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Howdy folks, it’s the first week of September 2025, and welcome to This Week in The West.
I’m Seth Spillman, broadcasting from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
On this podcast, we share stories of the people and events that shaped the history, art and culture of the American West—and those still shaping it today.
We’re in London, 1924.
A sold-out crowd of nearly 50,000 people has packed into Wembley Stadium. British spectators are on their feet, astonished at the actions of a tiny woman, clinging to the underside of a galloping horse.
That rider was Tad Lucas, a pioneering cowgirl and the First Lady of Rodeo. We remember her on this, the week of her birth in 1902.
Tad Lucas was born Barbara Inez Barnes in the sandhills of Nebraska, the youngest of – hold onto your hats – 24 children.
Her nickname as a child was “Tadpole,” a nod to her small size and restless energy. The name Tad stuck, as did her love for riding horses.
But that wasn’t all, at age 14, she won her first steer riding contest. By her late teens, she was raising money for the Red Cross during World War I — not by baking pies or knitting socks, but by riding bulls down the main streets of his hometown of Cody, Nebraska.
In 1920, her family moved to Texas, and a year later, barely 19 years old, she joined California Frank’s Rodeo Company as a bronc rider, traveling south to perform in Mexico. Just a year later, she met a fellow rodeo performer — the cowboy James Edward “Buck” Lucas. They married in 1924.
Lucas quickly found her calling in trick riding. She did just about everything one could do on the back of a moving horse – handstands, hanging upside down or even under the horse, like she did in London for Tex Austin’s International Rodeo.
She traveled across the U.S. with major Wild West shows and rodeos. She competed at Madison Square Garden, where she won Tex Austin’s trick riding competition three years in a row.
She also dominated the Cheyenne Frontier Days, winning the trick riding championship there eight consecutive times.
According to the book “Cowgirls of the Rodeo”, one journalist wrote of Lucas: “Tad has always been admired by everyone who had the good fortune to meet her. She is right at home in the saddle and makes a marvelous picture on a horse. She is considered the world’s greatest woman rider.”
Lucas dominated women’s rodeo in the 1920s and 30’s. In 1935, it was reported that she made $12,000 in prize money. That’s more than $280,000 in 2025 dollars.
Her excellence over this stretch earned her the title of “Rodeo’s First Lady,” which we honor today at The Cowboy with the Tad Lucas Award. As part of the National Rodeo Hall of Fame’s annual celebration, the award goes to women “who have demonstrated extraordinary characteristics while upholding and promoting our rich Western heritage.”
In 1933, while performing at the Chicago World’s Fair, Tad suffered a devastating accident. Her arm was crushed in a fall during a trick ride. But it didn’t keep her out of the arena. She kept performing — arm in a cast — for three more years.
In 1948, Lucas became a founding member of the Girls Rodeo Association — now the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association. Her fame and influence helped restore and legitimize women’s roles in rodeo, ensuring that future generations of cowgirls had a place to ride.
Tad continued riding broncs until 1964, at the age of 62.
After retirement, she remained deeply involved in rodeo, serving on the Board of Directors for both the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and the Rodeo Historical Society.
She was the first woman inducted into our National Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1967. She entered the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1978 and the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 1979.
After she died in 1990 at the age of 88, we established the Tad Lucas Award, which will be given again at the 2025 National Rodeo Hall of Fame Weekend on November 8.
And with that, we’ve completed the trick ride of producing another episode of “This Week in The West.”
Our show is produced by Chase Spivey and written by Mike Koehler
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We leave you today with the words of reporter Austin Lake of the Boston Evening American, who wrote this of Tad Lucas and rodeo cowgirls: “Nor according to Mrs. Lucas are these chuck wagon beauties a special breed of hairbreadth hellions blessed with reinforced frames, rubber-sheathed nerves and a passion for the sensations of a trainwreck. They are, says she, normal girls who fell victim to their environment – rugged daughters of a rugged frontier.”
Much obliged for listening, and remember, come Find Your West at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. t. Deming gives us far more than a model; he penetrates the deep reserve of Indian stoicism and finds there an underlying reverence and awe in the presence of the great founder of nature, and flashes of the underlying human spirit of sentiment and tenderness.”
Much obliged for listening, and remember, come Find Your West at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
