HUNTSVILLE — Brick by brick, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice rodeo arena is quickly becoming a memory.

The spot where so many prison rodeos were held has long been used as a storage area for old vehicles, but the crumbling structure has become a safety hazard in recent years, said Jason Clark, TDCJ spokesman.

The rodeo arena should be completely demolished by February, he said. The arena, located next to the Huntsville “Walls” Unit, served as the prison rodeo stage from 1951 to 1986.

Prison rodeos, which began in 1931, were held at a baseball field next to the prison until the new arena was built 20 years later.

“The arena was primarily used for the prison rodeo, which happened every weekend in October,” Clark said. “(Since 1986) it has been used as a staging and storage area for vehicles that are set to be refurbished by offenders at the Huntsville Unit. The area will continue to be used as a staging and storage area. There will also be some open space, which will serve as buffer space next to the unit.”

Clark said the demolition project has been in the works for quite some time. State budgetary constraints were not enough to stop demolition.

“The condition of the arena has deteriorated significantly in recent years and has become a safety hazard,” he said. “A public roadway also borders the arena and there was some concern that debris could fall and potentially cause problems. With these things in mind and the relatively low cost of the project, the decision was made to demolish the arena.”

Soon, photographs and memorabilia will be all that remain from the once massive structure, where visitors from all over the state and the nation watched prisoners in striped uniforms ride tough, prison-bred bulls.

Jim Willett with the Texas Prison Museum oversees an impressive collection of items salvaged from the Texas Prison Rodeo. It's these items, Willett said, that he hopes people will come to love.

“Personally, (the arena) might as well be on the ground in my opinion because it doesn't give a good reflection of what used to be there,” he said. “It looks awful. I'd rather look at pictures of it, when it was really in operation.”

In its heyday, the rodeo could bring in 20,000 people each weekend in October. This influx of visitors meant big bucks for Huntsville retailers who served tourists, such as service stations, restaurants and hotels.

“Looking overall for the city – if you had an October where there were five Sundays and you had good weather for all of them, you could look at having over 100,000 people coming to Huntsville that year,” Willett said. “People come in here all the time asking if I think they'll ever bring it back. My standard answer is no. It was a big to-do. It brought a lot into the economy of this community. This town became well-known because of it.”

Willett said folks loved the fast pace of the rodeo, though prisoner safety is one of the concerns TDCJ cites as a reason for not bringing the rodeo back, along with concerns about the arena's stability.

“It was a very fast-moving rodeo. As soon as the chute opened, and as soon as a bull rider hit the ground — almost that soon, the chute opened again and here came another rider,” Willett said. “Even to this day, we get a lot of people in here who say, 'My parents used to bring me to this rodeo every year.' My parents live 90 miles north of here and they came to a rodeo every year.”