INDUCTEES

Rob Smets

By Michael Allen

Ty Murray, rodeo bull rider and seven-time world all-around champion, was once asked to name his favorite rodeo bullfighter—the man whose job is to protect riders when they dismount or are thrown off their bulls. Murray paid due respect to a number of men but saved his highest praise for Rob Smets: “Rob will always be the best bullfighter… I’d get on a mountain lion as long as Rob was standing there next to me.”

Rob Smets–known for his athleticism and bravery in the rodeo arena–will be inducted into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame (ERHOF) at an August 26, 5-9 pm banquet at Central Washington University’s (CWU) Student Union and Recreation Center (SURC). Alongside Smets, announcer Justin McKee, world champion ropers Rich Skelton and Cody Ohl and world saddle bronc rider Dan Mortensen will be inducted. In a press release, Hall of Fame Induction Committee Chair Nip Tucker called the event a “rodeo superstar induction.” 

Rob Smets made six National Finals Rodeo appearances, eight Professional Bull Riders World Finals appearances, and won numerous bullfighting competitions during a three decade year career that earned him the title of “The Kamikaze Kid.” Born in Palo Alto, California, in 1959, Smets attended high school in Salinas, where he began competing in bull riding events. Drawn to the challenge of protecting roughstock cowboys, he joined the PRCA as a bullfighter in 1978. Smets worked the 1983, 1985, 1989-91, and 2000 National Finals Rodeos and the 1994-1995, 2000-2005 Professional Bull Riders Finals.  Along the way, he pioneered a new ‘look’ for bullfighters, giving up traditional clown outfits and makeup for sports jerseys, shorts, and a cowboy hat.

In 1981, Wrangler Jeans and Shirts became the sponsor of an annual professional bullfighting competition called the “Wrangler Bull Fights.” Professional bullfighters matched their wits and skills against wily bulls, and a world champion was crowned each year. Between 1983 and 1994, Smets won or shared the top award a total of five times, including a 1994 co-championship with Mile Hare, who is also an inductee to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame.

Rob Smets worked the Ellensburg Rodeo for six memorable years (1984-1989) and was very popular and respected by insiders and fans alike. Dr. Ken MacRae, who served twenty-nine years as Ellensburg arena director, hired Smets in 1984 and remembered him as a “great athlete” who, with Miles Hare, launched the Wrangler Bull Fights in Ellensburg. In The Tradition Lives: A 75-year History of the Ellensburg Rodeo, the late Ellensburg Daily Record editor John Ludtka, described Smets and Hare as “premier…outstanding bullfighters who amazed the crowds with their athletic ability and daredevil antics.”

Looking back over his storied career, Smets recalls that the “mid-80’s and 90’s were a heyday” for professional bull riders and bullfighters.  “I was so blessed to be a part of all that…. I was blessed to be able to fight bulls for over 30 years. I went from Hawaii to Florida and from Alaska to Brazil fighting bulls.  There were so many great bulls.”

In 2006, after breaking his neck in the arena for the third time, Rob Smets retired from professional bullfighting. Smets and his wife Carla make their home in Merkel, Texas, where Rob speaks to church, civic, and school audiences; he also makes hospital visits.

Rob Smets is an inductee to the ProRodeo Hall of Fame (2006), Texas Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame (2010), and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame (2019). He plans to travel to Ellensburg to accept his August 26 induction into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame.

Rich Skelton

By Jon Guddat

Team ropers are often recognized with their header or heeler partners, especially if there’s been long term success. In the case of Rich Skelton, one of the most decorated team roping heelers in the existence of professional rodeo, the Texas cowboy also could put together an individual accolade or two.

Skelton, who with partner Speed Williams won eight straight team roping world titles, is one of five individuals being inducted into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame next weekend.

The 57-year-old from Llano, Texas, took home three Ellensburg Rodeo championships – two as a team roper and another steer roping title–and was a factor for many years in the All-Around race here, though never won the saddle. 

A Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association member since 1985, Skelton won his first Ellensburg title in 1990, partnering with Jake Milton to win the three-head average here with a 20.6-second aggregate.

“I think that was the only time we roped together all year,” Skelton said by phone in mid-August. “I think I had $28,000 won after I won y’alls rodeo. Man, that wouldn’t be much now,” he laughed about how much world standings have changed over the years. “Winning Ellensburg secured my first NFR.”

Indeed, it did. Skelton first trip to the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas foreshadowed things to come – much bigger things to come. It was the first of 22 career qualifications to the biggest rodeo of the year and the first of 17 straight years making it to the NFR.

While Skelton roped with a handful of partners early in his career, he teamed up with three-time world champion Tee Woolman for a few years in the early and mid-1990s, earning a handful of NFR qualifications together. However, with Woolman easing his travel schedule Skelton connected with Williams in what turned out to be a duo that may never be matched. It was clear from the get-go they were always going to be in the mix at ever rodeo town.

“Everything started off good,” Skelton remembered. “Every morning when Speedy and I woke up and got out of the trailers, all we thought of was winning championships. When you’re at that level, your partner wants to do good just like you do. They have their goals. Everyone had good horses, they put in the time and effort.”

