Rodeo Capital of the World
Near Cody, Wyoming
Cody calls itself the Rodeo Capital of the World, and it has earned the boast through more than a century of hard riding. The tradition took formal shape not long after the First World War, when local volunteers organized the first Cody Stampede to honor the cowboy way of life and to put their young town on the map. That summer celebration around Independence Day still runs today.
But what truly sets Cody apart began in the late nineteen thirties, when the Cody Nite Rodeo launched. It bills itself as the only place in the country that offers rodeo every single night through the summer. From the first of June through the end of August, the chutes bang open here each evening, with bull riders, bronc riders, ropers, and barrel racers competing under the lights of the Absaroka foothills.
For visitors passing through on the way to Yellowstone, it is a chance to see a living Western sport rather than a museum piece, a nightly reminder that in Cody the frontier never fully clocked out.
