Homestead Rodeo celebrates 75th year in 2024

Florida is a strange amalgam of Deep South meets New York, with a little Havana and Puerto Rico thrown in.

If you travel around the Sunshine State, you also learn about a rich history of cattle ranching and “cow hunters” — what Florida called its Cracker cowboys, who “hunted” cattle by rounding them up with distinctive-sounding bullwhips.

So, it is not all that surprising that Florida has a rich history of rodeos in its small towns. One of the longest lasting traditional rodeos and the southernmost rodeo in the United States is in Homestead.

The Homestead Rodeo celebrates its 75th year in January 2024. It’s one of the first rodeos in the circuit of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and thus draws cowboys from around the country who want to start accumulating points toward the December national finals.