After more than 75 years of calling Colorado home, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association appears to be packing up its operations and ProRodeo Hall of Fame and moving to Wyoming.

The all-but-official move to Cheyenne will mark the end of a Colorado headquarters dating back to December 1950, when the association’s board voted to relocate here from Texas.

At first, PRCA moved to Denver. Then, seeking a major expansion in 1978, the venerable organization broke ground on a $1.9 million project — including the Hall of Fame and Museum of the American Cowboy — and moved to Colorado Springs in April 1979.

Colorado Springs was seen as an ideal place to headquarter the institution, and the PRCA was drawn there in large part through the efforts of businessmen and the city’s Chamber of Commerce.

The late Colorado Springs banker Harold “Hal” Littrell was instrumental in drawing the Association to the Springs, providing financial support to many Hall of Fame projects. The Hal Littrell World Champions Pavilion is named for him.

Colorado Springs has long been home to a vibrant nonprofit culture, and the PRCA is exactly the kind of nonprofit employer the Springs and the state want to keep. Unfortunately, that’s going to change.

“This is a strategic decision that positions the PRCA for the future,” said CEO Tom Glause, noting “Wyoming lives and breathes rodeo.” 

We’re sad to see them go — an organization that has done good work and made a real, positive impact for cowboy culture.

Colorado Springs city officials recognize this. Mayor Yemi Mobolade said the city took steps to keep the association in Colorado and offered a “generous” incentives package.

“I am proud of the coalition we formed and the work we did collaboratively to try to retain the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame,” he said, lamenting that the PRCA board voted to relocate to Cheyenne.

City leaders, including Mobolade and the Colorado Springs Chamber & EDC, deserve kudos for doing their level best to keep this institution here.

Wyoming, like Colorado, is a cowboy and tourism state. The association isn’t moving to Massachusetts; it’s moving to another place steeped in cowboy culture, ranching and agriculture.

Its board has to make the decision that’s best for them. We wish Wyoming and the PRCA the very best.

Incentives only get you so far, especially when the new destination is offering similar packages. It really comes down to something else: Wyoming’s “business friendly climate” — cited in a PRCA press statement about the move.

Colorado Springs leaders in fact were fighting an uphill battle against our own state’s policies.

Wyoming doesn’t have a state income tax, something even Gov. Jared Polis supports eliminating in Colorado. Our northern neighbor’s sales and property taxes are lower, too.

In that light, the imminent move is a canary in the coal mine — another warning to Colorado elected policymakers who insist on hiking taxes and fees, giving the cold shoulder to businesses, and even advocating a ruinous graduated income tax to replace Colorado’s flat tax. Economists warn such policies discourage investment and job creation.

Nonprofits aren’t shielded from these pressures. Colorado’s ever-growing array of employment regulations harms nonprofits just as much as for-profit companies — we’re already the sixth-most regulated state — which discourages job creation.

The PRCA has had a signature cultural and economic presence in this state. That it’s leaving makes as clear a case as any that Colorado must mend its ways and become “business friendly” once more.