Will Rogers & the 1936 Frontier Centennial

In 1936 Texas threw itself a hundredth-birthday party, and the big official Centennial Exposition went to Dallas. Fort Worth publisher Amon G. Carter — who never lost a chance to one-up his rival to the east — answered by hiring showman Billy Rose to stage a rival 'Frontier Centennial' here, complete with a giant outdoor theater and the slogan 'Dallas for Education, Fort Worth for Entertainment.' At its heart rose a gleaming Art Deco complex named for Carter's friend, the cowboy humorist Will Rogers, who had died the year before in a plane crash. This short walk circles that complex: the rodeo coliseum, the soaring Pioneer Tower, and the auditorium, plus the site of Casa Mañana, where Billy Rose's lavish revue played to crowds beneath the Texas sky. It's a tour of civic rivalry cast in limestone and chrome — the moment Fort Worth decided it would rather be fun than dignified.