Rowell Ranch Rodeo celebrates its 90th Annual Rodeo
May 15 - 16, 2010

What's happening? Where to be? When to be there? How much will it cost? Did you say there are things to do for FREE?
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Are you Tough Enough To Wear Pink?

Wear pink on Sunday, May 16, 2010 at the Rowell Ranch Rodeo to help raise awareness and funds for the fight against breast cancer. 

2009 Rowell Ranch Rodeo Top Hand - Joe Field

Every year the Rowell Ranch Advisory Committee honors one of its members with the “Top Hand” Award. In 1978, a group of local businessmen, ranchers, professionals and rodeo enthusiasts came together to form the Rowell Ranch Advisory Committee.
Guided by the Rowell Ranch Rodeo Board of Directors, this group works to produce and promote the Annual Rowell Ranch Pro Rodeo, as a tribute to its founders, the late Harry and Maggie Rowell.

Outstanding character, active participation and dedication to the Rowell Ranch Pro Rodeo are just some of the qualities The Rowell Ranch Rodeo Committee look for when honoring one of its own for this award.  Joe is a classic example of this honor.  .... More here >

Cecil and Fannie Ruth Jones moved up to Garden Valley in the Sierra Foothills in 1979 on 10 acres. He continued to be involved with the RRR as well as other PRCA rodeos and judged several rodeos. he still worked at the NFR Rodeo Gold Card Room as a Host. He still attends the Finals and has done so since 1959.

In 1979 he met Ed Bacchi of Bacchi Land & Cattle Co. and helped him yearly with his cattle here at his Lotus, Ca and For Klamath, Oregon ranches. He also schooled a few horses for them to use.
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When the West called for "men to match our mountains," a sailor on horseback answered. Some called him "Horatio Alger in a Stetson." He blazed trails in the business world and was crowned "The Rodeo King of the West" for his contributions to the sport. His name was Harry Rowell and he came to the Bay Area in 1912, at 21 years of age, a penniless young Englishman. He went on to live out the American dream.

He was a successful business man, operating a world famous saddlery, and was the stock provider and Rodeo Arena Director for the first Grand National Exhibition at the San Francisco Cow Palace in 1941, a role he continued until he left the business in 1952. He was a cattleman and a rancher, who raised some of his own stock, which were then showcased at some 25 rodeos which he produced and promoted throughout the West. And, he put on an annual rodeo at his own ranch in Dublin Canyon, that helped to set the standards for what rodeo is today.

He took the rodeo business seriously, striving to give it the respect and the recognition he thought it deserved as a true American sport. He only wanted to be known for one thing: as the best rodeo stock provider in the business, the man who supplied the best bucking horses and the best bulls. Over his 25-year career, he earned the reputation as someone who knew how to put on rodeos, and to this day, he is still referred to as "Harry Rowell, The Rodeo King of the West." Many people believe rodeo is partly what it is now because of the influence of Harry Rowell.

We hope you will join us the third weekend in May to enjoy Harry's spectacle as we have a rider gallop off Harry's hills carrying the American flag, and become part of the long tradition and heritage of the Rowell Ranch Rodeo.

For more information on the history of Harry Rowell and the Rowell Ranch Rodeo, you can purchase the book "Here's A Go!" -- see our Souvenir section.

Like most things American, rodeo began as a conglomerate of traditions gleaned from other peoples and other cultures.  It saw its beginnings in the traditions of the vaqueros first brought from Spain to Mexico and South America, then to what is now the American Southwest and California.

These traditions included the various skills used at work by the vaqueros and were exhibited at fiestas as a form of entertainment and friendly rivalry.

As the Americanos migrated west, they adopted the practice of rodeo and slowly modified it into a truly American tradition which continues to develop today.

The first rodeos in the Hayward area were the result of the festivities associated with the annual ritual of branding and cutting the longhorn cattle belonging to land grant holder Don Guillermo Castro.  These fiestas took place on what is now the Hayward Library Plaza in the early 1800's.  Neighboring rancheros and their families gathered to enjoy the spectacle.  The Indian and Mexican vaqueros used the opportunity to show off their skills.

American rodeo truly became a sport early in the twentieth century, as the daily use of horses was supplanted by mechanized transportation and cattle ranching came to rely less on vast open spaces worked by men and horse and more on highly intensive use of smaller plots of land.

Harry Rowell staged his first rodeo in 1921 at the site of Burbank School in Hayward.  The Rowell Ranch Rodeo, held every year in May, is a continuation of that tradition.  The Rowell Ranch Rodeo Board of Directors and the 80 member strong Rowell Ranch Rodeo Advisory Board are dedicated to Harry and Maggie Rowell's ideals and are determined that the rodeo will be a "real show for real hands."