“The National Western Stock Show has reached our potential and we must build and expand immediately.”
—General Manager, Willard Simms, 1970
Denver and its oldest, longest-running and best-attended show have had a rocky, expensive marriage that may be ending. Yet ever since its 1906 origins, the stock show has been chronically short of room when all the animals and people show up in January.
Still, the city has welcomed what are now more than 600,000 visitors in the city’s slowest, coldest month.
The show started out in tents, including the monster tent loaned by Sells-Floto Circus, a pet property of Denver Post co-founder Henry Heye Tammen. Denver Mayor Robert W. Speer showed up on Denver Day, a Friday that he declared to be an official city holiday.
The Denver business community, which had found the January show a terrific boost to the local economy, also offered to help. So did the city of Denver, which contributed $5,000 for the show each year.
The stock show started out as a place to show, buy and sell animals and learn about improved agricultural equipment and techniques. But the National Western management wisely learned to keep adding attractions to encourage ever larger crowds, including many city slickers who had never set foot on a ranch or farm.
One of the first crowd pleasers proved to be the Best Baby Contest started in 1913. Contestants between the ages of 1 and 3 were graded on their skin, the shape and position of their ears, height, weight, chest measurement, head measurement, teeth and general configuration.
The National Western expanded in 1909 by building the National Amphitheater (today’s Stadium Arena). In 1931, the stock show added another major attraction: rodeo. This exciting, dangerous sport grew into the best attended event and came to be the kickoff for the National Pro Rodeo season.
The Mexican Rodeo Extravaganza, added in 1994, re-established the Hispanic origins of the American cowboy. A mass, mariachi bands and swirling señoritas now open the show, along with Jerry Diaz’s incredible showmanship. The show also added women’s barrel racing, catch-a-calf, mutton bustin’, the stick-horse rodeo, and Junior Livestock Auction.
Although the National Western gradually bought various surrounding buildings, the situation grew desperate by 1945, when the Rocky Mountain News reported, “Facilities are extremely inadequate at present . . . We have to turn down hundreds of heads of prize cattle now because there is not enough room to exhibit them.”
Some talked of moving the show to Texas or Utah. A favorite stock show joke: “If you stand still, someone will tie an animal to you.”
Sympathetic Denver voters approved a 1947 municipal bond issue to build a $2.5 million coliseum, which is leased to the stock show for $1 a year. In 1989, Denverites once again approved a stock show bond issue. Without the money, Denverites were warned, the stock show might move to Texas.
Plans to move the National Western out of the core city are alarming. The current, historic site has a wealth of restorable historic structures, ranging from the great Greek temple that is the Denver Union Live Stock Company Building to brick-floored livestock pens with their antique wooden corrals and cast iron fixtures.
For a fraction of what a new complex would cost, the stock show could buy property down to the Platte River and link to the thriving River North neighborhood and Platte River greenway. Such a treasured setting filled with so many memorable moments should not be disposable.
Its central location is one reason that Denver’s stock show has done well. We need to repair and restore, not trash a working complex with rich historical roots.
Tom Noel, author of “Riding High: 100 Years of the National Western Stock Show,” welcomes your comments at .