They won it all in 1997, again in 1998. 1999? Yep, that was their gold buckle again. Eight straight years – 1997 through 2004 – the team roping gold buckle was theirs.

“Eight years, good horses, the right goals, and we had some luck too,” Skelton said. “The ball bounced our way several times. “There were several years where we could’ve gotten beat, but everything just worked out.” One could easily argue they created their luck with focus, practice and good horsepower though.

Skelton and Williams had the fast time at the Ellensburg Rodeo in 1996 (5.6 seconds) as well as 1999 (5.3 seconds). In 2003, they teamed up to win the average with a 17.5 on three runs. The team won plenty in go-round and average checks in the years they didn’t win it all here.

Fans and fellow ropers immediately recognized the dominance and the catchy phrase “If you want to get ‘Rich’ you have to have ‘Speed’” caught on early in the partnership.

“I guess that was right,” he said. “It was for us.”

The duo roped together through the 2005 season and was a factor in the world race until Clay Tryan and Patrick Smith finished as champions.

Skelton kept roping full-time for many years. He partnered with 26-time world champion Trevor Brazile, also an Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame inductee, going to the NFR in 2006 together. He made the finals in 2009 (with David Key) and 2010 (with Travis Tryan), before going three years in a row with Nick Sartain from 2013 through 2015.

In fact, in 2013 Sartain and Skelton had the fast time at Ellensburg with a 4.7-second steer.

Despite Skelton’s primary event being team roping, he is an accomplished steer roper as well. Skelton won Ellensburg’s two-round average in 1996 with a 24.4-second aggregate. He made the National Finals Steer Roping in 2007. His steer roping earnings kept him in the All-Around standings for much of the middle of his career, placing fourth in the All-Around in 2000 and in the top 15 for eight years overall.

“I wanted to do something on my own,” Skelton said of the decision to steer rope. “I practiced with Tee and Trevor plenty.”

The career netted Skelton a few bucks short of $3 million in career earnings.

All that success showed that Skelton placed a premium on quality horses. His horse Chili Dog earned PRCA/AQHA Horse of the Year honors four times in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2001. Later, Roany got the same nod in 2004 and 2005. Another horse, Z, was third in the 2006 voting. Skelton also said while his horse Gambler never received awards, “you could calf rope, team rope, trip steers on him. He’s a good one.”

Now Skelton–the ProRodeo Hall of Fame inductee in 2018–focuses on roping clinics and helping his wife Rhonda and his daughter Rainey on the rodeo road. Both ladies barrel race and 19-year-old Rainey is No. 1 in this year’s Women’s Professional Rodeo Association’s rookie standings.

The clinics and barrel racing keep the guy busy to say the least.

“I’ve accomplished everything I’ve wanted to in roping,” he said, including wins at Ellensburg. “Ellensburg is a great town,” he said. “We went to a lot of rodeos, and we actually called that area home (during the northwest run of rodeos). When the rodeo is on, everyone in town is there and knows about the rodeo. When you get to Ellensburg it shuts down and its only focus rodeo. It’s very cool.”

Cody Ohl

By Jon Guddat

World champions are crowned yearly. Champions along the rodeo schedule come and go. Not many cement themselves in local and national memories like Cody Ohl.

Known for his aggressive, take-no-prisoners style in the arena and life, Ohl earned Ellensburg Rodeo victories six separate times during his decorated career spanning more than two decades, which included six Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association world championships. The Texas cowboy is one of the five inductees into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame this year.

A rookie in 1994, Ohl visited Ellensburg throughout his career and won his first average buckle here during Labor Day weekend in 1996. While it was foreshadowing more buckles to come in Ellensburg and beyond, it wasn’t as though he was new to the scene when it came to victories. Ohl was winning right from the start of his professional career, earning the PRCA’s rookie of the year honors in 1994 on his way to the first of 20 National Finals Rodeo qualifications.

“I was just doing what I love and picking up checks,” he told NFR Extra during an October 2021 podcast.

Ohl, who turns 50 next month, fought to keep himself within reach of a gold buckle each year and fans can’t look at his career without looking at parallel careers of other ropers during his time. In 1997, it was once again Ohl and fellow calf roper Fred Whitfield (an eight-time world champion himself) battling for the standings lead throughout the year, where it came down to the last day before Ohl was crowned with his first world title, winning the calf roping championship by $5,031 over Whitfield.

“It’s not like I remember it happening like it happened yesterday, but the very first one, will always mean the most,” Ohl told NFR Extra. “All of the blood, sweat, and tears, not knowing if you’ll ever win one. And to get that first one is just so rewarding.

“All of them buckles have that special story, but that first gold buckle is so rewarding. So much blood on your hands from practicing so much, so many miles to get to that next rodeo. To finally get it was unreal.”

Part of what propelled Ohl to the world title was the money he won in Ellensburg. Ohl won the 1997 All-Around here by earning $5,081 between calf roping and steer roping (picking up the two-head win in that event as well).

