I was today days old when I learned that one West Texas town has been hosting a rattlesnake roundup every single March since 1958 — and that it started as a practical way to help ranchers, not as a tourist attraction.
The event is the Sweetwater Jaycees’ own, held every second weekend of March at the Nolan County Coliseum in Sweetwater, Texas, and it’s billed as the “World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup” — a self-applied, promotional title from the organizers, not an independently verified Guinness-style record. Sources: Wikipedia, Sweetwater, Texas and CBS Austin.
It wasn’t dreamed up as a tourist draw. The roundup started in 1958 as a genuine pest-control effort, a way for the Jaycees to help local ranchers manage the rattlesnake population on their land — the tourism angle came later, as the event grew. Today it draws roughly 25,000 visitors and generates more than $8 million for Sweetwater’s local economy every year. Source: Wikipedia, Sweetwater, Texas.
The event has also picked up formal recognition well beyond the fairgrounds: the Texas Legislature passed House Resolution No. 109 officially recognizing the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup. Source: Texas Legislature, House Resolution No. 109.
Nearly seven decades in, it’s still run by the same civic group that started it, still happens the same weekend every March, and still draws a crowd big enough to make it one of the largest annual events in this part of Texas — whatever its exact claim to “World’s Largest” is actually worth.