PENDLETON — Learning more about rodeo cowboys is an exercise in geography.

Many of the country’s greatest athletes ar drawn from the country’s largest cities and suburbs, facts that are often woven into their legends: Muhammad Ali and Louisville, Kentucky, Babe Ruth and Baltimore, LeBron James and Akron, Ohio.

But in the Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association, some of its most successful athletes come from the smallest dots on a map.

Where is Iowa, Louisiana? It’s where Zack Jongbloed, 10th in the Pro Rodeo Cowboy Association World Standings in all-around, is from. It’s also the location of the Iowa Rabbit Festival, a celebration of the local rabbit industry. And should one find themselves in Calcasieu Parish, in southwestern Louisiana, the Louisiana Office of Tourism advises travelers to pronounce the town’s name correctly (eye-oh-way) and not like the U.S. state.

When he’s not desperately attempting to stay on top of an angry horse for a potential cash prize, Tim O’Connell resides in the other Iowa. His hometown is Zwingle, a city of less than 100 souls named after Huldrych Zwingli, a Swiss religious leader during the Protestant Reformation who died in battle in 1531.

And then there’s the Wright family and Milford, Utah.

The Wrights are arguably the most successful family in rodeo competing today. Brothers Cody, Jesse, Jake, Spencer, Alex and Calvin have all been professional rodeo cowboys, collectively winning several world championships and world titles. Cody’s sons — Rusty, Ryder and Stetson — might even be better, sharing five world titles between them while still in their early to mid-20s.

Success has brought the Wrights media attention outside the rodeo world. Deseret News Magazine did a profile on Bill Wright, the family patriarch and how his sons and grandsons’ success in rodeo allows the Wrights to maintain the ranching lifestyle that has defined the family for hundreds of years. 60 Minutes sent a reporter and camera crew downt to Milford to talk to the Wright about their growing legacy and the road miles and bodily injuries it takes to nourish it.

But the stories don’t spend much time dwelling on Milford. The Deseret News only mentions Milford once, briefly referring to a hog farm Jake bought near the town of less than 2,000 people. 60 minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker called Milford a “no stoplight town where the Wrights are the main attraction.”

While it may not be the most charitable description of the town, it’s not something Cody took umbrage with in an interview with the East Oregonian.

Cody said there isn’t too much to Milford besides a railroad and some farms. Milford is well off of Interstate 15, and although the town sits only a few hours away from Zion National Park, the millions of visitors it receives per year don’t need to travel through Milford to get there.

Cody s son, Rusty, said Whitaker’s assessment was half-right: there are no stoplights in Milford. But he said there’s more to the town than the Wrights. Rusty estimated that the best time to rob a bank in Milford might be on high school football game nights, when the whole town shows out to cheer on the Milford High Tigers.

The family has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in rodeo and could choose to live anywhere, but for Cody and Rusty, friends and family and the land around it kept them in Milford. “Everybody knows your mom, so you can’t sneak around,” Rusty said.

While Cody has taken a step back from rodeo in recent years and isn’t attending this year’s Round-Up, Rusty is excited to compete this year after having to miss several years in Pendleton due to injury.

The irony about rodeo is that even though the PRCA sanctions rodeos in big cities and small towns alike, it’s mostly the big cities that offer the biggest payouts. Rodeo may have started as an offshoot of the cattle roping and horse breaking typical of rural ranches, but most of the money in competitive cowboying remains in urban environments.

When thousands of fans visit the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo or the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, they might not only have trouble placing Milford on a map but also the cowboys from Heppner or Hermiston, should they make it.

But for the Wrights and all the other cowboys from small town America, it’s just the place they call home.