RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA : Rodeo’s P.T. Barnum Mounts Celebration

Not everyone would consider it great luck to break both legs in a tractor accident. But Cotton Rosser figures it was the best thing that ever happened to him.

The former rodeo rider, who will furnish truckloads of livestock for a South County rodeo this weekend, credits an accident that almost cost him use of his legs for boosting him into a career devoted to “keeping Western heritage alive.”

After the 1955 accident, Rosser’s rodeo buddies chipped in to help him buy a Western store, a business venture that led to Rosser’s later purchase of a Northern California rodeo stock company, the Flying U Rodeo.

Supported by hundreds of horses, bulls, cowboys and clowns, such as those that began arriving Thursday in Rancho Santa Margarita, Rosser and the Flying U can put on one heck of a show, he said.

“The call me the P.T. Barnum of the rodeo world,” said Rosser, who welcomed Cotton as a nickname because “I’ve never heard of a cowboy called Horton,” his original first name.

The Fiesta Rodeo will run from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The rodeo program will begin at 2 p.m.

Sponsored by Rancho Santa Margarita’s Community Activities and Service Assn. and promoted by the Santa Margarita Co., the event is intended to celebrate the unincorporated community’s five-year anniversary.

Festivities will include bronc and bull riding, roping, food and entertainment. Rosser will also trot out a $50,000, 17-foot-high, red-white-and-blue cowboy boot that has an elevator inside to hoist a cowboy on horseback to its pinnacle.

It is his inclination to “dress things up” a bit that won Rosser the title of Most Colorful Man in Rodeo in 1976, he said.

Cowboys and rodeos are special, Rosser said, because “we think the rodeo is as American as apple pie.”

Rancho Santa Margarita is east of Interstate 5, between Mission Viejo and Coto de Caza. The rodeo will be held at the corner of Avenida Empresa and Comercio, near Santa Margarita Parkway and O’Neill Regional Park.

Ticket prices vary. For information, call (714) 589-4272.