The tradition of the Texas cowboy came from northern Mexico with the vaqueros, mounted livestock herders who worked mainly with cattle on the open prairie, and in Bandera County these men became legends. The City of Bandera became known as a cowboy town where people came for recreation and supplies, and boys learned at a young age to ride horses and drive cattle to earn wages on ranches. The Western Cattle Trail ran from Mexico through Texas to the Canadian border, and from 1874 to 1894 an estimated thirty thousand cowboys drove seven to ten million longhorns and one million horses along it, using Bandera as a staging area. Local rodeos began in the 1920s as working cowboys displayed their skills during roundups and cattle drives, and Bandera held its first rodeo in 1924 at Mansfield Park, where rodeos continued through the years. The Buck and the Bruce ranches hosted summer guests and provided rodeos as entertainment, followed by the Dixie Dude, Bennie's U-Bar, and the Twin Elm ranches. Bandera cowboys gained fame by winning world champion titles and entering the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 1938, Toots Mansfield became Bandera's first world champion in calf roping and won the title six more times, and he later became the first president of the National Rodeo Cowboy Association, organized in 1945. In 1948, a San Antonio newspaper called Bandera the "Cowboy Capital of the World," and the title afterward appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world.

Photo: Bonnie

Photo: Brian Anderson

Bandera, Texas · USA