09/15/2026
If you’ve been around Steamboat Springs you’ve run into this cowboy.
A six-year-old won $10 riding a calf and caught rodeo fever that never once let go. Nearly seven decades later, at 75 years old, he stood in the same National Cowboy Hall of Fame he'd visited as a boy on a road trip with his father — this time as one of its newest inductees.
Born and raised in Prescott, Arizona, J.C. Trujillo grew up watching his father Albert compete as a ba****ck rider, team roper and calf roper, with his older brother Frank right alongside him soaking in the same dream. "My brother and I were both very eager to be cowboys and learn how to do that," Trujillo said. He won his first rodeo money — $10 — in a calf riding competition at just six years old, and he was hooked for good.
He said it himself, describing exactly what pulled him toward ba****ck riding above everything else — "I think I was just cut out to be a ba****ck rider. I love that event and the attitude it took to be a ba****ck rider. And a bunch of my lifetime heroes ended up being ba****ck riders."
He won the Arizona state high school ba****ck championship his senior year, and on the drive to the National High School Finals Rodeo in Watonga, Oklahoma, in 1966, he and his father stopped at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum — young J.C. walking past statues of the cowboys he idolized, never once imagining he'd stand among them one day. He went on to compete for the Arizona State University rodeo team, winning the 1968 Intercollegiate Ba****ck Championship.
Trujillo joined the PRCA in 1967 and hit the pro circuit full throttle in 1972, finishing his rookie season 17th in the world. From there, he became a fixture at the National Finals Rodeo, qualifying twelve times — eleven years running in Oklahoma City from 1972 through 1983, then again in 1985, the very first year the Finals moved to Las Vegas.
In 1980, he came agonizingly close to the title he'd dreamed about his whole life, finishing runner-up at the World Championships. He said it himself — "One of my lifetime goals was to become a world champ, and in 1980 I was runner-up at the World Championships and I just barely missed it." He didn't miss the next time. In 1981, J.C. Trujillo became the PRCA World Champion Ba****ck Rider.
He built a career full of signature wins — five titles at Prescott, his own hometown rodeo, four at Salinas, three at Ogden, two at the Pendleton Round-Up, and a $50,000 payday at Calgary in 1982. He was also co-champion ba****ck rider at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Rodeo in Washington, D.C.
Known throughout the sport for his magnetic personality and his positive attitude, Trujillo said what carried him through the ups and downs of a career built on both big wins and painful injuries — "Success depends on the ability to be realistic about yourself and acknowledge your limitations."
After rodeo, he combined his love of the sport with a second passion — helping start the Cowboy Downhill ski races at Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and running a hunting business in northwest Colorado that's still operating today. He eventually returned home to Prescott, where he now serves as General Manager of Prescott Frontier Days Inc., the World's Oldest Rodeo — the very ground where his career began.
Inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 1994. In 2023, at 75 years old, surrounded by his children, grandchildren and extended family, J.C. Trujillo was inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame — an honor he says still feels surreal.
A six-year-old who fell in love with rodeo for ten dollars. A world championship earned after coming up just short the year before. A hometown boy who came home to run the rodeo that raised him.
That is J.C. Trujillo. 🤠🐎🏆
