Budweiser Clydesdales Restaged a 1933 Delivery in Smyrna

An eight-horse Budweiser Clydesdales hitch delivered Cartersville beer through downtown Smyrna on July 11, 2025, four days before the MLB All-Star Game at Truist Park.

Smyrna Fire Capt. Ronald Sadowski put the Market Village crowd at about 2,500. The wagon was doing the same job August A. Busch Jr. gave it on April 7, 1933, the week beer became legal again.

Eight Horses Pulled a Red Wagon Onto King Street

The city asked watchers to be in place by 3:45 p.m., with some downtown vehicle access ending at 3:30 p.m. The delivery parade started at 4 p.m. in the Market Village, along West Spring Street, and the team made several stops so handlers could pass beer off the wagon.

Bethani Moore, an ambassador for the Budweiser Clydesdales, named the horses as they came off the trailer, walked a lap, and were hitched. Two drivers sat the box. Handlers and ambassadors walked the route with them.

The path was short and local. It was also a full production: a red wagon, crates, a police presence, and a crowd that filled the village well before the first hoof hit the asphalt. Friday at 4 p.m. is when that downtown is trying to move cars, and closing it then is the price of putting a hitch on King Street.

THE PARADE ROUTE IN SMYRNA

• King Street: The hitch formed and the delivery parade started here.
• West Spring Street: Market Village sits on this block, the city’s designated pedestrian zone for the stops.
• Atlanta Road: The team turned here after the village deliveries.
• Memorial Place and Church Street: Final stops before the wagon left downtown.

Neighbors treated it as a block party with better animals. Matt Kozub said he lives around the corner and called seeing the hitch beside his house “really cool.” Lisa Kessa said the horses were much bigger than she had expected. Ella Walton, 11, of Smyrna, said she was unsure about the All-Star Game and had come because she saw a picture of the horses online.

The 1933 Repeal Gift Still Runs on City Streets

Moore told the Smyrna crowd the origin story before the wagon moved. On April 7, 1933, August A. Busch Jr. and Adolphus Busch III gave their father, August A. Busch Sr., a six-horse Clydesdale hitch in 1933 to mark the repeal of Prohibition of beer. The hitch carried the first post-Prohibition case from the St. Louis brewery down Pestalozzi Street.

The company sent a second six-horse team to New York, where the wagon drew thousands on the way to the Empire State Building and a case went to former Gov. Alfred E. Smith. The tour then reenacted a delivery to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington. The six-horse team later grew to eight. Anheuser-Busch still describes the horses as a symbol of heritage and quality, with hundreds of appearances across the country each year.

A Budweiser team member in Smyrna put the travel load another way. The horses are on the road about 300 days a year. “Everybody sees them on the commercials, but nobody truly realizes how big they are,” the team member said. “Seeing the wonder in everybody’s eyes when they truly see how wonderful and massive these horses really are, that’s the best part.”

THE HITCH FROM 1933 TO ALL-STAR WEEK

1. April 7, 1933: Busch sons present a six-horse hitch in St. Louis and send a second team east with cases of beer.
2. March 30, 1950: A Dalmatian joins the act at the opening of the Newark brewery and now travels with each hitch.
3. 1993: Anheuser-Busch opens its Cartersville, Georgia, brewery, later the source of the Smyrna load.
4. July 11, 2025: An eight-horse hitch delivers Cartersville beer through Smyrna Market Village.
5. July 12 to 15, 2025: The team stables at the Budweiser Zone outside Cobb Galleria Centre.
6. July 15, 2025: The 95th MLB All-Star Game is played at Truist Park.

Smyrna did not get a new idea. It got the original one, with Georgia beer on the wagon instead of St. Louis beer, and with baseball week as the excuse to close the street.

Why Smyrna Got the Parade and Not Truist Park

The 95th All-Star Game was a Cobb County show. Truist Park held the HBCU Swingman Classic the same Friday night the hitch was downtown. Capital One All-Star Village ran Saturday through Tuesday at Cobb Galleria Centre. Smyrna is the next city over, and it received the one piece of the week that still has to happen on a public street.

City Councilman Travis Lindley stood in that crowd and did not pretend the horses were a sideshow. “This is awesome, an American icon here in the great city of Smyrna,” Lindley said. “We couldn’t be happier. Look at this crowd. It’s a wonderful day.” He said the city had a full weekend, including a concert, and still called the hitch “the mainstay.”

City Hall had already framed the Clydesdales’ All-Star week stop in Smyrna as a public honor, not a pour-house stunt. Cobb County pointed people to the same downtown map and warned drivers to expect delays. The street parade had no age gate. Grandparents and kids stood in the same pedestrian pocket, which is the point of unloading the horses where people already walk.

It’s been on my bucket list my whole life, and I’m 82.

