This story was originally published in February 2024.

It’s not out of the ordinary to occasionally see people riding horses around Houston, slowly making their way through a neighborhood or climbing a trail in a park. Once a year, however, you can find riders like this everywhere around town.

Since 1952, trail rides have been converging on Houston every year to celebrate the beginning of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Although the first ride started out with only four participants, over 2,000 people now take part annually in the tradition. The unofficial heralders of rodeo season, you’ll see the riders make their way into town on horseback the weekend before the event, often with wagons in tow, from cities like Goliad, Prairie View, and Brookshire. Some only ride for a handful of days, while others’ journeys stretch for two weeks. Many have taken part in the custom for well over 50 years.

“It’s a family tradition,” says Miranda Sevcik, vice chair of Trailride PR, which coordinates all the Houston Rodeo trail riders. “You’ll see sometimes four or five generations of people who have done them.”

After arriving in Houston, the 11 trail riding groups all take part in the Downtown Rodeo Parade, a yearly tradition in Houston since 1932.

If you’re left wondering if there’s an invasion of horse-and-buggy-loving time travelers when you see a line of several hundred riders making their way through the city, here’s your explainer on all things trail ride.

About those riding groups…

Salt Grass, the oldest rodeo trail riding group, was established 73 years ago—it’s also the largest with 22 wagons and over 1,000 riders today. The ride starts in Cat Spring and travels 105 miles to reach Houston. Salt Grass has one of the oldest wagons, which was originally built in 1800 and has been completely restored.

Another historic riding group, Prairie View, founded in 1957, is the oldest Black trail ride in the nation and the first Black trail ride for the Houston Rodeo. It sets out from Hempstead every year and covers 80 miles. The crew usually includes nine wagons and over 300 riders.

The fanciest of all trail rides is put on every year by the Valley Lodge crew. Founded in 1959, the ride starts in Brookshire and travels 75 miles to reach Houston. It typically includes four wagons and about 75 riders. Sevcik says it’s described as the “Champagne of trail rides,” since dinner often contains prime cuts like filet mignon.

Meanwhile, the Mission ride holds the distinction of being the longest. Founded in 1991, it starts in Goliad and travels 206 miles. Every year, about 75 riders travel with 10 wagons.

The logistics

Quite a bit of planning goes into pulling off a successful trail ride. Although the rodeo has nothing to do with the planning, the separate groups do have to submit their routes ahead of time so they’re not all converging in Houston at once and creating a massive traffic jam. Sevcik and her team start working with each group about six months in advance to make sure they have their insurance, that vets have cleared all the animals, and that everyone is up to speed on safety.

“You can imagine how dangerous it can be with wagons and horses and riders traveling down Houston streets,” Sevcik says. “But we’ve found that Houstonians, and even new visitors to the city, are very patient. It obviously causes traffic, but we’ve never had a problem where someone’s been angry and honked their horn or purposely tried to scare the animals.”

Sevcik says the groups carefully set their routes to avoid as many major roads as possible and create daily schedules that are down to the minute. Since most of them have been doing these rides for decades, they’re experts on how much of everything to bring.

“They’ve got it down to a science,” Sevcik says. “They know exactly how much grain they need, exactly how much hay. They know exactly how much water they are going to need. Walking up to this completely ignorant, you’re overwhelmed, but they’ve been doing this for generations.”

Trail ride roles 

The most important member of each trail ride is the trail boss, who manages all the members of the group and has a wide list of responsibilities, from crew and animal safety to route coordination, permitting, camp site and supply management, and maintaining a team of scouts. The trail boss usually rides at the front, leading the entire procession along the chosen route.

It’s not unusual for the role of trail boss to be passed down from grandparent to parent to child. “It’s very much a legacy thing,” Sevcik says, noting that most trail rides also have an assistant trail boss as well as a secretary.

Scouts also play essential roles during rides. Always on horseback, they travel far ahead of the rest of the riders and radio back information on any obstacles ahead. If a large obstacle is encountered, like road construction, they’ll let the trail boss know that their route needs to be adjusted.

Life on the trail

Although most of the riders spend the entire day on horseback, their traveling accommodations are far more luxe than those of trail riders a century ago. Following the horse procession, a line of trucks pulls portable bathrooms and campers.

Dedicated cooking crews typically follow behind in vehicles and are known to throw together some pretty standout roadside fare. In 2024, the Mission crew cooked up maple-glazed pork tenderloin over saffron rice. “The food is usually really good,” she says. “I can’t speak for all the rides, but that was legit the best pork tenderloin I’ve ever had in my life.”

Since it can take over a week for some of the rides to complete their journey, they have to pre-arrange campsites for every night of their trip. Sevcik says many will camp out on land owned by people they know or in parking lots (with permission, of course). While many of the riders opt to sleep in luxury in their RVs, some decide to do it the old-fashioned way. “Some folks are the hardcore cowboys: They’ll sleep under the stars on their saddles,” she says.

Along the routes, and especially as the crews inch closer to Houston, they’ll start making stops to interact and engage with the community. “They’ll stop at nursing homes, schools, and community centers,” Sevcik says. “They have individual groups they meet with, and the people come out and pet the horses and learn about the history. It’s really neat. It’s like a traveling ambassadorship for the rodeo through Texas.”

The end of the journey

The Friday before the rodeo starts, all the crews converge in Houston at Memorial Park, which closes to the public on Thursday in preparation of their arrival. Sevcik says riders typically start trickling in after noon on Friday, staggering their arrival times so as not to cause too many traffic snarls. Once they reach the park, they all go to their separate camps and start unpacking. Each ride has its own designated area in the park, from a parking lot to a large corner of the picnic loop.

Sevcik says watching the groups unload everything is her favorite part, particularly due to the antics of the draft horses, who tend to be pretty happy that their multiple days of pulling wagons have come to a conclusion. “I love to watch them take off their gear,” she says. “The horses just throw themselves on the ground because their backs are itching. You’ll see these giant horses just rolling in the grass. It’s so fun to watch.”

That evening, all rides gather together at Memorial Park and judges present awards to the crews. Awards are given for the best small ride, best medium ride, best large ride, and a couple of additional things. Sevcik says the rides are judged on how safe they were and how diligent participants were with the western heritage they tried to convey, criteria that will take into account whether all ride members wore cowboy boots, hats, and other appropriate gear.

After the judging is done, it’s time to socialize. “It’s sort of the end of it,” Sevcik says. “They meet at each other’s camps. They’re all friends. They’ve been doing this, you know, every year for forever.” While some of rides throw modest celebration parties, others are known to include DJs and lots of dancing.

The next day, they all get up early and line up for the final journey of the year, this time all together, as they ride down Memorial Drive and into downtown for the Downtown Rodeo Parade.

After the parade, they all head back to Memorial and pack everything up. Sevcik says they have to be completely out of the park by early that afternoon. “We have to be out. I mean, not a speck of anything left in that park. We’re very careful not to leave a single cigarette butt or strand of hay or mound of horse poop,” she says. “At two o’clock on Saturday, everything is shut down and cleared out. It’s like nothing happened. We make a little village out there on Thursday, and by Saturday there’s not a trace.”

Fortunately, the journey home isn’t as arduous: Instead of riding all the way back, horses and wagons are loaded into trailers and are driven home in a matter of hours.