Sheriff welcomes rodeo cowboys

Aug. 19, 1956: Featuring “scores of the nation’s top bronc and fancy riders,” the 12th annual Sheriff’s Championship Rodeo held at the Coliseum drew 74,500 spectators -- prompting The Times to declare it “the nation’s biggest one-day rodeo.”

“In a Coliseum converted into a cowpoke palace, working cowboy champions competed with actor cowboys” for $12,500 in prizes. Events included bronco riding, calf roping, horse shows, parades and fashion shows.

“There were more than 500 horses in the glittering grand entry, which welcomed the crowd in the early afternoon. Sheriff Biscailuz, mounted on a high-stepping palomino and wearing a red coat and black frontier pants, led the cavalcade around the track,” the newspaper said. “Clint Walker, rodeo grand marshal and Cheyenne of television, and Rodeo Queen Natalie Wood each rode roan quarter horses.”

But “while the grand entry, a veritable fashion show of horses and riders, added color to the spectacle, it was the 158 working cowhands -- a record number for a one-day show -- that gave the rodeo its action and fire,” the paper said. The affair benefited the Sheriff’s Relief Assn.