Keeping the Mesquite Championship Rodeo running takes more hours than come in a day, more sore-muscle effort than most folks can abide and – for the first few years – moonlight jobs to pay the bills.

BEN SKLAR/DMN

Cowboys at the Mesquite Championship Rodeo keep tradition alive in the rodeo's 50th season.

But it's the tourists who get most of the thanks.

"If you go to Texas, people think you ought to see a cowboy," said Jim Shoulders, a 16-time world champion rodeo cowboy who, with Neal Gay and four other men, founded the rodeo in 1958. "It was the American cowboy image that helped keep us alive."

In the rodeo's 50th season, visitors get a taste of gritty traditions along with the punched-up entertainment that modern sports fans demand.

Thirty-five years into the Mesquite rodeo's life, the state Legislature declared its home city the "Rodeo Capital of Texas."

"We're going for 100 years," Gay said. DMN