Last week I reported about my novel, Stronger Than Mountains, winning the Silver 2018 Will Rogers Medallion Award for excellence in Inspirational Western Fiction.
The Will Rogers Medallion Award is held every year in conjunction with Red Steagall’s Annual Cowboy Gathering at the Fort Worth Stockyards. This is an event I’ve always wanted to attend, so I was excited on two counts.
I was not disappointed!
The Fort Worth Stockyards lies just west of I-35W, bordered on one side by Main Street. Though the fields and livestock barns stretch out from north to south, the main street through the Stockyards is only about 4 blocks long, making the center of activity dense and busy. And there’s so much to do!
Vendors exhibit their Western wares–everything from books to boots to bed linens–in colorful stalls, and costumed re-enactors roam the public area staging Wild West shoot-outs and the like. A wagon train arrives on the first morning of the event, and visitors can ride down the street in a covered wagon or stagecoach. Delicious aromas of barbecue, beans, biscuits, and coffee waft from the yard in front of the Fort Worth Livestock Exchange where chuckwagon cooks prepare a feast to tantalize the chuckwagon cooking judges. Then at 4:00 cowboys drive the Fort Worth longhorn herd right down the main street!
So my first visit to the Annual Cowboy Gathering was fun and educational, and it definitely won’t be my last! 🙂
