A Cowboy Reunion

Fred Dalby won’t ever forget the summer of 1957 when he was determined to get home for the Texas Cowboy Reunion and rodeo. “We’d been in California,” Dalby recalls. “We drove 1,300 miles straight to get back in time for the rodeo.”

Dalby, 84, hasn’t missed a reunion since the first one held July 4, 1930. Merchants in Stamford, Texas, decided the town needed a morale boost in the midst of the Great Depression and since Stamford was central to several large ranches, they hosted a rodeo in honor of the area’s horseback heritage.

At that first three-day rodeo, 98 working cowboys competed in four events that drew 12,000 spectators. Today, hailed as the world’s largest amateur rodeo, the reunion—now a four-day celebration held around July 4th—attracts more than 20,000 visitors to the town of 3,636 people. Some 700 rodeo amateurs and bona fide working cowboys compete for $50,000 in prize money and $15,000 worth of saddles, spurs, and belt buckles.

Long-time residents like Don Welch, the rodeo events chairman, are deeply committed to the reunion. Every year, more than 100 local volunteers work hundreds of hours to put on the rodeo, a big parade, and other festivities.

“It’s a tradition and a piece of our heritage that’s slowly becoming extinct,” Welch says. “All the effort we put into it helps keep it alive.”

Though people still ranch around Stamford, not too many make a living as cowboys anymore. Some work in the oil industry or local businesses, while others commute to jobs in nearby Abilene. “Ranches are breaking up . . . Pickups have replaced wagons. There’s not as many cowboys as there used to be. It’s just too hard a life for not that much money,’’ says Welch, a bull rider in his younger days.

The reunion always has been held west of town on 55 acres donated by the Swenson family, who’ve ranched near Stamford since the mid-1850s. At first, the rodeo was in a natural bowl area on the land. In 1937, residents built an arena and covered grandstands still in use today.

At a nearby stone bunkhouse built in 1935, members of the Oldtimers Association gather to reminisce and pay tribute to cowboys who’ve died in the last year. Membership in the association, which boasts the likes of humorist Will Rogers and philanthropist Amon Carter, is open to anyone 45 or older with a ranching background.

At the bunkhouse, the oldtimers maintain their own museum—open only during the reunion. It houses everything from hats, boots, guns, and spurs to a two-headed calf, all dating from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.

On the town square, the Cowboy Country Museum preserves local artifacts and family heirlooms, such as a wooden chuckwagon, household furnishings, and period clothing. Turn-of-the-century photographs of downtown Stamford show the same red brick streets and Greek Revival-style post office that are still in use today.

The reunion keeps former residents linked to the town.

“A lot of them haven’t been here in years, but they have such wonderful memories and warm feelings that they are so supportive of anything we’re working on,” says Matilda Bolin, secretary for the Stamford Chamber of Commerce.

Dalby says the reunion grew on him. The retired cowboy leads the rodeo’s grand entry every night on horseback, an honor he’s held for many years.

“Whenever you do something all your life, you want to keep going.”

Sheryl Smith-Rodgers is a freelance writer in Blanco, Texas.

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