

Dallas, Texas

Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...

, and operates during the annual State Fair of Texas

State Fair of Texas

The State Fair of Texas is an annual state fair held in Dallas, Texas . The fair season usually begins the last Friday in September and ends 24 days later. The fair is held at the historic Fair Park where it has been held since 1886. The 2012 State Fair of Texas will run from September 28th...

, where it is the most popular ride.

The structure has an overall height of 212 feet (64.6 m) (approximately 21 stories) and can carry up to 264 passengers in its 44 gondolas. It will be superseded as the tallest Ferris wheel in North America if the proposed 286 feet (87.2 m) Pepsi Globe proposed for American Dream Meadowlands, in New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

, is constructed.

The Texas Star Ferris wheel was built by SDC Corp. in Reggio Emilia, Italy

Reggio Emilia

Reggio Emilia is an affluent city in northern Italy, in the Emilia-Romagna region. It has about 170,000 inhabitants and is the main comune of the Province of Reggio Emilia....

, at a cost of $2.2 million. It was then shipped to Dallas for its debut at the 1985 State Fair of Texas. The Texas Star requires a staff of 18 employees. The view is one of the things that entices people to ride on it. On a clear day, you can see the Fort Worth skyline, which is 45 miles (72 km) away. It can go 1.5 revolutions a minute with an average ride time of 12–15 minutes.

During the fair, the Texas Star was, from 1985 to 2007, lit up at night by 16,000 incandescent

Incandescent light bulb

The incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe makes light by heating a metal filament wire to a high temperature until it glows. The hot filament is protected from air by a glass bulb that is filled with inert gas or evacuated. In a halogen lamp, a chemical process...

 red, white, and blue turbolites. In 2008, the incandescent system was replaced with a longer-lasting, more energy-efficient LED lighting

LED lamp

An LED lamp is a solid-state lamp that uses light-emitting diodes as the source of light. The LEDs involved may be conventional semiconductor light-emitting diodes, organic LEDs , or polymer light-emitting diodes devices, although PLED technologies are not currently commercially available.Since...

system.

The Texas Star is owned by Barbara Brown and her brother, Mike Sandefur.