The following year, Ohl quieted any thoughts that he would be a one-time champ by storming through the year on his way to his second calf roping world title in as many years. And while he didn’t win the world title in 1999, he dominated Ellensburg, winning the All-Around saddle as well as the calf roping average buckle here.

Some fans and ropers alike may attribute a run or two that defines Ohl’s grit. It might come down to two runs, both ran at the National Finals Rodeo. Ohl ran a 6.5-second calf in the 2003 Finals, a record that he still shares with Trevor Brazile and Shad Mayfield. However, one can’t discount his run during the ninth round of the NFR two years prior, where he barely made the 25-second whistle to count as a qualified time. Ohl missed the calf on his first loop and barely caught the calf on his second try, but while dismounting he planted his feet wrong and immediately blew out his knee. However, with the calf roping and All-Around buckles still in play, Ohl literally dragged himself to the calf to finish his run before collapsing in the arena dirt.

“I can remember that night like it was yesterday,” he said. “I was dragging behind that calf, struggling to get on my feet just to get it tied so I could stay in the average. (A destroyed knee) wasn’t going to be the reason why I lost, because I couldn’t compete on one leg.”

Ohl won both the PRCA’s All-Around and calf roping buckles that year.

He would win two more calf roping world titles in 2003 and 2006 and then proved to everyone he was still a force to be reckoned with when he won the Ellensburg calf roping one more time in 2015, some 16 years after his previous title here.

Ohl has won everywhere, winning multiple titles at huge rodeos like the Cheyenne Frontier Days, Reno, Guymon, Okla., and Dodge City, Kansas. But nowhere has he won as many big titles as he’s won with the six here in Ellensburg.

The Texan has won 52 National Finals go-rounds in the 20 years he competed at the NFR, and is second to only Brazile in career earnings, winning more than $3.5 million in the PRCA circuit, which includes $1.4 million in NFR earnings.

“It’s been one roller coaster ride.”

Both Ohl and the Ellensburg Rodeo were inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 2020.

While Cody has rightfully earned so much attention for his success, his horsepower also deserves much credit. And his horses have helped others to success. Shane Hanchey a 13-time NFR qualifier and a 2013 world champion, needed Ohl’s help, and specifically the help of Ohl’s horse, Pearl, right here in Ellensburg. With less than a month to go before the end of the regular season, Hanchey hadn’t wrapped up his trip to the National Finals and then had to deal with hurt horses from his own trailer. Heading into the short round in the final day of the Ellensburg Rodeo, Hanchey needed help.

“2013 was a historical year for me as many know,” Hanchey said of his year he won the gold buckle in calf roping. “But what most people don’t know is if it wasn’t for Cody Ohl letting me on Pearl at the Ellensburg Rodeo, none of it may have happened. Winning Ellensburg has always been a lifelong dream and to do it on a horse of that caliber was truly monumental. Cody Ohl saved my 2013 season.”

While Ohl has retired from professional roping, he still looks back fondly on his career as well as his relationship with the fans.

“Not only did I love to win, but I loved to entertain. The fans… I loved to interact with them. When they played my song when I rode up into the box, the crowd, I could feel their energy all through my body.”

He would leave it all on the arena dirt.

“They knew I was coming,” he said of both the fans and his fellow ropers. “There was gonna be greatness or was gonna be dust.”

Dan Mortensen

By Daniel Beard

Dan Mortensen in conversation is thoughtful, soft-spoken, and articulate, but behind those western good manners is a world class competitor.

The tradition of rodeo values understatement and reserve. Think of Jimmy Stewart in a black and white studio western, doffing his cowboy hat and saying, “Well, shucks, ma’am. It wasn’t much. I was only doing the best I could.” And at the same time knowing this man could take the measure of overwhelming challenges and come out as a champion. That is Dan Mortensen. He might hold the door and say, “after you,” but if it’s a competition in the rodeo arena, he wants to win first.

His successes in the rodeo arena are astounding. Dan Mortensen won seven Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) world championships–six saddle bronc titles and one all-around championship. He won Montana’s high school bull riding championship three times and the state high school bronc riding title once. As a Montana State University athlete, he won the national college saddle bronc riding championship. He was 1990 PRCA Rookie of the Year. He won countless rodeos, including the Ellensburg Rodeo bronc riding title in 1994, 1995, and 2002.

Dan Mortensen said of the Ellensburg Rodeo, “Ellensburg is such a great rodeo. It was such good competition. It was fun to ride there, but it was a lot of fun to watch. You go as a contestant and a fan.”

Dan was able to compete fiercely and “try your guts out on every horse,” but he was grounded enough to enjoy the process. In other words, Dan could compete with a positive mindset. He was motivated by a joy in the contest, not by a fear of losing. That mental balance is one of the most difficult struggles in life, and was the foundation of the rest of Dan’s accomplishments.

He said, “When you’re riding, you need to treat every horse the same. Whether it’s a small circuit rodeo or the 10th round of the National Finals Rodeo. You need to have the same amount of passion and energy. Sometimes you need to pick yourself up, sometimes you need to calm yourself down, but you have to try your best on every one.”

