Right here’s how Fort Price celebrated the Texas centennial in 1936

Amon G. Carter Sr., founding father of the Fort Price Star-Telegram, considered the 1936 Fort Price Frontier Centennial celebration as one of the necessary civic booster occasions town had ever undertaken.

Though Dallas had received the state’s competitors because the central centennial metropolis in Texas’ celebration, Carter, William Monnig, and different civic leaders labored to showcase Fort Price as a contemporary metropolis, rooted in Western frontier tradition and historical past.

Practically 1,000,000 guests attended the centennial fairgrounds, situated east of the Will Rogers Coliseum, in its four-month summer season and fall run. Regardless of shedding $75,000, Carter and Monnig, chair of the Fort Price Centennial’s Board of Management, boasted the celebration a public relations success. Thanks primarily to New York showman Billy Rose, guests loved funhouse photos of Fort Price and the West, absent of serious African American, Mexican, Spanish, and Accomplice histories.

Jacob W. Olmstead’s 2021 e book “The Frontier Centennial: Fort Price & The New West” recounted the formation of the pageant’s glamorized western picture. The Board of Management’s authentic plans sought to focus on Fort Price’s frontier historical past, cattle trade, and numerous cultures of West Texas.

Native girls’s golf equipment promoted infusing the celebration with genuine furnishings, buildings, artwork, historical past, and books. They deliberate for Fort Worthians to decorate in pioneer garments as they greeted company. Greedy Native American, Spanish, and Mexican influences in Texas’ growth, the ladies anticipated shows of their historic and cultural contributions.

Wanting to create a world-class attraction, Board of Management members employed Billy Rose, feted for his current “Jumbo” circus Broadway present. They contracted Rose for $1,000 per day for 100 days, a excessive price ticket for the time. Rose delivered to city his razzmatazz showmanship to attract massive crowds with leisure, novelty, and intercourse enchantment. He disdained historic pageants and museum shows as boring, and didn’t permit accuracy to hinder “The place the Enjoyable Begins.” As a substitute, he exploited cowboy stereotypes as promoted in motion pictures and novels, and the commercialization of girls. A information advert boasted “Come To Fort Price Frontier For Leisure, Go Elsewhere For Training.”

Rose re-staged his New York “Jumbo” present with 150 dancing ladies, together with at the very least one Latina. Centennial posters displayed females scantily clad in cowgirl apparel subsequent to a “Wild and Whoo-Pee!” invite. After native ministers and girls leaders complained, Rose and Carter assured them the performances can be in good style with no smut or nudity as carried out in Rose’s New York reveals. They exercised deft diplomacy when Rose employed Sally Rand, infamous for her feather and bubble dances, and Nude Ranch present, “The place the Wild West Goes Wild.” The Fort Price Star-Telegram and Fort Price Press poked enjoyable on the sexual exotics with headlines “Acknowledge Her With Her Garments On?” and “No Truthful Peeping! 2 Youths Nabbed As Follies Cavort.”

Rose nixed the preliminary plans of a Mexican village with stucco archways, bell tower, tiled rooftops, outlets, plaza, church, and a graveyard. As a substitute, the Mexican contribution consisted of an adobe the place guests might purchase trinkets. Native People and bison carried out within the “Final Frontier,” a rodeo/wild west present. Native African People responded to the exclusion of their admission, historical past, and tradition by celebrating a “Century of Negro Progress” in that yr’s Juneteenth festivities. As attendance for the “Jumbo” performances lagged, they had been permitted to attend the present. Rose discovered one other function for African People, hiring 200 as waiters for the Casa Mañana (Home of Tomorrow) café/efficiency theater.

Showgirls starred in glittery-costumed dancing and singing performances on the Casa Mañana mechanically revolving stage, separated from the viewers by a pool. The Metropolis Council in 1958 rebuilt the efficiency corridor as a theater-in-the-round with a geodesic dome on the previous fairgrounds and stored the identify.

Rose envisioned a six flags theme park idea to memorialize the six nations that shaped Texas. Though scant or no illustration was displayed for some international locations, his thought took root. In 1961, Six Flags Over Texas opened its first theme park in Arlington, now a global amusement park company. Disney World, Knott’s Berry Farm, and different amusements parks adopted the theme format.

In 1936, Amon Carter promoted the newly constructed Will Rogers Coliseum, Auditorium, and Pioneer Tower with its Artwork Deco and trendy designs. Recreating Previous Fort Price with a weathered normal retailer, saloon, dance corridor, accommodations, and hitching posts alongside Sundown Path, Rose contrasted visually town’s progress. Maybe, by the 2036 bicentennial pageant, Texas can boast true development into the brand new frontier of genuine African American, Latino, and feminine historic and cultural inclusion.

Creator Richard J. Gonzales writes and speaks about Fort Price, nationwide and worldwide Latino historical past.