Wal-Mart Shareholders: Meeting Evolution

From float trips and camp outs along the Big Sugar Creek near Noel, Mo., in the early days of Wal-Mart and ice cream socials at the Walton’s Bentonville homestead, the annual shareholder meeting has been an evolution in the making since 1969.

But today’s spectacle of star proportion took years to perfect, according to local historians.

The first official meeting was held in Bentonville around 1969 when Wal-Mart patriarch Sam Walton and six others gathered around a small table at the coffee shop next to the warehouse to casually discuss the company’s success. That was the year Wal-Mart incorporated and there were 24 variety stores — a mixture of Ben Franklin and the first few Walmart stores. Click here to read the full story from our partners at TheCityWire.com.