He undoubtedly enjoyed causing outrage to Dallas city leaders when he forced American to partially pull out of Love Field and into Amon Carter Field during the airport wars of the 1950s. He gave us our own Texas Centennial celebration in 1936 and with it the Will Rogers Memorial Center, and was a founder of American Airlines. With the help of Roosevelt’s son Elliott, Carter was instrumental in bringing a bomber plant, today Lockheed Martin, to Fort Worth. He counted as friends John Nance Garner and Franklin Roosevelt. If he needed to use charm, he would do so, but he also wasn’t afraid of the hammerlock. When Amon spoke, business and political leaders listened. Amon Carter, who swore he brought a sack lunch when he went to Dallas so he wouldn’t spend any money there, had the best bullhorn of any of them, his voice heard clearly from here to Washington, D.C., and New York City. The head of our cheer squad is better than yours, including you, Houston, and Jesse Jones. Stockyards, honky tonks, weekly bull riding, and the only official John Wayne museum outside of his birthplace? If the Duke approves of our city, we rest our case. And we are, after all, where the West begins. While Austin and San Antonio are, geographically, farther west, being West (big W) is a state of mind. Go anywhere outside of Texas, and the citizens of the other 49 assume our state is full of horse-riding, cowboy-hat-wearing folks who routinely say “howdy.” We’d hate to introduce them to any of the other four major cities and disappoint them. Add in Funkytown, and it’s simply no contest. ![]() Big D and Alamo City are all fine and dandy (Austin doesn’t seem to have ever been bestowed a decent nickname), but we argue Fort Worth has those city’s nicknames beat in both quality and quantity. And the roll-off-the-tip-of-your-tongue nickname of Cowtown might be one of the most apropros monikers in all of these United States. The story of how Panther City became a thing - a Dallas reporter writes of an escaped panther being found asleep in downtown Fort Worth - is the kind of tall tale that gets more fun with each telling. ![]() So, how did our town manage to get two separate nicknames dedicated to each animal? The answer has more to do with our city’s diversity and self-deprecation than it does with paying homage to furry critters. Outside of being large quadrupeds, cows and panthers have seemingly little in common.
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