Bovines and Beethoven

In 1923, Amarillo was a teenager on the cusp of adulthood. She was the debutante shucking her braces and shopping for a ball gown, or the young buck with a bottle of cologne and change in his pocket. Amarillo was growing up and deciding what kind of city she would be.

The witnesses to Amarillo’s high-flying 1920s have passed on, but two long-lived civic institutions celebrating centennials this year and next provide a few clues as to what Amarilloans of a century ago hoped to leave behind. One organization is the earthy and dusty Tri-State Fair. The other is the elegant Amarillo Symphony. These two different institutions cultivate two different visions, but both tell a story about who we were, who we are, and who we might still become.

Building in the Boom Years

In the summer of 1923, a group of civic leaders chartered the Amarillo Tri-State Exposition, hoping to draw on the successes of earlier regional fairs that were held in the city and establish a solid framework for an annual event to celebrate and promote the region’s agricultural expertise. The first Tri-State Fair took place in September that year on Buchanan Street, in and around the old Municipal Auditorium. Today, it’s the site of the city’s Centennial Plaza.

By that point in the city’s history, the oil and gas industry had become ascendant, flooding the city with newfound wealth and a taste for the finer things. Not long after the first Tri-State Exposition, the Amarillo Philharmonic Club organized a symphonic performance that launched what would become the Amarillo Symphony Orchestra. 

This fall, as the Tri-State Exposition celebrates its centennial year, the Amarillo Symphony begins its 100th season.

Beth Duke, executive director of Center City of Amarillo, spent three decades chronicling both organizations during her time at the Amarillo Globe-News. She says the Fair and Symphony reflect Amarillo’s multifaceted personality. Both show the city’s willingness to make things happen without help from the outside.

“The 1920s were boom years for Amarillo,” Duke says. “Many of our great historic buildings downtown were built in that era. The city’s prosperity encouraged leaders to establish traditions that grew into the quality of life that we enjoy today.” Those traditions included our agricultural heritage, she says, but farming and ranching weren’t the only things on local minds. “At the same time, women created clubs such as the Amarillo Philharmonic Club, which established the Amarillo Symphony, and the Just Us Girls club, which founded Amarillo’s public library. They knew that if Amarillo was going to have these cultural traditions, they would have to start them on their own.

“Some institutions have come and gone. Some big cities have lost their symphony orchestras, but Amarillo’s pioneer spirit keeps our Symphony and the Tri-State Fair & Rodeo going strong,” Duke adds.

This creative drive has only gained momentum over the past century as both groups work to stay relevant at a time when entertainment and cultural enrichment is so readily available from multiple sources. And though they’re selling different experiences, leaders from the Fair and Symphony count on the same sense of community to stand apart from the rest. 

Livestock and a Food Court

The railroad allowed local ranchers to ship cattle to big cities back east, but also attracted a generation of farmers eager to tap into our abundant land. This railroad town quickly grew into an agricultural powerhouse, and a little more than a decade after its founding, Amarillo was dreaming of a way to promote this agricultural bounty to a wider world.

“There was a recognition by citizens that this area needed a fair, a place to display, show off, gather and share that sense of community,” says Brady Ragland, CEO of the Amarillo Tri-State Exposition. Area leaders gathered in Tulia to determine where to host the fair. “There were representatives from both Lubbock and Amarillo—and we won,” he says.

It wasn’t the first local fair, however. According to regional historian Lana Payne Barnett of Tulia, the precursor to a regional fair was a livestock show held in Amarillo in 1897. The Amarillo-Panhandle Fair and Livestock Association formed two years later, and Amarillo’s first true fair arrived in 1903, on land where Llano Cemetery is now located.

In the following years, fairs were held only sporadically until a string of successful events at Glenwood Electric Park in 1913 and 1914 proved fairs could not only be popular with the public but also financially viable. But World War I undercut these efforts, until civic leaders got serious in 1921 about funding an organization that could stage annual events at an established location. In 1923, the Amarillo Tri-State Exposition was born.

Ragland points out that the Exposition has survived intact since that time, though the World War II years and the early months of the pandemic in 2020 saw fairs canceled or postponed. Today’s Fair looks different than it did even 25 years ago, but something about it remains comforting and timeless.

“The sense of community and sense of togetherness that fairs across the country still bring to people is something that is more and more unique to our current way of life,” Ragland says. “As much time as everyone spends glancing at a nine-inch screen, and learns their news in whatever political channel they take it in, fairs have a unique way of bringing together the fabric of the community.”

