Rodeo History

No matter where she runs, rodeo clown Tonya Waters's stalker always finds her. Now he's managed to track her down on the rodeo circuit. If bull rider Seth Starke hadn't saved her, she'd be dead. But when the handsome cowboy is injured in the ring and Tonya rescues him, Seth seems more determined than ever to keep her safe. But can she risk staying at his Tennessee ranch and bringing danger to his family? As her stalker gets more violent, Tonya and Seth vow to outsmart him before he makes good on his ultimate threat: if he can't have her, no one will.

Stories of "The American West" often rely on tired tropes of tough cowboys, but real history is much less straight and narrow and way more interesting. Join host Niecy Nash-Betts for a wild round-up of LGBTQ+ lives that got buried in the dust of popular culture and history, and a look at how queer people continue to shape the West today–from gay rodeo to two-spirit identity to trans truckers.

They call me Rodeo, ‘cause I was made for ridin’. When a member of our MC turns up dead, I know exactly who did it. But when I show up at the witness’s house to confirm my suspicions, she tells me something I don’t wanna hear. It wasn’t the MC I thought. It was someone else. So now we have two enemies. And I have to keep her safe from both. Because she’s beautiful and fragile. She needs someone like me to take care of her. And I do, all night long. Things usually get complicated when I try to rope a girl. But this level of complicated? This is a whole new thing.

In August 1908, three unknown riders arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, their hats adorned with wildflowers, to compete in the world’s greatest rodeo. Steer-roping virtuoso Ikua Purdy and his cousins Jack Low and Archie Ka’au’a had travelled 4,200 miles from Hawaii, of all places, to test...

The working cowhand of old was a dusty laborer, but today's rodeo performers can hone their skills before small-town crowds and be stars in urban coliseums.Historian Kristine Fredriksson follows the evolution of rodeo from the range to Buffalo Bill's Wild West to the extravaganzas in modern times.

Rodeo is a dangerous and painful performance in which only the strongest and most skilled riders succeed. In the popular imagination, the western rodeo hero is often a stoic white man who embodies the toughness and independence of America’s frontier past. However, marginalized people have starred in rodeos since the very beginning. Cast out of popular western mythology and pushed to the fringes in everyday life, these cowboys and cowgirls found belonging and meaning at the rodeo, staking a claim to national inclusion.