Cowboys and cowgirls from around the area will descend upon Castle Dale Friday and Saturday for the ninth annual Cowboys Memorial Rodeo to be held in conjunction with Castle Dale City Days. With both rough stock and timed events it will be two evenings of family friendly fun at the rodeo grounds.

The Cowboys Memorial Rodeo came out of The Eastern Utah Rodeo Association Finals. The association is no longer in existence and they held the finals in Castle Dale the first weekend in August. About nine years ago a group got together and decided to bring it back.

Diamond H Rodeo from Smithfield will be providing all the stock for the rodeo and after spending some time with the company just last weekend, announcer Monroe Magnuson is pretty excited to be back at his hometown rodeo.

“I was with them in Grace, Idaho it was last weekend as a matter of fact, and I’ll tell you what, their rough stock, it is on point right now, it is ready to go.”

And with local rodeo comes local talent. Audie Allred is set to go one evening and lots of other young locals will take part as well.

There will be bull riding both nights along with tie down and break-away roping as well.

An added exhibition will be free style bull fighting.

” Each night there will be an exhibition fight, with pure bred Mexican fighting bulls. You may think of fighting bulls like the old matadors in Spain and Mexico with the swords and all of that, it’s not like that. It’s tamed down, they don’t use swords but I’ll tell you what, the blood in the Mexican bulls has not been tamed down at all”, Magnuson stated.

Another added attraction is John Payne, “The One Armed Bandit”. Payne has been named the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association’s (PRCA) Specialty Act of the Year an unprecedented 12 times. An animal trainer, he works with buffaloes, horses and zebras.

Tickets are available through Venmo from Alissa Truman and at the gate. Adults $10, kids 6-11 $6 and 5 and under free.