A Palace for Cows: How Daly City Got the Grand National
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The arena on Geneva Avenue, on the line between Daly City and San Francisco, was built for livestock, horses and rodeo. Its official name was the California State Livestock Pavilion. Almost nobody has ever called it that.
A name meant as an insult
As early as May 1935, with the Depression on, a local newspaper asked why money should be spent on a "palace for cows" when people were going hungry. A headline writer turned the phrase around. By the time the building opened in 1941, Cow Palace was its name in print, and it stuck.
The first Grand National
The arena opened in April 1941. That November it held what it was built for: the Grand National Livestock Exposition, the Grand National Horse Show and the Grand National Rodeo, run together from November 15 to 22. News reports put the crowd at 12,000 a day.
War, then every year since
1942. The Grand National is called off. The building goes to the military for the rest of the war.
1946. The Junior Grand National is founded in the spring for young people raising livestock, and the Grand National returns on November 15.
1950. A contestant named Dianne Goldman competes for Grand National rodeo queen. San Francisco later knew her as Dianne Feinstein.
2008. The ProRodeo Hall of Fame inducts the Grand National Rodeo.
2020. The rodeo is held online.
The same floor has held two Republican National Conventions, the Beatles and the Warriors. The horses and cattle still come back every fall. This is one entry in the full Bay Area horse history timeline.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Grand National Rodeo" (dates, with the 1941 and 1946 newspaper reports it cites)
Wikipedia, "Cow Palace" (the name and the 1941 opening)
"History of Bayshore" (the name, in a local history)
San Francisco Chronicle, "How did the Cow Palace get its name?"