Media, stage and fair17 cards: 4 firsts, 3 claimed firsts and 10 beginnings
Newspapers, radio and television, theaters and an opera house, the fair, and the ball clubs.
- The Tyler Telegraph, the county’s first newspaperDavid Clopton began publishing the Tyler Telegraph, a weekly and the first newspaper in Smith County, in 1851.
- Tyler’s first fair, as the city’s survey dates itA mile-long race track; a 75-acre fairground the next year.
- The Grande Opera House opensRudolph Bergfeld helped open it.
- Moving pictures are shown in Tyler for the first timeSponsored by a Methodist church; adults paid 35 cents.
- Sarah Bernhardt plays the Grand Opera HouseThe year before the house burned.
- The East Texas Fair Association is foundedThen a permanent fairground on 75 acres of city parkland.
- The Tyler Elbertas, a minor league team named for a peachClass D, in the South Central League.
- The Tyler Trojans join the East Texas LeagueThey played on and off until 1955.
- The fair’s first “Colored Day,” after a petitionAt the request of African American residents, who presented a petition, the East Texas Fair Association added a “Colored Day” to the fair in 1928.
- The Tyler Morning Telegraph debutsIt traces its roots to the weekly Courier, founded in 1877.
- Radio station KGKB moves to TylerNow KYZS 1490, the oldest AM license in town, Scott Fybush says.
- The Mayfair Club opens for the Queen’s BallA building at the fairgrounds, leased by promoter Max Gilfillan.
- Tyler Civic Theatre opens a building for theatre in the roundWhat the theatre calls the nation’s first building of its kind.
- KLTV Channel 7 signs onFounded by Lucille Buford, whom KLTV calls “the L in KLTV.”
- Elvis Presley plays the Mayfair ClubIn 1955 a young Elvis Presley, touring with the Louisiana Hayride, played the Mayfair Club at the Tyler fairgrounds three times.
- The East Texas State Fair adds its first PRCA-sanctioned rodeoThe 2026 rodeo ran September 25 to 27.
- KLTV calls its founder the first woman to own and operate a TV stationThe station’s own words about Lucille Buford.