No Rio Grande Valley city embraces its Western heritage likes Mercedes does.

Drive around the city and you will see tall and colorful boots sitting on street corners. They aren’t there just to spruce up the visible appeal of a city. It’s representative of boot making that started in Mercedes over 100 years ago and continues to the present at Rios of Mercedes and individual bootmakers like Camargo’s Western Boots.

The start of boot making came not long after Mercedes first began hosting agricultural and livestock shows. The first show was in 1913. It was only six years after the city’s founding when American Rio Grande Land & Irrigation set up their headquarters in one of the first Valley cities to be founded between Brownsville and Rio Grande City. The emerging midpoint Valley community was marketing itself as an ideal spot for farming and ranching and as a commercial agricultural hub with the railroad reaching Mercedes.

The 1913 show was the forerunner to today’s Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show. In those early years, livestock shows and expositions showcased the agricultural potential of the city and region. Local historian Dr. Beatrice de Leon Edwards says agriculture in the region began with` `the original cowboys.’’ These were the skilled horsemen who worked the ranches of Spanish and Mexican land grant recipients long before Midwesterners moved here in the early 1900s.

Those Midwesterners, Edwards has said, were not only new to South Texas but to farming in general. In a book about the history of Mercedes, she said the Midwest settlers were seeking ideas on how to get the agricultural industry going in the early years of farming in the Valley. The early livestock shows were essential in bringing in experts to highlight the best techniques and agricultural/livestock products that could be used to get farming established in the Mercedes area.

Over 100 years later, the city and its livestock show have blossomed. On March 7, the 85^th edition of the RGV Livestock Show kicked off, and a new generation of cowboys came to the city.

Cowboy Up

It’s called extreme bullriding and the best American cowboys in the business came to Mercedes to compete at the livestock show’s rodeo arena.

The rodeo portion of the livestock ran from March 12^th-16^th and was broadcast nationally for the first time in the show’s history on the Cowboy Channel. The broadcasts gave Mercedes and the RGV national exposure and demonstrated again the stature that Mercedes and its livestock show enjoy in the agricultural show industry.

“It’s a feather in the cap of Mercedes,’’ said Luis Saldana, the executive director and general manager of the RGV Livestock Show. “We’re right up there with all of the majors, (livestock shows in the United States).’’

The RGV Livestock Show depends heavily on its 600 volunteers who help Saldana and his staff handle the roughly 300,000 visitors who visit the Mercedes show grounds during the show’s nearly two-week run. It’s the largest single entertainment event in the Valley, Saldana said. Its enduring appeal through the decades is a testament that the RGV Livestock Show continues to be an event area families look forward to and plan to attend from one year-to-the-next.

“Ask anyone who has grown up in Mercedes and the Rio Grande Valley, and they will name the Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show & Rodeo as one of the best-known and attended events of the year,’’ the historian Edwards has written.

To think it all started with those first modest agricultural shows to get a nascent farming industry off the ground in the Valley. From the original cowboys of yesteryear to the extreme bullriding cowboys of today, the RGV Livestock Show continues to grow and makes it mark – for Mercedes and the RGV.

• Ricardo D. Cavazos