Check out our map of Cowboy poetry and Storytelling events. Every cowboy needs a guitar Photo courtesy of Rudy Gonzales. The cowboy life is filled with dirty, dangerous, hard work. It can be lonely. Yet there is much beauty to be found there, as well.
Cowboy culture has a long-standing oral tradition.
Early on, cowboys made up verses that expressed their experiences during their hard and lonely life on the trail. Cowboys sang, recited their verses, and shared tall tales around campfires. The rhyming nature of the stories made them easier to remember, and also made people want to hear them over and over again. Rudy rides a longhorn bull Photo courtesy of Rudy Gonzales. During the 1880s, cowboy poetry began appearing in ranching periodicals.