Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

The world's first indoor rodeo bucked out of the chutes here, and the rodeo has never really stopped. Cowtown Coliseum at 121 East Exchange Avenue, in the heart of the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District, was built in a sprint - ground broken in 1907, the 250,000-dollar Mission Revival hall by architect Berkley Brandt finished in just 88 working days, opening officially on 11 May 1908 for the National Feeders and Breeders Show. Financed by the Stock Yards Company with the Swift and Armour meatpacking giants and 50,000 dollars raised by the public, it was proclaimed the largest and most elegant livestock exhibition building in the country. History piled up quickly under its arched roof: the first indoor exhibition cattle round-up and first indoor night horse show in the United States in 1908, Enrico Caruso and the Russian Ballet on its stage, Theodore Roosevelt at its podium - and in 1918, the world's first indoor rodeo. The Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show filled it each year from 1918 until moving to the Will Rogers complex in 1944, by which time the City of Fort Worth had bought the building for 100,000 dollars ahead of the 1936 Texas Centennial. Today the roughly 3,400-seat coliseum is the beating heart of the Stockyards revival: the Stockyards Championship Rodeo runs bull riding, bronc riding and barrel racing every Friday and Saturday night year-round - the world's only weekly year-round rodeo - alongside Pawnee Bill's Wild West Show in season, bull-riding tours, concerts and Western heritage events, with the twice-daily Fort Worth Herd cattle drive passing its front door on Exchange Avenue. Wrapped by the district's honky-tonks, Hotel Drover and the restored Mule Alley, and freshly supported by the Stockyards' 630-million-dollar second redevelopment phase, the old coliseum remains what it was built to be in 1908 - the showplace where Fort Worth earned the name Cowtown.