EVENTS
Rodeo Producer
Stock Contractor
Born in Woodstown, New Jersey in 1931, Howard Harris III performed with a trick pony in his father’s Wild West Show even before he attended school. He sharpened his rodeo skills on the family’s Wyoming ranch during his youth and helped start the rodeo program at the University of Idaho, from which he won the 1954 All-Around Intercollegiate Championship.
On his return to New Jersey, Harris III founded the weekly Cowtown Rodeo on his 3,500-acre spread. The self-contained operation (including land, livestock, auction, and rodeo) provided a good school for aspiring cowboys and rodeo bucking stock. The business supplied rank bucking bulls to the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City, 1965-1984, as well as some of the largest rodeos and contractors in the West, including Denver, Houston, San Antonio, and Fort Worth in the same era.
Howard Harris III also took rodeo on the road, reintroducing the sport at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1969, and presenting similar western competitions in locales as diverse as Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Rome, Italy. A rodeo producer and RCA-PRCA stock contractor for more than 50 years, and now “retired” in Claremore, Oklahoma, he continues to promote the sport.
