La Fiesta de los Vaqueros Tucson Rodeo - this was the main reason for our visit to Tucson this year. The first La Fiesta - a celebration of the cowboys – took place on three days in 1925. Today it has grown to a nine-day celebration centered on the Tucson Rodeo, one of the top 25 professional rodeos in North America. This year the parade and rodeo was celebrating its 90th birthday and we were fortunate to be part of the big party!
The original idea for this event came from a "snow-bird" from the East Coast by name Leighton Kramer: he wanted to draw visitors to Tucson during the slow mid-winter season. In 1925 Tucson was still a frontier town and not much was going on. Since then, each February local groups, organizations and businesses saddle their horses and hitch up their buggies and carriages for the "Celebration of the Cowboys.” The day of the parade is even a school holiday, universities are closed and many businesses as well. The Tucson Rodeo Parade is considered the world’s longest non-motorized parade. This two-hour spectacle around the rodeo grounds features western-themed floats and buggies, historic horse-drawn coaches, Mexican folk dancers, highschool marching bands and outfitted riders on beautiful horses. An estimated 200,000 spectators view the parade each year.
To watch this colorful parade from the grandstands, we had to get up early (left the hotel at 7 am already!) to avoid street blocks and to still get parking on the rodeo grounds. It's been cold in the morning (only about 40 deg F), we needed our warm jackets for a change, but sun was out and it became a beautiful day. We had popcorn for breakfast and watched the pre-parade entertainment (a great high school mariachi band - see pic - , an old gent's cowboy choir and some western show) before the parade started at 9 am and took for about two hours.
On the rodeo grounds there were boothes of all kind being set up: food vendors - good mexican food! -, hats, boots, souvenirs etc. Before the "real" rodeo started, kids - more girls than boys! – were preforming in the arena. At the Mutton Bustin’ contest, 4-to 6-year-olds tested their riding skills on sheep, followed by kids ages 7-12 performing in barrel race and calf roping.
Nowadays the entry list for Tucson shows the most renowned "stars" of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) from all over the U.S. and Canada, competing for more than $460,000 in prize money, while about 11,000 fans are cheering for them. Rodeo events include bull riding, bareback and saddle bronc riding, steer wrestling, tie-down roping, team roping and women’s barrel racing. At 2 pm the competition started with the bareback riding and as media members we were fortunate to be able to watch either directly at the chutes or on a viewpoint above the chutes. So, we've been able to watch the cowboys getting ready for their 8-second-ride. We also noticed how well-kept and healthy the bucking horses appeared and how the whole procedure went. It was fascinating and eye-opening and it changed our perception about rodeo completely (more about that later!).
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