Fight For The Stockyards
If you were to ask a native Texan, “What’s the best way to spend an afternoon in Texas?” chances are you might be directed toward the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District – oI, as it’s known to the locals, Cowtown. The Stockyards have just about everything you’d expect from a popular Texas tourist destination: smoky steakhouses, old-fashioned honky-tonks, an indoor rodeo and, to top it all off, daily cattle drives parading a majestic herd of Texas longhorn through the streets — a fitting tribute to the Stockyards’ once-booming livestock industry.
For over 30 years, tourists seeking the quintessential Texas experience have set their sights on the Stockyards – and for good reason: in the Stockyards, authenticity is king. Local business owners have taken great care to ensure that a visitor’s Stockyard experience is genuine. “Down here we believe that if you’re doing something that’s supposed to be authentic, you’d better make damn sure it’s authentic,” says local businessman Hub Baker. “Real Texans are gonna find out in a minute if it’s not.”
“Most of these buildings have been around for more than a century, and, for the most part, are locally owned,” says Steve Murrin, a white-haired mustachioed fellow known unofficially as Mayor of the Stockyards. “That’s the kind of self-authenticating atmosphere you have out here — it ain’t fake. Visitors always tell me, Now this is the Texas we expected to see.’
TRADING ON THE CHISHOLM TRAIL
Long before becoming a tourist destination, the Stockyards were known as the final stop of the historic Chisholm cattle-driving trail, where a weary cattleman could stock up on rest and supplies before crossing the Red River into Indian country. When a newly built railway system streamlined livestock transportation in 1876, the Stockyards became one of the country’s busiest livestock markets. To keep up with the booming economy, the city in 1907 commissioned the construction of Cowtown Coliseum – home to the world’s first indoor rodeo.
Given the area’s rich history, it’s no wonder Murrin takes pride in the Stockyards’ continuing authenticity. For Murrin, the story of the Stockyards is a story of the hard-working, can-do spirit that brought Texas prosperity in the early 20th century. “As far as I’m concerned, the Stockyards are right up there with the Alamo,” he says. “That’s a history worth preserving.”
Despite this rich past, however, the Stockyards have had a turbulent history with the Fort Worth City Council. In fact, without the persistent intervention of folks like Murrin, the Stockyards would have been leveled years ago — for economic reasons. By the mid-20th century, the Yards had fallen on hard times. At the end of World War Il, the once booming livestock industry was fading. The Stockyards fell into rapid decline; crime was on the rise. As the major meatpacking plants left town, the cattlemen who once roamed the streets were replaced by loiterers and vagrants. “By the ’70s, all the old historic cafes and restaurants had pretty much turned into wino joints,” Murrin sighs. “The ol’ Cowtown Coliseum that once held the rodeo now hosted Monday night wrestling. At that point, all they had to do was bulldoze.”
“The Yards were too important to the history of Fort Worth to have shootings and rowdy drunks,” recalls Roberta “Bert” Walters, a businesswoman and third-generation Fort Worthian. “They needed to be restored.” Though concerned citizens knew immediate action was necessary to save the Stockyards, the restoration cause would remain static without a leader to rally behind. “We needed someone who could come in and be political on our behalf,” Walters adds. “That was Steve.”
ROOTS BUILDING Reclaiming Cowtown Coliseum, Murrin says, was key to the area’s restoration. “We had to fight,” Murrin says, “to get the city to restore the Coliseum back to how it should be.”
WORTH PRESERVING
Murrin was the obvious choice to lead the restoration efforts. As a third-generation Fort Worth resident himself, he came from a line of hardworking Texans with a penchant for business. Murrin’s grandfather immigrated to Fort Worth from Ireland in 1885, opening a successful saloon on the city’s south side. Before going off to fight in World War I, Murrin’s father, Steve Murrin Sr., worked as a trader in the Stockyards. During the Great Depression, Murrin Sr. sold ham sandwiches in the yards for 15 cents apiece, saving whatever he could. With that sandwich money, Murrin Sr. purchased a ranch where he raised Steve Jr. and his two sisters – the same ranch where Steve Jr. resides to this day with his wife, Dashelle. Though Murrin won’t admit it, he’s inherited a great deal of his father’s business sense. “I wish I could come close to my father — he was an incredibly wise fel-low,” he says. “His motto was, “Try to leave things a little better than you found them.”
Murrin’s memories of growing up near the Stockyards are fond: “I’ve been blessed to be so lucky and lucky to be so blessed,” he says. “The whole atmosphere I grew up in was perfect.” Murrin’s only time away from Fort Worth was his term at Holy Cross College in Massachusetts, after which he returned home and began a career in real estate.
When asked to spearhead the restoration of the Stockyards, Murrin, not surprising-ly, was more than eager. Not only did he possess the business sense necessary to get the project off the ground, he also fit perfectly as the restoration’s public face. “When I first met Steve, I gotta say, he seemed a bit strange,” Hub Baker laughs. “Не seemed to be playin’ a character, like Yosemite Sam … boot-tops up to his knees, large cowboy hat — the works. Then you find out it really is his character. Once I got to know him I realized, hell, he’s one of the smartest human beings I’ve ever known.” Fitting, it seemed, that the struggle to save a historic Texas town would be led by an equally larger-than-life public figure.
