The Cow Palace Arena and Event Center

as the Grand National Rodeo, its first iteration featured a tribute to the late Will Rogers, the well- loved American “cowboy philosopher” and humorist, and was considered a smash success. Within a month of that first Rodeo, however, the United States was drawn into World War II, and the Cow Palace “immediately became corralled -- pun intended -- into the war effort and served as a deployment center for the Pacific theater and then, later on, as a machine shop and facility for repairs and maintenance of equipment,”Keaney relates.The ten-day Rodeo and associated events returned on November 15, 1946, and the third Grand National Rodeo took place in 1947. The only other time that the Rodeo wasn’t held was during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. “That’s why we celebrated our 75th Rodeo a couple of weeks ago,” Keaney adds. “But when you do the math, it doesn’t really add up.” 4 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 12