August 16, 2022
The longest-standing weekly rodeo in the country isn't in Texas, Colorado or Wyoming – it's in a small South Jersey farm town less than an hour from Philadelphia.
The Cowtown Rodeo in Pilesgrove, Salem County, has held a show almost every Saturday since 1955.
But if developers had their wish, the fifth-generation family business would be replaced by acres of the nondescript warehouses that have popped up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in recent years.
Developers have propositioned the family with "astronomical" sums of money – much more than they could ever make through their business, Grant Harris, who ran the rodeo for decades before selling it to his daughter in 2018, told the New York Times.
"Some of the offers were tempting," Harris said. But his daughter Katy Harris Griscom – the Cowtown's first female boss – isn't looking to sell.
The family was forced to pause its 67-year tradition for six weeks at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it otherwise flourished amid the pandemic. Last summer, ticket sales were 50% higher than they've ever been.
Though Cowtown was already a long-standing summer tradition for many, the rodeo benefited from the large number of urban and suburban families looking for pandemic-friendly outdoor activities in the countryside.
Additionally, Professional Bull Riders – the highest-level league in the country – saw its television viewership grow 8% in 2020 as ratings for more mainstream professional sports like baseball and basketball slumped. Cowtown hosted its first ever PBR event earlier this summer.
But the pandemic was even more of a boon for online shopping.
E-commerce sales grew by $244 million, or 43%, in 2020. With sales spiking, retailers like Amazon sought to set up warehouses in rural parts of South Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, where land is relatively cheap but close to New York City and Philadelphia.
South Jersey residents have not always welcomed them. Residents have fought warehouse developments with mixed results in Westampton, Burlington County, and in Logan and West Deptford, Gloucester County.
The state plans to issue new guidelines designed to help towns handle the large number of warehouse proposals they're facing.
In the Lehigh Valley, residents have bemoaned that new warehouses often come at the expense of agricultural properties, like an old horse farm in Palmer Township, Northampton County.
The 18th century farmhouse that anchored the Palmer Township property for centuries will be moved down the road and used as an office by Carson Cos., the California firm that bought the 95-acre property for $60 million in April. The company plans to build five new warehouses on the parcel.
"It's not the township's position that we need any more warehouses," Township Manager Bob Williams told Lehigh Valley Live. "We're past saturation."
But even as inflation, recession anxieties and the return to in-person shopping have caused a decline in e-commerce – which led Amazon to close a distribution facility in South Jersey in May – demand remains strong in other segments of the warehouse market
Last month, the New York Times covered the flurry of activity at a liquidation warehouse in Pittston, Luzerne County, which remains very busy. With online shoppers spending less and making more returns, facilities like this are needed to store the nation's unwanted goods.
Developers and other businesses that support the new warehouses often note that they bring new employment opportunities to regions like the Lehigh Valley, which lost well-paid manufacturing jobs over the course of the 20th century.
But in South Jersey, Cowtown's owners are more focused on preserving their traditional way of life.
"My family made a living — at least — doing what we do for 13, 14 generations," Harris told the New York Times. "Why would you want to mess with that?"