Dan loved riding bucking horses. “At the end of the year, I’d sit back and evaluate if there was anything else I wanted to do more than ride bucking horses. And there wasn’t. And then I knew that I had to work hard and give it my all, because there was a hundred guys who wanted to do exactly what I was doing.” That quote is Dan Mortensen in a nutshell: thoughtful, positive, balanced, and competitive.

Dan is currently enjoying his retirement in Billings, Montana. He and his wife, Darla, have three young children (ages 10, 8, and 6). He is enjoying spending time with his family and teaching his kids “to be good horse people.”

Justin McKee

By Daniel Beard

The rodeo announcer connects the audience, especially those new to rodeo, to the action in the arena. At the most basic level, the announcer communicates who is competing and what is the resulting time or score. Good announcers create a framework so the audience understands how that individual performance compares to the rest of the performance or weekend. Who’s winning first? Was that a good ride? What took place on Friday night or Sunday afternoon? Great announcers communicate how the individual effort the audience just watched fits in with the pursuit of year-long goals and accomplishments. Hall of Fame announcers help the audience understand how a few hours of entertainment in the Ellensburg Rodeo arena dirt connects to generations of Western heritage, to the most treasured values of American freedom, to a connection with something spiritual. Justin McKee has a special gift. He helps the audience enjoy the performance but also to understand both what they saw and why it is important. Justin McKee is an Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame announcer.

Dan & Judy Ackley

From the 1970s to the present, Dan and Judy Ackley have been Ellensburg Rodeo “regulars,” as participants, officials, volunteers, and contestants. Together, they have devoted thousands of hours of work to the growth and success of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

A Washington State native, Judy spent part of her youth in the Kittitas Valley. Her parents Robert and Maxine Wilcox were rodeo enthusiasts who always kept horses. Judy remembers rodeo clown Slim Pickens and world champion bronc rider Casey Tibbs.

Judy first rode cutting horses, then started barrel-racing in her teens. Judy won the Washington Barrel Racing Association Championship in 1972 and competed in the United States and Canada for 18 years as a member of the Girls Rodeo Association/Women’s Professional Rodeo Association.

John and Gwynn Jordan

 John and Gwynn Jordan, a mid-twentieth century rodeo couple, served the Ellensburg Rodeo as announcer and secretary for more than a decade. Highly respected in Pacific Northwest rodeo circles, they were regulars in Ellensburg during professional rodeo’s “golden age.” 

 John Jordan began his career in the 1920s, riding the western rodeo circuit as a saddle bronc competitor. He competed in nearly every major rodeo, including Ellensburg. 

 In the 1930s John made the transition from the arena to the “crow’s nest” and became a rodeo announcer. His mentors and role models included the legendary announcers “Foghorn” Clancy and Cy Taillon.

 Meanwhile, his wife Gwynn Jordan also made her living at the sport. She served as a rodeo “secretary,” keeping the complex records of rodeo entrants and their times and scores, and writing checks (or handing out cash) to winning cowboys and cowgirls. 

Spring Planting

Flying Five / Big Bend Rodeo’s great saddle bronc, Spring Planting, is a 2022 inductee to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame. Rodeo stock contractors, Chad Hutsell and his wife, Lindsey, along with ERHOF inductees, Don Hutsell and Sonny Riley own the bucking horse.

788 Spring Planting began her rodeo career in excellence.  In her first year bucking, she went to the 2007 National Finals Rodeo (NFR) as a five year old and won a go-round buckle in Las Vegas. She continued her excellence for her entire career. In 2022, as a twenty year old legend of the sport, she carried Zeke Thurston to a 89.5 point win at the Reno Rodeo and Coburn Bradshaw to an 89.5 point win at the Sisters Rodeo. Now in her retirement, there wasn’t a moment of her 15 year bucking career that wasn’t marked by excellence.

Spring Planting is a dark blue roan. Quiet in disposition; kind but not overly personable. Lindsey Hutsell said, “She will let you pet on her, but she will nip at you to tell you when she’s done.” She is regal in her bearing and imposing in her physicality. She is an athlete and as big as a draft horse. Which is appropriate because you could fill a wagon with her awards and accomplishments and need a draft horse to pull it.

The NFR cowboys vote on the best 100 saddle broncs to take to the NFR. Spring Planting has been chosen fourteen times. As an example of her excellence over time, Spring Planting has carried both Cody Wright and his son, Ryder Wright, to round wins at the NFR.

The cowboys also vote on the yearly award for the Saddle Bronc of the Year. Spring Planting won the award in 2009 and 2013. She was second place bronc of the year in 2011, 2014, and 2017, and third place bronc of the year in 2016, 2018, and 2019.

Along with national awards, Spring Planting accumulated an impressive amount of local accomplishments. She was chosen as the best saddle bronc of the PRCA’s Columbia River Circuit in 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2018.

