From Cheyenne to Pendleton, the Rise and Fall of the Rodeo Cowgirl (NR)

synopsis

Chronicles the lives of Idaho’s Bonnie McCarroll, Colorado’s Bertha Blanchett, and Washington’s Mabel Strickland, and the history of the rodeo from its earliest beginnings. From the day that Bertha Blanchett arrived in Cheyenne, Wyo., for the 8th Annual Frontier Days Rodeo in 1904 -- the first year women were allowed to compete in the bucking bronc competition -- to the tragic and avoidable death of Bonnie McCarroll at the 1929 Pendleton Round-Up, the women’s Northwest rodeo circuit was a wild ride.