EVENTS
Steer Roper
Calf Roper
Quarter Horse Trainer
Barton Carter was born on an Osage allotment near Pawhuska, Oklahoma, in 1894. Raised on the family ranch, he learned to ride and rope at an early age and entered his first rodeo contest at the age of 17. During the 1910s he honed his roping skills at many Oklahoma rodeos.
In 1925 Carter broke the World Steer Roping record at Claremore, Oklahoma, with a time of 16-and-3/5 seconds and went on to win the steer-roping championship at Madison Square Garden in New York–then equivalent to the event world championship. Though travel often was difficult in the 1920s and 1930s, Barton entered in rodeos at New York, Chicago, Cheyenne, Colorado Springs, and Tucson, as well as all around Oklahoma, over a 37-year career. He was a founding member and director of the Cowboys Turtle Association (CTA) and a longtime member of the Rodeo Cowboys Association (RCA).
Carter also contested in quarter horse racing and cutting-horse competitions for many years, and was widely recognized in Oklahoma as a horse trainer and judge for racing and show. For many years he managed the annual Pawhuska Rodeo. When he died in 1991, radio personality Paul Harvey eulogized him as “The last of the real cowboys.”