At the Ellensburg Rodeo, Spring Planting has impacted the course of champions at the Labor Day Rodeo. Five of her career ten 90+ point scores have been recorded in the arena at Ellensburg. Cody Wright, Cody Demoss, Chad Ferley, Isaac Diaz, and Coburn Bradshaw have all been 90 points or more in front of a cheering Monday crowd. Either through a high score or a buckoff, Spring Planting has been a determining factor in who wins the coveted Ellensburg Rodeo Bronc Riding championship. To her credit, the cowboys scanning the draw sheets for the Ellensburg Rodeo finals have all wanted to draw Spring Planting. Even though she is big and strong, her bucking style has always been honest and even, the kind the cowboys want to draw.

Spring Planting’s mother was a horse called Jamboree. Jamboree was a huge red roan mare. Huge. She could have been the source material for the song “Mr. 5 by 5.” Jamboree could fill up a bucking chute, but she had a bucking pattern that was popular with the cowboys. Spring Planting’s sire was the great Spring Break. Spring Break combined the genetics of the great Iron Mountain, Flying Five Rodeo’s famous Appaloosa stallion, with the genetics of Spring Rose, who was also the mother to the Hall of Fame bucking horse Spring Fling.

Spring Planting is everything a rodeo stock contractor could hope for in a bucking horse. Her size is ideal. She is big and strong enough to carry a saddle bronc rider and buck like she wants to buck, not as the cowboy might try to affect her. She sets the tone and the rider has to see if he’s cowboy enough to make it to the 8 second whistle. She has the physicality to handle the grind of the year long rodeo season and be the same bucking horse in January and July and September. She also inherited the bucking ability and heart that inspires the greatest of bucking horses. Perhaps most notably, she inherited an easy going demeanor that competes at the highest level without getting bothered by any of the bright lights. There was never a setting that was too big for Spring Planting; she was big enough to be herself.

Flying Five Rodeo and Big Bend Rodeo are Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame inductees. Don Hutsell and Chad Hutsell and Sonny Riley have owned legendary and Hall of Fame bucking stock. Spring Planting stands out among the best of the best in the history of the company. She was the same every single time, year after year, and she was excellent.

Dick and J.D. Yates

At 85 years of age, rodeo cowboy Dick Yates does not rope much nowadays. “I don’t like to run a lot of cattle anymore,” he told The Team Roping Journal. “I watch the rest of them rope. I enjoy watching [son and grandson] J.D. and Trey rope as much as I like doing it, or quite a bit more….It’s been a good ride.”

Dick and J. D. Yates are the father-son members of a famed Colorado family of team ropers, steer ropers, barrel racers, and horse trainers. “I was raised in the eastern part of Colorado near Lamar,” Dick told the Team Roping Journal. “My dad was a farmer.” Small in size, young Dick rode race horses as well as competing in college rodeo roughstock and timed events. Dick and Jan Yates married in 1958 and daughter Kelly and son J. D. were born in 1959 and 1960. Kelly took up barrel racing and Dick and J. D. began team roping, a professional rodeo event that first emerged in the late 50s and early 60s. As a team, Dick was “header” (roping the steer’s horns) and J. D. was “heeler,” (roping the steer’s back legs). The Yates’s began to regularly follow the rodeo road.

“Back in those days they didn’t make pickups good enough to pull trailers very good,” Dick remembers. “We pulled our trailers with a Buick Electra 225” automobile. Their air conditioning system was “two-by-55,” he jokes: “We drove with two windows rolled down 55 miles per hour!” With Kelly also competing, “our first stock trailer hauled three horses and we pulled it behind that car.”
In 1975, J. D. became the youngest cowboy ever to compete in the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) when the 15 year-old heeled for Dick in the team-roping competition. In 1984, Kelly qualified in barrel racing, making the Yates’s the only father-daughter-son trio to ever compete in the same year in the NFR. Kelly ultimately qualified for 3 National Final Rodeo barrel racing competitions. During their team-roping partnership, Dick and J. D. Yates qualified for 13 NFRs.

J.D. attended the University of Southern Colordao and Oklahoma Panhandle State University, where he won two college team roping rodeo championships (1979-80). Between 1975 and 2002, J.D. roped in 21 National Finals Rodeos, counting the 13 with Dick. He also qualified 11 times in the National Finals Steer Roping (a solo roping event distinct from team, calf, or “tiedown” roping) and won the world title in 2002. J. D., now 62 years-old, has accrued over $1.5 million in lifetime winnings. His son Trey is a professional team roper.

Following Dick’s lead, J. D. slowly transitioned from competitions to training roping horses. J. D.’s business, “Hitch Rack Performance Horses,” is headquartered on the Yates’s home ranch outside Pueblo, Colorado, where J.D. trains heeling, heading, and calf roping horses. Hitch Rack’s website touts JD’s ”state-of-the-art show barn, countless stalls and pens, a large outdoor roping arena and fresh cattle–ready to rope at all times.” J.D. has also produced his own training DVD’s—“Starting the Heading Horse” and “Training a Heeling Horse.” J. D. Yates and his horses have won an amazing 34 American Quarter Horse Association championships.

“The better-bred horses today…are smarter and easier to train,” Dick Yates reflects. But he adds, “You have to let them progress at their own speed and not overdo it, so you don’t burn them up… You’ve got to give them time. Too many people get in too big a hurry trying to finish a horse.” He states proudly, “J.D. has an unusual gift, and it’s been good watching. Now I’m watching him get through to Trey.”

Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame induction committee chair Ken MacRae states, “Dick and J. D. Yates have strong ties to the Ellensburg Rodeo. As a Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) representative, Dick worked with me when I was arena director to add team-roping to the Ellensburg program.” Dick and J. D. went on to win Ellensburg team roping championship buckles in 1986 and 1988, while J. D. won the 1988 Ellensburg all-around championship; in 2003, J. D. won the Ellensburg steer roping championship.

When asked to describe the caliber of team-roping talent today, Dick Yates says, “It’s mind boggling. The scores have gotten shorter and the cattle have gotten smaller…it’s a wicked old deal at the rodeos…it’s a tough old road.”

85 year-old Dick Yates and wife Jan sit back and watch it all unfold. And, in addition to the pride they share in the accomplishments of Kelly and J. D., they can now watch the career of grandson Trey. A 2018 college national team roping champion heeler, Trey is a two-time NFR team roping qualifier, making the Yates’s a three-generation family of rodeo champions.

Kittitas County Junior Sheriff’s Posse

Founded in 1958, the Kittitas County Junior Sheriff’s Posse rode across two decades of Ellensburg rodeo history, participating in parades, playday competitions, horse shows, trail rides, and mounted drill exhibitions. Posse boys wore red western shirts with white scarves, white straw hats, white slacks, and star-patches awarded them by the Kittitas County Sheriff. Astride sorrel and black horses, Junior Sheriff’s Posse riders carried American flags in the Ellensburg Rodeo parade, grand entry, and both day and night show performances of the late 50s, 60s, and 70s.

Kittitas County Sheriff Bob Dorsey, who served from 1942-66, founded the Junior Sheriff’s Posse in 1958 as a community service project. The boys held their first practices in 1959. Ellensburg Rodeo Posse member Cal Shull (husband of Sheriff Dorsey’s office administrator Nellie Shull) served as the first drillmaster, assisted by Frank Moore and Bryce Baker. In the posse’s early days, volunteer Rod Hussey trucked the boys’ horses around the state. Shull, Baker, and Hussey also volunteered with the all-girl Ellensburg Rodeo Wranglerettes drill team.

An Ellensburg Daily Record article described the Junior Sheriff’s Posse as “a unique riding group brought together to combine a youth club with the love of horses…. The premise of the club is to build character and leadership in the boys, combining responsibility in rural youths along with good horsemanship.”

Founding member George Michel joined at age 14 and rode in the posse for two years. He served as posse 1^st Lieutenant alongside his friend Ron Carlson, who was Captain. Michel remembers, “some of the boys were only eleven and twelve years old.” He states, “the most fun I had was in the playday competitions, especially when we traveled over the mountains. The Snoqualmie Riding Club in North Bend hosted a parade and playday with ribbons and trophies.” Playday events included “scurries” (hurdle racing), relay races, pole bending, mounted drill competitions, trailer races, and more.

Michel recalls each of the founders: Wallace Audie, Mac Bledsoe, John Burkheimer Jr., Ron Carlson, Rick Cole, Scott Dierenger, Jim Hand, Gary Heglar, Scott McCullough, Bill Moore, Johnny Vaughan, Steve Gerwells, and Fred Newschwander.

In addition to the Captain and 1^st Lieutenant, posse officers included a Secretary and Treasurer. The boys conducted their own business meetings. A 1965 Daily Record article reported the posse’s annual awards potluck ceremony at Fairview Hall drew 93 attendees and featured awards for Sportsmanship (Ken Hunt), Inspiration (Jim Shaw), and Attendance (Scott Dolquist). A “Gymkana” trophy for playday wins went to Dave Storlie.

The posse participated in Ellensburg’s annual National Bank of Washington Equitation Show and traveled to events in Wenatchee, Yakima, Enumclaw, North Bend, and other venues. They were featured entertainment at the King County Fair and Rodeo in Enumclaw.  “We also performed during the Ellensburg Rodeo on several occasions as the ‘specialty act,’” recalls founder Rick Cole. “We drilled to the music of Eddie Arnold’s record, ‘Cattle Call.’”

The drill required a great deal of practice and precise horsemanship. “We started with two abreast,” Michel remembers. “Then Ron Carlson and I took the trailing riders and did separate circles then came to center crossing, a maneuver called ‘threading the needle.’ Then we all lined up facing the crowd. The entire drill lasted the length of the song ‘Cattle Call,’ about 3 minutes.”  Synchronizing 15-20 young horseback riders into circles, figure-eights, and threading the needle was a difficult feat.

A younger group also holds good memories of their Junior Sheriff’s Posse days. Wayne Hunt, who is 7 years younger than Carlson and Michel, remembers, “John Woods and I were pretty good at the ‘trailer race’—a playday event where competitors drove a horse trailer into the arena and raced to saddle their horse and run a two-man relay. In ‘scurry races’ or ‘scurries,’ we jumped hurdles. I had a horse named ‘Hunt’s Ketchup’ that was a little wild and sometimes would start bucking after a jump!”

