EVENTS
Steer Roper, Champion, 1938
Steer Wrestler, Champion, 1932
Hugh Bennett was born at Knox City, Texas, in 1905. As a youth, he learned the cowboy trade on his parents’ ranches near Benjamin and Sligo, Texas. In 1925 he turned pro, entering the steer-roping and bulldogging events at Lubbock.
Bennett was always a big-money winner, taking top honors at Fort Worth, Tucson, El Paso, and Pendleton, and other major rodeos. He captured the steer-wrestling title in 1932 and added the steer-roping championship in 1938.
Hugh Bennett is revered as a leader of the 1936 cowboy strike at the Boston Garden rodeo; through his efforts came the Cowboys Turtle Association, forerunner of the PRCA. Bennett’s insistence on diplomatic, careful negotiations with rodeo administrators was a stabilizing influence in the cowboy union’s early years.
During his career Bennett used his winnings to buy and improve ranches in Arizona and Colorado, where he bred and raised champion quarter horses. He was a founder and one-time president of the American Quarter Horse Association. He died in 1994 at Colorado Springs.
