Early Site of Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show
Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Fort Worth became an important trading and supply depot in the 1870s for Texas cattlemen driving herds to Northern markets. With the convergence of several railroads here in the 1870s and 1880s stockyard facilities began to appear along the railroad lines. In 1893 Boston investors purchased the Stockyards and organized the Fort Worth Stock Yards Company. The Company held the first livestock show at nearby Marine Creek in March 1896. The show's initial sucess was due mainly to the participation of members of the Texas Cattle Raisers Association (TCRA) whose Annual Meeting in Fort Worth coincided with the Show. The Fort Worth Stock Yards Company built an impressive livestock exchange building in 1903. In 1908, with the help of Armour & Co., Swift & Co., and TCRA members, the National Feeders and Breeders Show opened here in new Coliseum facilities. The show offered a variety of events including a cutting horse competition and a horse show. A Wild West show was added in 1916. The show, renamed Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show in 1918, developed into a premier rodeo, livestock, and exhibition event. In 1943 the facilities were converted for U.S. military purposes and in 1944 the Show relocated to a site in west Fort Worth. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Fort Worth grew into a cattle supply depot in the 1870s as drovers pushed herds north, and railroad lines soon drew stockyards along their tracks. Boston investors bought the yards in 1893, and the Fort Worth Stock Yards Company held its first livestock show at Marine Creek in 1896, boosted by the Texas Cattle Raisers Association. With backing from Armour and Swift, the show grew into the National Feeders and Breeders Show, added a Wild West act in 1916, and by 1918 became the Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show before relocating in 1944.
Why it matters
Born where the cattle drives met the railroads, this show turned Fort Worth into a capital of the American cattle industry and helped invent modern rodeo.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort Worth Stock Yards Company
Fort Worth, TX
Formed in 1893 when a Boston-led group of investors bought the Fort Worth Union Stock Yards, this company transformed the city into a livestock capital. It courted the Cattle Raisers Association and lured meatpacking giants Armour and Swift to build plants nearby, then drew animals to market through publicity and its Fat Stock Show. During World War I, foreign armies buying draft animals made Fort Worth the world's largest horse and mule market, and receipts soared into the millions before postwar decline.
Fort Worth Stock Yards Entrance
Fort Worth, TX
Completed in 1910, this concrete gateway spans Exchange Avenue to announce the Fort Worth Stock Yards, one of the great livestock markets of the American West. Built by the Topeka Bridge & Land Co. for the Stock Yards Company, its towering columns and long sign made it an ambitious feat of concrete construction for the era. The entrance still stands as the iconic threshold to Fort Worth's historic stockyards district.
Thomas B. Saunders Family
Fort Worth, TX
North Carolina native Thomas Bailey Saunders brought his family to Texas in 1850 and started a cattle ranch near Gonzales, launching a dynasty that would shape the state's beef industry for more than a century. His sons and grandsons drove herds to New Orleans and Kansas, became noted trail drivers, ran livestock commissions in San Antonio and Houston, and — in Thomas B. Saunders II — opened the first cattle-dealing firm on the Fort Worth Stockyards in 1902, pioneering the shipment of cattle by truck. Later generations built ranching operations and cattle clearinghouses across the Southwest.
Fort Worth Belt Railway
Fort Worth, TX
When the railroad reached Fort Worth in 1876, it transformed the town from a regional trading post into a national livestock hub. The stockyards' Belt Railway, launched in 1904, shuttled cattle and supplies into the yards and finished products out to markets across the country. As trucking rose in the 1920s the belt declined, and today a short surviving stretch carries an excursion train through the historic stockyards district.