John Brotherton, five years younger than Hunt, recalls the posse boys rode “mostly sorrels and a few blacks (Scott Dolquist had a beautiful black), but I was the only member who rode a palomino.” “We were pretty busy,” he continues. “My sister Roberta rode in Wranglerettes, and so our family’s summers were filled with trail rides, parades, playdays, and rodeos. Les Storlie, whose sons Dave and Scott rode with the posse, was drillmaster when I was member.”

Trail rides up the canyons were a favorite pastime. “We had a lot of fun on those trail rides,” says Scott Storlie. “Kenny Hunt and I could get back at the older members for picking on us. After dark we would steal their saddles and string them as far up a tree as we could!” He remembers “swimming parties at the CWSC pool” and even recalls the exact route he and his brother Dave rode their horses to and from practice each week: “From Judge Ronald, to Pfenning, to Radio Road, and then across the field behind KXLE radio station. Then, across the highway to the city canal road, to the railroad tracks, and across to the posse barns and into the rodeo arena.” Storlie also fondly recalls drilling to the music of “Cattle Call.”

In the mid-1970s, interest lagged, and mounted youth drill teams around the region began to disappear. 4-H Horse Clubs and High School and Junior Rodeos began to take their place, and youngsters found other hobbies and activities to pursue. Interestingly, as the posse met difficulties fielding enough riders for shows and parades, they were assisted by local girls (some of them Wranglerettes) who donned red shirts and white hats to help out. This was the first integrated male/female drill posse in Ellensburg Rodeo history.

The Kittitas Junior Sheriff’s Posse disbanded around 1975.

Today, the Kittitas County Junior Sheriff’s Posse “boys” are senior citizens. Alumni are spread across the Kittitas Valley, the Pacific Northwest, and North America. Many plan to attend their induction into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame and celebrate their special place in the history of the Ellensburg Rodeo. 

Kittitas County Junior Sheriff’s Posse, 1958-1970s:

Founder: Sheriff Bob Dorsey (Kittitas County Sheriff, 1944-1966). Drillmasters: Cal Shull, Frank Moore, Les Storlie, Ed “Cass” Dolquist, Don McPherson, John Richardson, and Rod Hussey (driver).

Posse Members: Wallace Audie, Russ Belsaas, Mac Bledsoe, Don Bowers, Chris Bridge, John Brotherton, John Burkheimer Jr., Ron Carlson, R. G. Charlton, Win Charlton, Mike Clapper, Pat Clapper, Ron Clapper. Jim Cobb, Mike Cole, Rick Cole, Jeff Colson, Bill Devney, Scott Dierenger, Scott Dolquist, Jeff Dunning, Jeff Fitterer, Jon Fitterer, Steve Gerwells, Bill Gwenner, Jim Hand, Gary Heglar, Ken Hunt, Wayne Hunt, Bob Jenkins, Dick Jenkins, George Michel, Scott McCullough, Kevin McDowell, Dale McPherson, Bill Moore, Dale Newman, Dan Newman, Fred Newschwander, Lloyd Nickel, Denny Nielson, Bruce Noyes, Gary Pederson, Jim Shaw, Fred Slyfield, Montie Smith, Pat Smith, David Storlie, Scott Storlie, John Vaughan, John Woods, and Dale Young.

Girl participants: Dede Bledsoe, Janet Bledsoe, Marilyn Bowers, Susan Clerf, Mary Gifford, Susan Clerf, Nan Hooper, Terri Lowe, and Cheri McConnell.  

Note: If your name or the name of someone you know should be on this list, please email ERHOF97@gmail.com and we will add it to the Kittitas County Junior Sheriff Posse’s permanent Induction file in our archive.

Eddy Akridge

World Champion Bareback Bronc Rider Eddy Akridge was born in 1927 on a working cattle ranch near Pampa, Texas. The son of a rodeo cowboy, the 5’ 9” 155-pound Akridge entered his first amateur rodeo in Meade, Kansas, in 1946. In 1948, Eddy joined the RCA (Rodeo Cowboys Association, now PRCA), holding RCA Card # 376. Prior to specializing in bronc riding events, Akridge also rode bulls and competed in bulldogging and calf roping contests. His post-World War II rodeo career paralleled an era rodeo historians call the “Golden Age” of the sport. For fifteen years, Eddy Akridge rose to world-class status, competing alongside legendary cowboys like Casey Tibbs, Deb Copenhaver, Marty Wood, Bill Linderman, and Jim Shoulders (all ERHOF Inductees).

In addition to his world titles, Akridge regularly won day money, bareback and saddle bronc championships, and all-around titles at Calgary, Pendleton, Madison Square Garden, Boston Garden, Phoenix, Salinas (CA), Fort Worth, Red Bluff (CA), Joseph (OR), Lewiston (ID), and of course Ellensburg.

According to a 1950s RCA press release, Akridge tried to size up the broncs before he drew them. He preferred “mean buckers” he had ridden before, but “if he had no chance to ride [them] he’d at least like to see someone else try before he rides. Scouting a bucking horse, he says, gives him a chance to figure him out a bit.” Eddy recalled one of the toughest broncs he ever rode was “Miss Klamath,” from the stock of Oregon’s Christensen Brothers (1999 ERHOF Inductees).

