San Juan Bautista celebrates memories of its Fiesta Rodeo

Lea este articulo en español aquí.

The San Juan Bautista Historical Society’s June 1 celebration of the city’s storied Fiesta Rodeo at the Mission Farm’s barn quickly sold out. Serving as the society’s annual meeting, attendees will partake in barbecue prepared by Ron Vaccarezza and an informal panel discussion hosted by Ed Kutz featuring participation from Jim Dassel, Kenny Holthouse, John Cornell, Linda Vaccarezza and Karen Stacy.

“There has been a great response,” said Society President Wanda Guibert. “We reached our maximum capacity of 100 people earlier than we thought. Next time, we will have to plan for more!”

The big response is a sign of how beloved the celebration had become before ending in 1983. Incorporated as Fiesta Rodeo de San Juan Bautista in 1947, it actually began in 1907 as a fundraiser to restore Mission San Juan Bautista. 

“After the damage from the 1906 Earthquake,” Guibert said, “the church was looking for ways to fundraise. So they started with a fiesta and modified rodeo on the property and in the 1920s they added pageant plays.”

The same year, the featured pageant was “Twilight of the Dons” by Lucy Cuddy which, according to the Californian, was “enacted by a cast of more than 100 players on an outdoor stage of nearly an acre.” (Another regularly performed pageant was “The Bells of Orizaba.”) The festival ended with matches between the state’s leading mens and womens polo teams.

The Fiesta Rodeo developed a reputation as a must-see event that quickly drew crowds in the tens of thousands. It was significant enough to catch Hollywood’s attention: the Salinas Californian reported in June 1936 that “several dozen famous stars of motion pictures” planned to attend and participate, including Bing Crosby, Jack Oakie, George Raft, Loretta Young and Leo Carrillo.

While people came for the fiesta, the pageantry and the rodeo, one of the prime attractions was the barbecue, where reportedly as many as 10,000 chickens were served to the crowd.

The barbecue was part of the event from the start, making use of huge pits the missionaries dug to roast beef and lamb. For the occasion, the pits were lined with masonry and covered with iron rails salvaged from an abandoned railroad line. 

The Santa Cruz Sentinel described the scene in 1948 as having “pits filled with glowing oak embers over which an expert corps of barbecue experts, headed by Joe Jacinto, will start the meticulous process of broiling thousands of chicken halves, seasoning them periodically with secret ingredients.” 

Besides the chicken, the Sentinel made special mention of the “real frijoles” served during the feast: “the old recipe, with its secret formula for spices and condiments, is carefully cooked to make the beans an epicure’s delight.”  

After the rodeo incorporated in 1947, it remained a fundraiser for the mission, which was still in desperate need of repair. “We have been watching this front wall with great concern. It is about ready to fall. Already you can see the light of day through one of the huge cracks in the front corner,” said Father Edward Haskins, in an interview with the San Francisco Examiner in 1949.

“Everybody in town participated whether they were Catholic, whether they were Protestant. everybody participated,” said Guibert. “People were just shoulder to shoulder and the whole place was packed. Everybody would come; it was a family gathering, a community gathering. It was the precursor to the Salinas Rodeo.”

The greatest advertisement for the event might have been the floats designed by Frank Bettencourt, a San Juan resident and former fiesta chairman. Bettencourt began designing floats as a hobby in 1956 and slowly turned it into a career that lasted over 25 years. The Queen of the Fiesta and her royal court traveled with the various floats to city and county parades all over California and they frequently won top prizes. 

The fiesta grew in popularity every year. In 1969 the Santa Cruz Sentinel claimed the fiesta “draws 35,000 people to overflow the town that has a population of 1,146,” and described the rodeo as the “best one day show in the West.” The paper placed the number of rodeo spectators at 5,000; other published accounts place the number as high as 7,500. 

The event came to a close in 1983, following what Guibert described as a “riot of some sort” that ended with law enforcement having to take charge of the scene.

“A lot of people have very good memories,” Guibert said, “and a lot of people talk about the realities. It got to be a rough crowd, people drinking and having fun, and you know what happens then.”

But Guibert hopes that the people who show up for the celebration will bring their best memories of the past and contribute to the shared knowledge of the panel.

“We have a lot of old timers who actually helped with it coming to talk,” she said. “It will be impromptu and very informal, and I am counting on people who loved the event to share their memories. They were there. This is their event.”

Fiesta-Rodeo memorabilia reproduced courtesy of the San Juan Bautista Historical Society

We need your help. Support local, nonprofit news! BenitoLink is a nonprofit news website that reports on San Benito County. Our team is committed to this community and providing essential, accurate information to our fellow residents. It is expensive to produce local news and community support is what keeps the news flowing. Please consider supporting BenitoLink, San Benito County’s public service, nonprofit news.