Fort Worth

Fort Worth, Texas, “where the West begins’’, is a cow town,” a big-hearted, loud-mouthed, “howdy, stranger’’ town”*. It is the capital city of that magnificent realm of western ranch lands that stretch west to New Mexico and northward almost to Kansas and Colorado. In much of this land, rain is a curiosity and everything either “sticks, stings or stinks’’.* And the sturdy Western folk with the rawhide hands and the highheeled boots rub off on a town where they bank and buy and frolic. Fort Worth probably comes nearer expressing what the word “Texas’’ signifies to most outlanders than any other city in the state.

Characteristically, Fort Worth’s biggest yearly festival is the Fat Stock Show. Fort Worth declares its own rodeo, held in conjunction with the stock show, it is the biggest indoor rodeo on earth. Many of the broncs* and Brahmas* that appear in rodeos the world over have been able to see the tops of the Fort Worth sky-scrapers throughout their colt and calf hood, and many a leading roper* and rider calls Fort Worth home.

For nearly fifty years the stock show was held in the North Side Coliseum, out by the stockyards. Lots of Fort Worth people grow misty-eyed at memory of the color and excitement and huge smells that always filled Exchange Avenue at stock-show time in March, when hat brims were sombrero-wide and every heel was raised three inches off the ground, when drinking and fighting and wild-horse riding were the order of the day.