Howdy folks, it’s the last week of December 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.
When a young woman from Mason, Texas, appeared on the hit television game show To Tell the Truth in the late 1950s, she was introduced alongside two impostors, all of them claiming to be a champion rodeo cowgirl.
The celebrity panelists, used to guessing professions like secret agents or snake charmers, seemed a bit thrown by the soft-spoken contestant in boots and a smile. But when the real Wanda Harper Bush stood up, the crowd erupted.
Three of the celebrities on the panel had correctly identified Bush, who we remember this week on the 10th anniversary of her death, December 29, 2015.
The game show was a rare moment of national spotlight for Bush, who preferred to let her riding and roping speak for her. Her daughter, Shanna, once said, “She was never in it for publicity. She just wanted to do her job well.”
Did she ever. Doing the job well was something Wanda Harper Bush did better than almost anyone in the history of rodeo.
Born October 6, 1931, in Mason, Texas, Wanda Harper was raised on her family’s ranch, where she grew up riding nearly as soon as she could walk.
Her father, Alvin Harper, was a skilled horseman who taught his daughter to rope and ride with precision. The two spent countless hours in the arena together.
As a young girl, she rode her horse three miles each way to catch the school bus, wearing pants under her dress so she could ride in comfort. She opened and closed eight gates on the way, and when the weather turned bad, her father would saddle up and meet her halfway.
In the late 1940s, women’s rodeo was just beginning to organize under what became the Girls’ Rodeo Association, founded in San Angelo, Texas. Bush was quick to join, earning card number 14 and becoming one of the association’s original members.
She was only 20 when she won her first world championships in 1951, taking titles in both calf roping and ribbon roping.
Over the next two decades, Bush amassed an unmatched 32 world championships across a dizzying range of events from barrel racing to cutting, calf roping, flag racing and the all-around.
She captured nine All-Around World titles and became the first barrel racer in GRA history to win back-to-back world championships in 1952 and 1953, aboard her beloved mare, Dee Gee.
She would say of her victories: “I just did what I did. I discovered I could ride as good as anyone else could.”
In an era when women’s rodeo often struggled for recognition and equal prize money, Bush competed and won against both men and women at major stock shows and rodeos across the country.
She qualified seven times for the National Finals Rodeo, even before barrel racing became part of the PRCA’s main events.
In the eighteen years between 1951 and 1969, Bush failed to win a GRA world title only once.
She won 11 calf roping championships and seven in ribbon roping.
In 1957, Wanda married fellow horseman Stanley Bush, a respected cutting horse trainer who would later be inducted into the National Cutting Horse Hall of Fame.
The couple’s shared love of horses became a lifelong partnership. Their ranch in Mason, Texas, became a proving ground for great horses, including Dee Gee and Royal Chess — the latter inducted into the National Cutting Horse Association Hall of Fame.
Their daughter, Shanna, born in 1959, followed in her mother’s footsteps, qualifying for the National Finals Rodeo in 1984.
Even into her sixties, Bush’s competitive fire never cooled. In 1992, after years away from competition and recovering from major back surgery, she entered the Old Fort Days Futurity aboard Shanna’s horse Flaming Patrick.
At age 62, she rode to a Reserve Championship title and a $28,000 payout.
In 1968, Bush opened her first barrel racing clinic in Austin, Texas. She personally rode every horse that came through her clinics to understand better how to help its rider.
Many of her students went on to become champions themselves, and when she passed away in 2015, tributes poured in from across the rodeo world.
Nearly every top cowgirl could trace part of her success back to something Wanda Bush had taught or a barrier she had broken.
Bush served on the GRA — later the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA) — Board of Directors for nearly 20 years, helping shape policies that would ensure the sport’s growth. Her leadership was instrumental in securing equal prize money for women at PRCA rodeos, especially in Texas.
She was inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame here at the Cowboy in 2001.
Bush was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in 1978, and nearly forty years later, in 2017, was posthumously inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame — the first year the Hall recognized women from the WPRA.
And with that, we’ve told the truth on 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 Shanna Bush about her mother, Wanda: “(A friend) said Wanda was ‘quietly famous’ and I always thought that summed her up. Granddad raised her that way. He said, ‘We were who we were, just be yourself. We’re not above anyone else or below anyone else. All you have to do is be Wanda.’”
Much obliged for listening, and remember, come Find Your West at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