Looking ahead, Ragland says the Fair’s leadership is placing a strong emphasis on education and scholarships. Its youth shows enjoy record participation rates and the organization is on track to award $100,000 in scholarships to around 130 youth in the tri-state area. Competitions in veterinary science, culinary arts and even robotics now stand alongside traditional livestock shows. What hasn’t changed is the Fair’s ability to cut across social and political divisions through a shared community experience.

“It may be that we have a more unique opportunity now than we had before,” he says, alluding to the mysterious power of taking action through non-action—achieving success by limiting change. He points out: “People still feel connected when they share in the appreciation of a livestock show, a carnival and a food court.” 

In other words, the Fair cuts through our digital focus with real sights, sounds and smells—truly tangible moments that bring families together.

A Vision for the Finer Things

Downtown in the Amarillo Building, seemingly far removed from the dusty barns of the Tri-State Fairgrounds, Larry Lang also has relevance on his mind. He’s describing plans not just to celebrate the 100th season of the Amarillo Symphony Orchestra, but to remain viable long after the celebrations end. As with the Fair, the Symphony owes its start to the wealth generated from Amarillo’s vast resource of land.

It started in 1924 with a ladies music club. “They were the wives of the cattle and oil barons here at the time, and they were interested in having the finer things in life, and interested in the arts,” Lang says, emphasizing that these visionary women had to act because they knew no one else would do it for them.

“David Palmer, our artistic director for Chamber Music Amarillo, often says since we’re remote, we have to do things ourselves, to create things ourselves,” Lang says.

Grace Hamilton, an Amarillo piano teacher and member of the Philharmonic Club, was the first director of the Symphony and played a leading role until her death in 1958. Her work launched a century of seasons that have been uninterrupted by economic distress, war and, most recently, the COVID pandemic. In 2020, the Symphony presented concerts online and in the open air of Amarillo’s Hodgetown baseball stadium with members of the audience sitting several seats apart.

“We’ve never had a season where we weren’t playing, which is really remarkable when you consider what has happened during these past hundred years,” Lang says. “A lot of that comes from the community. People love the arts here. They go to the museums, they support the ballet, the Nutcracker and the opera. It’s stunning, really.”

Throughout its existence, the Symphony’s resident players have largely come from the faculty of Amarillo College and West Texas A&M University, which by 1924 was called West Texas State Teachers College. But Lang points out that the Symphony regularly brings in guest artists, and through its history has featured world-famous musicians such as violinist Itzhak Perlman, composer Percy Grainger and many others.

These names mean something to a classically trained musician or lover of symphonic music, but the Symphony’s challenge has always been to make its music meaningful to the general public, just like the Fair connects urban dwellers with the rural way of life. Relevancy is key.

“We’re working very hard on that, especially myself and our new conductor George Jackson,” Lang says. “George and I came at the same time a year ago and we’re committed to being relevant to the community and representing the community.”

The Symphony’s centennial season promises to be a showcase of relevancy. The first program was held at Hodgetown last month, featuring country and western artist Randall King, a native of Hereford. In October, Hispanic Heritage Month, the Symphony presents Celebraciones, featuring mariachi vocalist Nayelli Peña and Trio Los Reyes along with the Amarillo Symphony Youth Orchestra. A November program features a symphony by Johannes Brahms that culminates with a bluegrass ensemble playing with the orchestra. 

“We really want to do things that get people in the door, get them excited about what we’re doing and show them that it doesn’t have to be stuffy,” Lang says. “Sure, we can do [classical]  music and we will. We’re going to play Brahms and Beethoven and Mahler, which we do very well. But we also want to play other things that catch people’s attention in a new way.”

Lights, Sounds and Emotion

In a year when two of the city’s oldest institutions reflect on a century of service, that new way will continue to inform both organizations. The Fair will lean heavily on tradition as it opens up to the modern world for nine big days in September. The Symphony intends to use brass and stringed instruments and clashing cymbals to call up deep emotions in its audience members. 

“The key is the balance for us,” Lang says, “because we don’t want to lose the connection to the music and the musicians by adding too much.”

With that in mind, the Symphony’s big finale next spring aims to elevate concert goers beyond that starry canopy of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. And if Ragland and team have their way, at some point during this year’s fair and rodeo, a kid who’s never seen a steer or a barrow hog is sure to marvel at an animal way bigger than the family pet.

In these moments, the ordinary aspects of life in Amarillo will join with a universal symphony of light and sound. Somehow, it’ll still feel like home.