Riding Pretty

When the town of Pendleton, Oregon, held its first large-scale rodeo, it introduced a new kind of rodeo queen—not a traveling cowgirl performer but a young, middle-class woman from its own town. Riding Pretty examines the history, evolution, and significance of the community-sponsored rodeo queen, from the introduction of this new phenomenon at the 1910 Pendleton Round-Up to the advent of Miss Rodeo America in 1956, and places the main theme—connection of queens to community—within the context o