Big Week is about more than the rodeo—it’s about the city of Salinas’ identity.

Big Week in Salinas kicks off tomorrow, July 14. Not to quibble, but it’s technically more than a week of live music, carnival rides, the finest in Western wear and, of course, professional rodeo activities.

Sara Rubin here, thinking about the history of Big Week in Salinas, which did originate in 1911 as a one-week-long affair. The original Wild West Show, held at the Sherwood Racetrack Grounds, featured mostly local cowboys and cowgirls. The Salinas Rodeo was incorporated in 1913. By the end of the 1920s, the event drew more visiting athletes than locals. 

That remains the case today when it comes to the rodeo events, sanctioned by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. (It wasn’t until the 1990s that PRCA announced a rule change that eliminated locals from participating in rodeo events, unless they were PRCA members.) 

The rodeo events themselves have been professionalized, and so has the entertainment, with big headliner bands. But there are also time-honored traditions, like a youth parade, still in effect.

Even in Salinas’ early days as a city, the rodeo represented something more than sportsmanship, but big ideas of what the city could be—an urban center in a rural area, a cultural hub anchored by its agriculture industry. The rodeo harkens to the rural and agricultural side. As historian Carol McKibben writes in her 2022 book, Salinas: A History of Race and Resilience in an Agricultural City: “Between 1890 and 1930, city leaders and residents, women as well as men, were mainly interested in building everything from libraries to schools and in developing a community culture that reflected both the rural and the urban, rodeos and opera houses.” 

The rodeo was an early defining feature of Salinas—and its role in highlighting rural roots is a spirit that remains alive and well today. “[The rodeo] became the very definition of identity for the city,” McKibben writes. “The Salinas Rodeo was part of the effort of city boosters to lure tourists and to define Salianas in rural, cowboy cultural terms.”

I think remarkably little has changed about the role the rodeo and Big Week play in Salinas cultural life—a series of well-attended events that honor the spirit of the rural West, even as the region’s agriculture industry of today involves a lot of sophisticated technology and not a lot of horsemanship.

It starts tomorrow when the country band Little Big Town plays at 7pm at the Salinas Sports Complex. (The carnival activities also open at 3pm tomorrow.) 

Then on Sunday, more than 1,200 youngins celebrate by participating in the Kiddie Kapers Parade—look for not just Western fashion, but also thematic decorations on wagons and bikes as they march through Salinas, starting at 3pm at the corner of San Luis and Salinas streets. 

This children’s parade has been happening for 92 years, almost as old as the rodeo itself. Like I said—it’s tradition.