Pecos, Texas

Pecos started in eighteen eighty-one as a Texas and Pacific Railway station on the cattle trails of the Trans-Pecos, a water and supply stop where ranch outfits passed through. On July Fourth, eighteen eighty-three, cowboys from competing ranches settled a question that had been nagging at them: which outfit had the best hands. They laid out a series of contests, roping and riding events on the flat ground west of town, and ran them off in front of whoever showed up to watch.

Pecos calls that July Fourth gathering the World's First Rodeo, a claim historians have debated but which the town has defended for well over a century. The West of the Pecos Rodeo still runs every year in July, drawing competitors from across the region. Whether or not the eighteen eighty-three contest was truly the first, the sport needed to start somewhere, and Pecos has staked that ground for a hundred and forty years.