Given the condition of the Stockyards, Murrin had his work cut out for him. Nevertheless, he remained hopeful. “The idea was to clean the area up, bring in some entertainment, elevate the quality of the businesses so everyone could succeed,” he explains. “T’ve seen other places where entertainment was bringing in big money, like Underground Atlanta. The Stockyards’ welcoming atmosphere really lent itself to that.” With high hopes, Murrin himself purchased the historic Longhorn Saloon with his business partner, Bert Walters. Despite Murrin’s best inten-tions, the pair were in for a rough few years. “I wrote into the lease,” Murrin says, “If someone shoots out my window, I’m not paying for it.” Even with tough times ahead, Murrin never lost his spirit: “I used to joke that all we had to do was elevate the quality of the wine drinker from the 49-cent bottle to the $49 bottle.”
In addition to purchasing and flipping Stockyard real estate, for years Murrin also stood ankle deep in the murky waters of Fort Worth zoning politics. “Every time the city tried to bulldoze the Yards, or even just a building, it’d be Steve who’d save it,” Baker recalls. “He’s been the chief guard of the Stockyards since the day he stepped in here.”
“Nobody has been out here quite like myself,” says Murrin. “For years I’ve been carefully preserving that which makes the Stockyards feel real. Turns out, authenticity is a pretty fragile commodity.”
Little by little Murrin’s investments began turning a profit, and the Stockyards remained standing. Murrin, however, wasn’t satisfied. The complete restoration of Cowtown still hinged on one factor: taking back the Cowtown Coliseum. “The Coliseum was obviously the theme-setter for the whole area,” he says. “It was the key to bringing the Stockyards back around to their authentic, Western roots.”
“We had to fight in court many times,” Walters remembers, “to try to get the city to restore the Coliseum back to how it should be — a place for the rodeo.”
“If we had ultimately lost the Coliseum battle,” Murrin adds, “that would have been the end of it.”
Among the city’s politicians, Murrin’s restoration had never garnered much support. Even with history on his side, Murrin’s efforts were frequently rejected. “Some of the older councilmen — thank goodness — could see the good in what we were trying to do, but they were the minority. The mayor couldn’t see it, so we had to keep hanging in there.” The setbacks were disheartening, but Murrin, confident in the righteousness of his cause, knew he’d succeed if the city council could somehow understand how passionate he and his fellow Fort Worthians were about saving the Stockyards.
For Walters, however, the city’s constant rejections began to take their toll, finally coming to a head following a particularly painful rejection. “Steve had invited me to speak … I got up to address the council … but I couldn’t say anything. I had nothing but tears running down my cheeks. I was just so upset at our situation. I told Steve I’m so sorry, I let you down, but he said, No Bert, that’s the best thing you could have done! They’re gonna realize our hearts are in this deal? I’ve always held those words in my heart.”
Murrin had gotten his message across. In 1976, the city council reversed an action that would have prevented the Coliseum from hosting a rodeo for 30 years. “To this day the Coliseum is successful in rodeo and Western events,” says Hub Baker, who now serves as executive director of Cowtown Coliseum. “It’s one of the Stockyards’ major attractions.”
A MAGNET FOR VISITORS
Since Murrin’s Coliseum victory, various Fort Worth investors have flocked to the Stockyards looking to find fortune in the familiar atmosphere, with varying degrees of success. Murrin, on the other hand, never gave up his role as Stockyard guardian. Using the skills he acquired in his fight for restoration, Murrin successfully ran for City Council in 1987. “The City Council needed somebody on it who understood the importance of the visitor industry and the role the Stockyards could play in it,” Murrin explains. “It was an opportunity for me to keep doing what I’d done from a different perspective.” Today, Murrin’s Stockyard business entities are mainly run by his son Philip, the eldest of his three children. Though Murrin may not be as active in the Stockyards as he once was, he remains vocal about sustaining the Yards’ authentic atmosphere.
Despite his lifetime of hard work, Murrin knew from the start that the fight for the Stockyards would never truly be finished. The recent rise of tourism has brought a slew of national investors to the Stockyards, a trend that Murrin worries may compromise the authenticity he’s worked so hard to establish. “To some degree, I think [the new investors] think we’re bumpkins who don’t have any concept of how to increase our cash flow by going with national chains,” he says. “Having locally owned businesses is what makes this place authentic. The heritage of the Stockyards belongs to the people.”
In addition to preserving the authentic-ity, fiscal security is still a concern for locals. “I worry about my renters,” says Walters, now a landlord for many of the historic buildings along the Stockyards’ Exchange Avenue. “I worry that the city will raise our taxes so that smaller, local businesses won’t be able to compete with the tax incentives these new investors are getting. Success in these stockyards has been a roll of the dice since the day we bought that saloon.”
“I’s no longer a question of ‘Are we gonna be successful?” Murrin says, “but a question of ‘Can we be successful in the right way? Can we maintain that success so our great grandchildren can still come out and feel like they’re in an area where their great grandpa was involved?” With new challenges presenting themselves daily, the future of the Stockyards may seem as uncertain as double sixes. Luckily for those like Murrin fortune often seems to favor the bold.
