{"id":31061,"date":"2023-10-21T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-21T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-colorado-rodeo-legend-clinches-one-more-title-his-name-in-the-national-cowboy-hall-of-fame\/"},"modified":"2023-10-21T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-21T13:00:00","slug":"a-colorado-rodeo-legend-clinches-one-more-title-his-name-in-the-national-cowboy-hall-of-fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-colorado-rodeo-legend-clinches-one-more-title-his-name-in-the-national-cowboy-hall-of-fame\/","title":{"rendered":"A Colorado rodeo legend clinches one more title: his name in the National Cowboy Hall of Fame"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"CJ
CJ Trujillo in the tack room at his ranch below Dunckley Pass. The 1981 PRCA World Champion in Bareback Riding, who also helped found the Cowboy Downhill held every January in Steamboat, is being inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News)<\/span>Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He was 6.<\/p>\n

He remembers his first calf-riding competition for kids \u201cas clear as day,\u201d he said. \u201cI was scared as you could be, to have to get on one of those calves.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he did and was able to stay on by clutching onto the calf\u2019s side. Trujillo won himself the second-place prize: $10.80.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd by golly, I thought I\u2019d never see a poor day,\u201d Trujillo said.<\/p>\n

Almost 70 years later, the former national bareback champion likes to say that just about everything he\u2019s achieved in his life \u201cis basically because of the sport of rodeo.\u201d<\/p>\n

That includes his ranch, his collection of shiny belt buckles won in competition \u2014 including one presented to him by President Ronald Reagan \u2014 and on Nov. 11, the highest honor a cowboy like him can imagine: being recognized by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, colloquially known as the Cowboy Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a great honor that I\u2019ll never get over that for sure,\u201d Trujillo said, in his straw cowboy hat and denim Western shirt with his tiny initials, JCT, embroidered on the front.<\/p>\n

He was sitting between an old bunkhouse and a former schoolhouse that he and his wife, Margo, turned into their home on a 50-acre spread an hour away from Steamboat Springs. A dirt road leads to the ranch, which is surrounded by mountains thick with trees draped with golden leaves that look like fire in the autumn sunlight.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never get your eyes full of this kind of country,\u201d Trujillo said.\u201cYou never get tired of looking at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

God\u2019s country, as Trujillo calls it, which is also how he describes the land near Prescott, Arizona, where he grew up. His father was a ranch cowboy, and his mother was nervous about him rodeo-ing \u201cuntil her dying day.\u201d Still, she always supported him. The couple bought Trujillo and his brother horses and paid their entry fees at junior rodeos, yet were always clear that to make something of himself, Trujillo had to go to college.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd by golly, I did,\u201d he said. Trujillo graduated from Arizona State University. \u201cAnd that made them happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Trujillo\u2019s rodeo career was steadily building. Instead of going to teaching school, as originally planned, \u201cI went to riding bareback horses and never looked back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When he hit the pro circuit in the early 1970s, Trujillo ended up ranked 17th in the world.<\/strong><\/p>\n

He quickly made it to the national finals \u2014 and would for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

Trujillo became a star, the kind of cowboy known for a crowd-pleasing performance who always made time to talk to his fans and the press. Trujillo said rodeo taught him to have the \u201cright attitude,\u201d and he earned a reputation for always having a big smile, especially around children.<\/p>\n

Kids look up to cowboys, he explained, just like they would a standout football player. \u201cYou need to not disappoint \u2019em.\u201d Trujillo and a friend taught rodeo basics to children all across the country for years.<\/p>\n

But Trujillo was still on the chase: \u201cIt was a lifetime goal of mine \u2014 and dream \u2014 to become a world\u2019s champion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In 1980, the same year his first daughter was born, Trujillo got close until a horse bucked him off in competition. That lit a fire in him. The next year, rodeoed hard yet again \u2014 and clinched it.<\/p>\n

Trujillo became the 1981 World Champion Bareback rider.<\/p>\n

It was humbling to finally achieve something he\u2019d put on a \u201chigh, high pedestal,\u201d he said. He also knew his time in rodeo wouldn\u2019t last forever. At the height of his career, Trujillo was riding in more than 100 rodeos a year, \u201ctraveling from border to border and coast to coast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trujillo\u2019s wife and daughters needed him to be home more. In 1983, he did get a break \u2014 courtesy of a horse named Tombstone.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe drug me around. I broke some ribs, punctured a lung, dislocated my right knee,\u201d Trujillo said in his no-nonsense way. \u201cBut other than that, I was OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years later, Trujillo realized he was the oldest guy at the national finals. He competed one last time and decided \u201cto hang \u2018er up.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Trujillo got the call about his upcoming induction into the hall of fame alongside so many of his heroes, it didn\u2019t feel real.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a great honor that I\u2019ll never get over that for sure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There is a trope of the solitary cowboy, but Trujillo didn\u2019t get here alone. As he talked about how much his parents did for him, his voice broke a little and got quiet. He said he knows they\u2019re looking down right now.<\/p>\n

When his name is added to the list of great cowboys and western heroes, \u201cI know they\u2019re going to have a giant smile on their face,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same way he looks at his grandkids as they compete in rodeo. Two have already turned pro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trujillo in the tack room at his ranch below Dunckley Pass. The 1981 PRCA World Champion in Bareback Riding, who also helped found the Cowboy Downhill held every January in Steamboat, is being inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News)Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News He was 6. He remembers his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,28,937],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-31061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-headlines","tag-rodeo"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31061"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=31061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}