Dottie Harrington, Marietta resident, at the Smyrna parade

Alexa Hesse, who called herself locally involved, said events like this bring people together and let adults watch through a child’s eyes. The hitch is built for that first live look. Television shrinks the animals. A curb in Market Village does not.

Brandon, AJ, Tom, and the Rest of the Hitch

Moore said the Smyrna team came from Boonville, Missouri, home of Warm Springs Ranch, the company’s breeding farm on 300-plus acres with more than 70 Clydesdales. She said Anheuser-Busch runs three official teams, two out of Boonville and one in St. Louis. Seven handlers and 10 horses travel to each appearance. Only eight pull at a time, so each horse gets a rest day.

Training starts early at Grant’s Farm in St. Louis. At about six months the horses meet handlers and learn to be groomed, walk on a lead, and stand for a farrier. They spend two years in work before they pull in public, first in pairs, then up to the full eight. They typically start public appearances at five and work about 10 years, retiring at 15 to a base farm.

THE HITCH STANDARD

Those marks are the whole costume. A bay gelding without the blaze or the stockings does not make this hitch, no matter how strong he is. The hay is part of the brand too. Moore said every team eats the same hay, and when a hitch travels the hay is shipped to the stop so the diet does not change.

THE EIGHT HORSES ON THE WAGON

• Brandon: One of the eight pulling in Smyrna.
• AJ: Named with the others as the trailer unloaded.
• Tom: Hitched for the Market Village delivery.
• Kevin: On the eight-horse team that left King Street.
• RJ: Part of the Boonville hitch on the Smyrna trip.
• Toby: Pulled the red wagon through West Spring Street.
• Hudson: One of the eight on the carriage.
• Dave: Completed the pulling team of eight.

Two more horses were on the trip and were not named as pullers that afternoon. The show people remember is the eight, the wagon, and the names called out in order before the first turn.

The Beer on the Wagon Came From Cartersville

The load was not a prop shipped from St. Louis. The eight-horse team delivered brewery-fresh Budweiser from Anheuser-Busch’s plant in Cartersville, about a county away from the All-Star hotels. The Cartersville brewery opened in 1993 at 100 Busch Drive NE and brews Budweiser among other company brands.

That is the 1933 mechanic with a Georgia address. The original hitch advertised beer that had just become legal. The Smyrna hitch advertised beer that had just left a local line, hauled the old way through a town that was not on the All-Star ticket. Handlers pulled bottles from crates on the carriage and handed them off at the stops. The horses were the crowd. The cases were the point of the route.

Budweiser, an official MLB beer sponsor, called the Smyrna stop one of the ways it was “proudly continuing its tradition of celebrating America’s favorite pastime.” The pastime on King Street was watching a wagon. Baseball was a few miles east, and later.

Cobb Galleria Held the Stables Through Tuesday

After the parade, the hitch’s week moved indoors-adjacent. Fans at Capital One All-Star Village could visit the Budweiser Zone just outside Cobb Galleria Centre from July 12 to 15, play games, win prizes, and meet the horses at their stables. That site was 21 and older. The street in Smyrna was not.

Cobb County’s own All-Star desk listed the Smyrna clop next to All-Star Week events around Truist Park, the Galleria, and The Battery. The county’s account posted photos of the hitch the next day and told people the weekend was still going. The horses had already done the one thing a convention hall cannot copy, which is take a public right-of-way and make it a delivery.

Lindley reached for a bigger frame than a suburb with a good Friday. “From the jungle city to Main Street America, we couldn’t be happier to have them here,” he said. The happier party was the one standing in the road’s old parking spaces, watching eight geldings work a script written for a brewery gate in 1933.

Moore told the crowd the team would work the Budweiser Zone through July 15. The wagon left Church Street with the cases lighter and the All-Star Game still four days off.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Tall Is 18 Hands on a Clydesdale?

A hand is 4 inches, so 18 hands is 72 inches at the withers, the ridge between the shoulder blades, which is why Moore could also tell the Smyrna crowd the hitch horses stand six feet tall before anyone counts the neck and head.

Why Do the Clydesdales Travel With a Dalmatian?

Anheuser-Busch added a Dalmatian on March 30, 1950, at the opening of its Newark brewery, nodding to the old brewery practice of keeping dogs to guard horses and wagons, and a Dalmatian now travels with each hitch even when the day’s work is a suburban beer handoff.

Where Was the Smyrna Delivery Beer Brewed?

The wagon carried Budweiser from the Cartersville brewery at 100 Busch Drive NE, a plant that also packages the company’s emergency drinking-water donations when a production line is switched from beer to filtered water for disaster relief.

Who Could Meet the Horses at Cobb Galleria?

The Budweiser Zone outside Cobb Galleria Centre was limited to visitors 21 and older from July 12 to 15, a tighter gate than the Smyrna street parade, which the city ran as an open downtown delivery with designated pedestrian areas and no age cutoff.