The History of Rodeo

Clay Gross

B1

The History of Rodeo

       The history of rodeo dates all the way back to the early 1700’s when early settlers of America considered today’s rodeo a daily chore.  During the westward expansion, many large cattle ranches moved large amounts of cattle in order to feed the new towns and take advantage of new grazing grounds.  This created a chance for cowboys to compete against one another in horsemanship and cattle cutting during the long cattle drives.  Once the cattle expansion started to die down, the wild west show was created by cowboys like Buffalo Bill.  The wild west show was for the view of the eastern city people that had never seen the western cowboy culture.  These wild west shows were the first form of rodeo back in the late 1800s.  rodeo is one of the only sports that has originated from the skills of a working situation.  Rodeo consists of two types of events, Roughstock and timed events.  Roughstock events contains saddle bronc riding, bareback riding, and bull riding.  In all of these events you must ride the animal for eight seconds while holding onto the animal with only one hand.  The timed events consists of calf roping, steer wrestling, team roping, and barrel racing.  These events are not scored like the roughstock events, but instead are measured in the amount of time it takes the cowboy to complete the task.   Rodeo is unlike any other sport competed by man in the world.

      Clark, Ralph. "Rodeo History - The Early Years." Rodeo. About.com. Web. 10 Oct. 2011. <http://rodeo.about.com/od/history/a/rodeohistory1.htm>.
      Quaid, Ronda. "Rodeo History." Silicon Beach Communications. Santa Barbara News Press, 1996. Web. 10 Oct. 2011. <http://www.silcom.com/~imago/sbnp/rodeohist.html>.