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Horse Happenings Travel United States

Twenty-Five Unnatural Wonders of the Western Roadside: Tornado’s Grave (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)

Tornado was the greatest bull in rodeo history. Just outside the Cowboy Hall of Fame, he is interred along an ambling oath that takes visitors past some magnificent bronzes of cowboys as well as monuments to a select few of their best-remembers animals: Baldy (“A Great Cow Pony”), Steamboat (a horse, “Symbol of the Spirit of Wyoming”), Hell’s Angels (“Great Bucking Horse”), and Midnight (a horse: “Please, God, Rest His Soul”).

Tornado is the only bovine creature honored here; his marker eulogized such talents as “bucking, jumping, and spinning… clown- and barrel- fighting” but notes that “He was not a killer bull. He bucks just hard enough to toss his rider. The better the cowboy rode, the harder Tornado bent to his task.”