iconic

Fashionably dressed bronc rider Bertha Kaepernik, picked herself up from the dust and mud of the rodeo arena in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in August 1904, and wiped the dirt out of her eyes. She had just been thrown from a big gray horse, a bucker of the worst type. “Why of course I’m going to ride him again,”...

Cowgirl Mamie Francis sat atop her horse, Babe, waiting for the director of California Frank Hafley’s Wild West Show to let her know when the program began.  Mamie and Babe were perched on a wooden platform thirty feet in the air over Coney Island, New York, looking down at the audience in the grandstands.  Directly...

Cowboy Bill Pickett is credited with introducing the sport of bulldogging to rodeos in 1907. In bulldogging, the rider dashes after a madly fleeing steer, leans out from the saddle, and throws himself onto its horns, bringing the beast to the ground in a swirling scramble of dust and a half ton of flying beef.  Often...

Twenty-nine-year-old Florence LaDue laid on her back in the middle of a rodeo arena in Alberta, Canada, twirling a lasso.  It was July 1910 and the crowd in the stands watching her work were cheering and whistling.  The trick the petite cowgirl was preparing to do was to throw a wide loop over a rider...

Bronc busting champion Kitty Wilkes won her first title at the Wild West Celebration Rodeo in Miles City, Montana, in 1916.  The seventeen-year-old New York native’s straightforwardness and untamed physical daring gave fans the impression she was born and bred into the rugged life of a Wyoming ranch.  Few would have guessed she was new...

Professional bronc rider Kitty Canutt grabbed a stick of wood lying next to a horse stall at the rodeo grounds in Spokane, Washington, and smacked champion relay racer Donna Card in the mouth with it.  The incident occurred in early September 1918 and was the start of a feud between the cowgirls that would continue...

From the early 1920s to the mid-1930s, trick and fancy rider Bonnie Gray and her company were recognized as some of the best rodeo performers in the country. The famous, all-around cowgirl solidified her place in the profession as an expert in the “under-the-belly-crawl” stunt. Riding fast into the arena atop her horse, King Tut,...