A Hundred Years of Heroes: A History of the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show

During the winter of 1896, two men, Charles MacFarland, Texas cattleman, and Charles C. French, public relations director for the Fort Worth Stock Yards Company, met on a sidewalk in North Fort Worth. In the course of their conversation they agreed that a stock show would do a great deal to stimulate the livestock industry and to draw attention to Fort Worth’s place in it.

On a crisp winter morning in 1993, two men met on a sidewalk in West Fort Worth. Both were professional stockmen. T…