Rodeo

Texas named rodeo its official state sport in 1997, becoming the first state in the country to make such a designation. Governor George W. Bush signed the measure that June, naming Houston, San Antonio, and Fort Worth as home to internationally known rodeos. Wyoming and South Dakota followed with their own state sport designations in 2003.

A chute opens and a bull explodes into the arena with a rider clinging to a single rope, the animal twisting and kicking to throw them before the eight-second horn sounds. Bronc riders face the same clock on a bucking horse, judged on control rather than simply hanging on. Timed events move faster: a steer wrestler leaps from a galloping horse to wrestle a steer to the ground, while barrel racers and ropers chase the clock instead of an animal.

Texas runs some of the largest rodeos in the world. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo draws more than two million visitors each spring and ranks among the highest-grossing rodeos anywhere, while the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo and the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo each fill arenas built to hold tens of thousands of fans.

Rodeo traces its roots to Texas cattle ranches, where cowboys settled arguments over who could rope and ride best. On July 4, 1883, ranch hands in Pecos staged what is widely credited as the world's first rodeo, and roper Morg Livingston beat Trav Windham for a prize of ribbons cut from a little girl's dress. That contest still runs today as the West of the Pecos Rodeo.

Bill Pickett, a Black cowboy who ran a horse-breaking business with his brothers in Taylor, invented the event now known as steer wrestling by grabbing a steer's horns and wrestling it to the ground. His technique spread to rodeo arenas nationwide, and in 1972 he became the first African American inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame. Pickett's innovation, born on a Texas ranch, remains a standard rodeo event today.

Houston, Fort Worth, and San Antonio built on that founding claim, turning their rodeos into some of the biggest annual events in the country. Lawmakers named all three cities directly in the 1997 resolution, tying the modern arenas to the same tradition Pecos and Taylor started more than a century earlier.

State Representative Bill Siebert filed the resolution naming rodeo Texas's official sport in December 1996, and the House adopted it the following May. The Senate amended the measure to add Fort Worth alongside Houston and San Antonio as home to Texas's internationally known rodeos before both chambers gave final approval. Governor George W. Bush signed the resolution on June 18, 1997, making Texas the first state to designate an official state sport.