The Calgary Stampede is an annual rodeo, exhibition, and festival held every July in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The ten-day event, which bills itself as “The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth”, attracts over one million visitors per year.

It also features one of the world’s largest rodeos, a parade, midway, stage shows, concerts, agricultural competitions, chuckwagon racing, and First Nations exhibitions.

The event’s roots are traced to 1886 when the Calgary and District Agricultural Society held its first fair. In 1912, American promoter Guy Weadick organized his first rodeo and festival, known as the Stampede. He returned to Calgary in 1919 to organize the Victory Stampede in honour of soldiers returning from World War I. Weadick’s festival became an annual event in 1923 when it merged with the Calgary Industrial Exhibition to create the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede.

Here are some other fact about the Stampede:

#1 – The very first Calgary Stampede in 1912 was only 6 days
#2 – In 1939, admission to the grounds was just 25 cents.
#3 – The “Big Four” businessmen: A.J. MacLean, A.E. Cross, George Lane and Pat Burns made a crucial contribution of $100,000 towards the first ever Calgary Stampede
#4 – The first Calgary Stampede Rodeo awarded $20,000 in prize money to competitors.
#5 – It wasn’t until 1968 when the Calgary Stampede became a 10 day event

Every year thousands of visitors descend on our city to partake this incredible 10 day event.  Here are few of the numbers:

#1 – Over 120,000 people attend the Stampede every day, and well over a million visitors each year
#2 – Approximately 400,000 people attend the Stampede Parade every year
#3 – The first Stampede in 1912 attracted about 80,000 people to a city with a population of only 47,000
#4 – The 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede (2012) set an attendance record with 1,409,371 visitors
#5 – Over 2 million Canadians nationwide watch the Stampede Parade on television

the Stampede offers a variety of foods and some are well strange to say the least. At the end of the day people gravitate to comfort fair foods. Here is some consumption values:

#1 – More than 2 million mini-donuts are eaten every year at the Stampede
#2 – More than 125,000 hot dogs are eaten
#3 – Over 75,000 hamburgers are consumed
#4 – Over 200,000 pancakes are served at community breakfasts throughout the city during the Stampede
#5 – A total of four beer gardens are found at the Calgary Stampede — cannot tell you how much beer is consumed, but let’s just A LOT!

The Stampede is actually two events in one that make up the Greatest Show on Earth: The Exhibition (Midway Rides and Games, and the Food and Beverages), and the Stampede (the rodeo and the chuckwagon races). To house such an event requires a lot of space. Here are numbers around the size of the grounds:

#1 – Stampede Park itself covers more than 200 acres of land
#2 – That’s about:

• About two times as big as The Mall of America
• About four times as big as Grand Central Station
• About six times as big as The Pentagon
• About eleven times as big as Buckingham Palace

#3 – More than 7000 animals are hosted by the Stampede Park during the 10-day event including over 600 chuckwagon horses.
#4 – If the Stampede was a city, it would be the third largest one in Alberta with over 120K people each day – Red Deer only has a population of 104K
#5 – The total for the 10 days is about 1.2M people passing through the gates. That almost doubles the population of Calgary.