History
The American Royal began as a cattle show in 1899 in the Kansas City Stockyards. The name "American Royal" was inspired by a 1901 editorial in beef industry publication Kansas City Drovers Telegram entitled "Call It The American Royal." The editorial noted the Royal Agricultural Society in England has a similar event called the Royal Show.
The first American Royal horse show was added in 1907, and has grown to include five shows (Quarter Horse, Hunter-Jumper Horse, Arabian Horses, American Saddlebred and a 4-H show).
In 1926, the American Royal invited vocational agriculture students to judge livestock. During the 1928 American Royal, 33 of the students meeting at the Baltimore Hotel in downtown Kansas City formed the Future Farmers of America. The group proceeded to hold a convention every year during the Royal in Kansas City until 1998.
The original home of the American Royal was destroyed by fire on Valentines Day in 1925. The structure was rebuilt in time for the event that year and served as the center for events until the American Royal complex was built across from Kemper Arena in 1992. During World War II, the Royal complex was converted into a glider factory.
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“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)