At the 74th Annual Redding Rodeo, there was a very special guest in the stands. The 82-years-young Sandy Winters has been in attendance all 74 years of the Redding Rodeo and to make it sweeter, she was the Redding Rodeo Queen in 1958.
Winters started with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Posse and she took an interest in the Redding Rodeo arena when it was being built. She was in the fourth grade and she would ride her bicycle to the arena after school and watch as the arena came to life.
“They had a big racetrack all the way around the arena back then and the grandstand was all wood,” she said.
Winters said that the bulls back then were brahmas and they did not care about fences.
“I remember one time, Dr. Charles had his beautiful red, convertible Thunderbird parked over here around the corner and one of them went right over that fence and landed on his convertible and just flattened it,” she recalls.
Winters has seen the Redding Rodeo from the very beginning evolve into what it is now and she carries with her some very special memories from the legendary California rodeo.