The Cascade Rodeo Grounds were built on the east side of the Missouri River on the site where the original town of Cascade once stood.
The first rodeo was held in 1964. Rodeos continued to be held at the arena until 1987. Rodeos were often 2-day events and included M.R.A., High School Rodeos, a Little Britches Rodeo, N.C.M.R.A. and PRCA Rodeos.
Besides the usual events of Bareback Bronc, Saddle Bronc Riding, Bull Riding, Calf Roping, Steer Wrestling and Barrel Racing a special event was often included.
These special events varied over the years. Ladies Bull Riding was featured one year, another year was a match off of two ladies Bareback Bronc Champions. There was also a Businessman’s Wild Cow Milking Contest, and an old time Cowboys’ Bronc Riding with horses snubbed in the arena and ridden using 1920 rules. A wild horse race and a Businessmen and Women’s Wild Cow Scramble were also featured over the years.
There was a hiatus after 1987. Then enterprising individuals tried their hands at reviving the sport. Born out of a desire to support the local community and Cascade area cowboys and cowgirls, the Cascade Rodeo Association was formed in 2009 with the goal of growing and supporting High School Rodeo.
After seven events, the Cascade Rodeo Association established the inaugural Cascade Pro Rodeo as a PRCA event on the Montana Circuit in 2014.
In 2018, our rodeo was recognized at the National Finals Rodeo with the Justin Boots “Best Footing Award” distinguishing the Cascade Pro Rodeo as the most improved rodeo on the Montana Circuit.
The Cascade PRCA Rodeo Association is a 501©3 all-volunteer, non-profit organization dedicated to providing fun family entertainment while promoting western heritage.
Rodeos are a significant part of our local and nation’s history, reflecting the cowboy culture and traditions that have shaped America’s identity. Rodeo has its history. It began about a century after the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.
Rodeo’s name is derived from the Spanish verb, rodear, which means to circle or round up. Santa Fe, New Mexico lays claim to be the first rodeo, based on a letter dated 1847 written by Captain Mayne Reid from Santa Fe to a friend in Ireland.
Others claim the first official rodeo was in 1869 in Deer Trail, Colorado, when two groups of cowboys from neighboring ranches met to settle an argument over who was best at performing everyday cowboy tasks, including breaking wild horses.
Many others claim first rodeo in the U.S., such as Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1872; Winfield, Kansas, in 1882; and Pecos, Texas, in 1883. The “World’s First Rodeo” in Pecos, Texas, came about when two well-known cowhands, working for different outfits, earned reputations of being excellent ropers. The taunts and ribbing between the outfits’ cowboys, led to a competition to establish the bragging rights for the best cowboy in the Old West. “That hot, summer day in 1883 became launching pad to what we see in rodeo today.”
An excerpt from ‘World’s Toughest Rodeo’: “Like everything in the pioneering life, the daily work became the chessboard by which the cowboys played their games. Who was the best with the rope? Who could rope a steer and tie it down the fastest? Who could ride that bronc nobody wanted to try?”
Though rowdy and skillful, these early contests were primarily displays of riding and roping skills and not the organized events of today’s rodeo industry. Often characterized as an American sport, in reality it grew out of the practices of Spanish ranchers and their Mexican ranch hands (vaqueros), a mixture of cattle wrangling and bullfighting that dates back to the sixteenth-century conquistadors.
Rodeo evolved after the Texas Revolution and the U.S.-Mexican War when Anglo cowboys learned the skills, attire, and sport of the vaqueros. “Ranch-versus-ranch contests gradually sprang up, as bronc riding, bull riding, and roping contests appeared at race tracks, fairgrounds, and festivals”.
The more organized competition that would become American rodeo gained popularity at events such as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which began in 1883. Such shows established rodeo as an American fixture by romanticizing a West that was already rapidly changing.
“The word rodeo was only occasionally used for American cowboy sports until the 1920s, and professional cowboys themselves did not officially adopt the term until 1945. Similarly, there was no attempt to standardize the events needed to make up such sporting contests until 1929.”
In 1936 a group of performers walked out of a show at Boston Garden to protest insufficient pay. The players organized the first cowboy union, “the Cowboys’ Turtle Association (so named because, though organizing was a slow process, the association finally “stuck their neck out”), to guarantee fair compensation”. In 1945, the group renamed itself the Rodeo Cowboys Association, bringing the sport’s true name into common usage. In 1975, the organization became the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.
There might not have been any steer wrestling at all in American rodeo were it not for a black cowboy from Texas named Bill Pickett. Born to formerly enslaved parents, Pickett originated steer wrestling. Pickett devised his own unique method of bulldogging steers. From horseback, Pickett would chase a steer, leap onto it, grab its horns and wrangle it to the ground—’sometimes biting the animal’s lip and nose to subdue it’.
“Pickett performed at local central Texas fairs and rodeos and was discovered by an agent, who signed him on a tour of the West with his brothers. He received sensational national publicity with his bulldogging exhibition at the 1904 Cheyenne Frontier Days. This brought him a contract with the famous 101 Ranch in Oklahoma and its traveling Wild West exhibitions”.
In 1972, Pickett was posthumously inducted into the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum’s Rodeo Hall of Fame, the first Black athlete to be so honored.
“It’s a throwback to a way of life but also a tip of the cap to the generations of people who founded this land.” If you get the chance to attend our local rodeo, “it truly is like Garth Brooks says: It’s boots and chaps; It’s cowboy hats; It’s spurs and latigo; It’s the ropes and the reins; And the joy and the pain; And they call the thing rodeo”!!