Rodeo History

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You hear the roar of the crowd as a young cowboy makes a great bareback ride on a horse called Blue Fire. A rodeo clown starts making jokes about the announcer, you find yourself laughing heartily as you spill some popcorn on the hot bleachers. You smell the concessions where they have burgers, hotdogs, and scones. You can see cowboy hats bobbing up and down like crashing waves behind the bucking chutes as they get the next cowboy ready to make his ride.

Rodeo as we know it didn’t begin until the late 1800’s. Although it can be traced back to its Spanish roots. The Spanish started settling California and becoming cattle ranchers. “The very definition of “rodeo” is a Spanish word meaning roundup.”(Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame) Many of the rodeos in the late 1800’s were actually
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These are rodeo’s scored events. The scoring is the same for all three of these events. With the highest score being 100 points, 50 points for the rider and 50 points for the animal. There are usually two judges. One for the cowboy and one for the animal. Scores are usually around the 70’s and 80’s. The cowboys have to make a ride for 8 seconds on top of an animal that is bred to buck. Any roughstock rider will tell you it seems like so much longer. A buzzer is used to signal the end of the eight seconds. The first roughstock event was the traditional cowboy event saddlebronc. Saddlebronc began from breaking (training) horses in the saddle for the first time. Most horses will buck when first saddled either from fear or just to try and get the rider off. Bull riding started out first as steer riding and progressively made it all the up to the bulls we see in modern rodeos. Although bull riding is not a traditional cowboys event and serves no real purpose on ranches it has become one of the most popular events. Bareback, similar to bull riding, was started mostly to entertain audiences and serves no real purpose on a