The Spurs leave town for three weeks every February so two thousand tons of dirt can move in. The San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo, headquartered at the fairgrounds east of downtown, has run annually since 1950 and now draws roughly 1.5 million visitors across its run - one of the largest single events in the city and a fourteen-time PRCA Large Indoor Rodeo of the Year. The event was born of Joe Freeman's 1940s campaign to build a county coliseum for livestock exposition; the Freeman Coliseum opened in 1949, hosted the first stock show that year and the first rodeo in 1950, when 60-cent adult tickets bought a seat and Governor Allen Shivers rode in the opening parade. Concerts joined in 1951 with Eddy Arnold and became the signature draw: Loretta Lynn famously played a 1987 set through a coliseum blackout on a generator-powered microphone, and Garth Brooks carried the American flag into the arena at the height of the Gulf War in 1991. The main events moved next door in 2003 into the new SBC Center - today's Frost Bank Center - whose NBA tenant departs on the annual Rodeo Road Trip while nightly rodeo performances and headline concerts fill the arena; the Freeman Coliseum converts to an expo hall alongside. The volunteer machine behind it is the real institution: more than 7,000 volunteers run the show, and the organisation has committed over 279 million dollars since inception to scholarships, grants and junior livestock auctions reaching 22,000 Texas youth a year. With the Spurs planning a downtown arena, the stock show is set to become the fairgrounds' primary tenant - opening the door to year-round events on the grounds its founders built for three weeks of February. The grounds spread across the Frost Bank Center and Freeman Coliseum campus with a carnival midway, livestock barns, a horse show complex and food alleys serving everything from turkey legs to puffy tacos - a February economy of its own with shuttle lots, family days and military appreciation nights built into the schedule.

Type: Outdoors

Address: 1723 Creekview Drive, San Antonio, TX, United States, 78208

Website: https://www.sarodeo.com

Cover Charge: 1

Opening Date: 23/02/1950

Serves Food

Outdoor Area