Hermiston herald., August 12, 2015, Image 25

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2015
around the nation, it will be
real good. There will be a lot
of good cowboys in Hermis-
ton.”
But that didn’t mean it
would automatically be a suc-
cess. That ¿rst night, with the
late-arriving crowd, went off
without a hitch. Eventually,
the rodeo separated from the
fair due to ¿nancial reasons.
Each year for the ¿rst two or
three, Bothum said, Farm-
&ity started from scratch ¿-
nancially because the money
went back to the fair. As an
independent organization, as
it is now, FCPR could pool
its pro¿ts, pay vendors who
helped, and save a little for
the next year. It proved to be a
wise decision.
Evolution
The ¿rst maMor evolution
of Farm-City Pro Rodeo is the
“The grounds looked totally
different then. Nothing that
was there then is here now.”
— David Bothum
Farm-City Pro Rodeo co-founder

arena itself. At that ¿rst event,
it was a small arena with
Must one semi-large wooden
grandstand. It was old. The
wood was warped. But it was
all they had and Bothum and
company made do.
“The grounds looked to-
tally different then,” Bothum
said. “Nothing that was there
then is here now.”
They cleaned it up. They
planted grass along the back-
side between the arena and
STAFF PHOTO BY GARY L. WEST
When the Farm-City Pro Rodeo kicks off this week some of the best
professional cowboys and best rough stock in the work will blast out of
these chute gates.
Hermiston High School. Each
year for the ¿rst few they went
under the bleachers to shore
up the deteriorating wood.
They replaced posts. They re-
placed benches. Then, ¿nally,
they replaced the old decrepit
wooden bleachers with new,
modern aluminum benches.
“They got up on Tuesday
(when) we used to have a
horse pull here,” Bothum said.
“We were tightening the last
bolts when people were sitting
down.”
More box seats were added.
The gold buckle section was
added. They began to rent even
more collapsible bleachers that
required more retaining walls.
From nothing, Farm City’s are-
na sprung up to become a won-
derful place to watch rodeo.
“Every year, we’ve done
something more,” Bothum
said.
But that’s Must the arena. The
event itself has evolved, too,
and even affected the sport of
rodeo as a whole.
Farm-City was where the
back-to-back started; mean-
ing that a cowboy, who could
be participating in as many as
three for four rodeos simul-
taneously, can get his or her
two runs in and leave without
having to come back another
day and spend more money on
travel.
“They’d have to come back
and forth,” Bothum said. “And
there were four, ¿ve rodeos go-
ing on a the same time, and it
was hard to work them all.”
After a trial run of the back-
to-back at Farm-City, it’s been
picked up by the overall sport
of rodeo. Farm-City was also
one of the ¿rst rodeos to alter
the rosters so big-named cow-
boys could perform in front
of a crowd. Bothum laid out a
hypothetical scenario where 30
cowboys have to do an event,
but only 14 can be in the per-
formance and the other 16 have
to wait and ride after the per-
formance, as he called it. If,
say, Trevor Brazile, the 12-time
PRCA All-Around Champion,
is in the group of 16, Bothum
can decide to put him in the 14
by changing the order so the
fans see the best cowboys in
the world.
Farm-City was also one
of the ¿rst smaller rodeos to
hire multiple stock contractors
and “cherry pick,” as Bothum
said, the best bulls, broncs and
calves. As a result, Farm-City
won the Remuda Award last
year for the best bucking bron-
cos in the country at any rodeo.
“The thing that (Farm-City)
has done,” Bothum said, “was
to put Hermiston on the map in a
lot of different ways. This rodeo
has done a lot as far as helping
the rodeo business. It’s changed
the rodeo business a lot.
“It’s pretty neat how (Farm-
City) has made the rodeo busi-
ness better.”
FARM-CITY PRO RODEO
From page 4
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