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RodeoHouston cleanup begins

After holding on for 20 days, wrangling 32,793 livestock entries, hatching 425 chicks and cooking up 8,000 funnel cakes, the 2017 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo roped in a record 2.6 million visitors.

After holding on for 20 days, wrangling 32,793 livestock entries, hatching 425 chicks and cooking up 8,000 funnel cakes, the 2017 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo roped in a record 2.6 million visitors.

“Great weather contributed to that, but we also feel we had a great product this year as a result of our 33,000 volunteers and staff putting in a lot of effort,” said Joel Crowley, HLSR President & CEO.

That effort continued Monday after the rodeo closed its gates the night before. Early that morning, crews started tearing down all the stages, booths and rides.

“It’s quite a process,” Crowley said. “A lot of the elements you see here are property of the livestock show and rodeo, so we need to box those up and put them into storage.”

Those boxes will all go to HLSR’s warehouse at NRG Park. Meantime, all the carnival rides -- and the 380 semi-trucks that brought them to Houston -- are headed back to Arizona. Crews have to break them all down and pack them first, which will take until early next week.

The vendors set up inside NRG Center don’t have nearly that long, which is why they spent today scrambling to pack up. Many of them know they’ll be back next year thanks to this year’s record crowds.

“I think we did a tremendous job,” Crowley said.

Rodeo organizers already announced tentative dates for next year: Feb. 27, 2018 through March 18, 2018. They also revealed that there will be a new performance stage.

“The current stage was put into use in 1986, and it’s obviously undergone a lot of retrofits and technology upgrades,” Crowley said.

Garth Brooks will be the first artist to use the larger, more interactive stage when he opens the concert series. He’ll also close out the rodeo.

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