The 1950s proved to be Akridge’s heyday despite constant injuries. A bruised knee cartilage laid him up for nearly three months in 1950, as did a bruised liver in ‘53; torn knee ligaments put him in a steel brace and out of competition throughout the 1957 and ’58 seasons. Overcoming excruciating pain, Akridge ultimately won an impressive four World Bareback Bronc Riding titles (’53, ’54, ’55, ’61). His achievement has been surpassed by only one cowboy, Joe Alexander (ERHOF Inductee, 2005).

In Ellensburg, Eddy Akridge won the ‘Bares’ in ’51 and ’53. Then in 1956, he enjoyed huge success, winning both the Saddle and Bareback Bronc titles to become the Ellensburg Rodeo All-Around Champion Cowboy. Akridge kept up his momentum for two more weeks, winning enough day money and titles in Walla Walla, Lewiston, and Pendleton to claim his first “Big Four” crown in 1956. Notably, Akridge’s greatest Ellensburg victories came on grass; 1956 was the last year for the rodeo’s turf arena (Pendleton’s arena floor remains grass to this day).

Eddy Akridge retired from professional rodeo in 1968. A father with four children, he supported his family in Las Vegas as a musician and professional card dealer. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Eddy played rhythm guitar and sang lead for the Gold Buckle Band; he recorded several records. Eddy Akridge has been inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame (Oklahoma City) in 1977 and the ProRodeo Hall of Fame (Colorado Springs) in 1979.

Born on November 4, 1943, Joe Alexander grew up on his family’s isolated 10,000-acre cattle ranch near Cora, 60 miles from Jackson, Wyoming. As youths, Joe and his brother rode horseback to their school bus stop. They would tether their mounts, attend school, and ride home carrying the day’s mail to their distant ranch house.

At seventeen, Joe rode his first bucking horse in a ranch meadow and he never looked back. He excelled in high school rodeo, riding broncs and bulls, wrestling steers, and honing his team-roping skills. In 1964, he left Cora for Casper (WYO) College, where he won the Intercollegiate Rodeo Association’s Bareback Riding Championship. This 5’ 8” 155-pound cowboy soon joined the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA). He later graduated from the University of Wyoming (Laramie), with a B.S. in Animal Husbandry.

Joe hit the rodeo trail in earnest in 1970 and achieved immediate success on the PRCA circuit. Describing his career at that time he told Western Horseman, “I really like to get going from June on. I like to get on a bareback bronc every day if possible. I’ve found I ride better and feel better when I do.” This strategy combined with his physical prowess and professional savvy to earn Joe the PRCA record of five World Bareback Bronc Riding Championships from 1971-75. Equally impressive is his record of 13 years qualifying for the National Finals Rodeo. Throughout his dominance in roughstock competition, Alexander supplemented his earnings on the “other side” of the arena, consistently placing in the team roping event. In the 1980s, at 40 years of age and a decade after his rise in the sport, Joe Alexander was still riding bareback broncs. He is a 1979 Inductee to the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colorado and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.

Joe Alexander remembers the Ellensburg Rodeo as an important stop on his road to five world championships. Joe cut a wide swath through the 1970s Ellensburg Rodeo arena, continually winning day money, averages, and the Ellensburg Bareback Bronc titles in 1972, ’75, and ’78. From those days, he remembers contractor Harry Vold’s (ERHOF 2000) rank bronc Neck Lace (ERHOF Inductee 2000) as “one of the four toughest broncs I’ve ever been on.” ERHOF Board member and former arena director Ken MacRae notes “I remember Joe as toughest bareback rider going in those years and his record proves it.”

Today, Joe Alexander lives in Marysville, California, with his wife Cindy, a former rodeo queen (Miss Winston) and 1973 Women’s Professional Rodeo Association Team Roping World Champion. Together, they raise quarter horses and take life a lot easier than they did during their 1970s “glory days.” Alexander told ERHOF that he is humbled by his selection.

Guy Allen

When Texas team- and steer-roping champion Tee Woolman dubbed Guy Allen “The Legend,” he was not exaggerating, just stating a fact. Guy Allen’s professional steer-roping career, from 1976 to present, is highlighted by thirty-one National Steer Roping Finals qualifications, eighteen world championship titles, and career earnings totaling $1,547,824. Indeed, in the world of professional rodeo, Guy Allen is a “legend” in his own time and all time—the greatest steer roper in the history of professional rodeo.

Guy Allen was born September 15, 1958 in Chousatta, Louisiana, to ranchers James and Ann Allen. He has two brothers and a sister. Three Allen men—James, Gip, and Guy—took their ranching skills into the rodeo arena. Guy hit the rodeo trail at age 7, accompanying his roper dad. After graduation from Santa Anna High School (in a senior class numbering twenty-six), Guy attended Ranger College in Texas.

He soon transferred to compete for the famed rodeo team of Sul Ross State College in Alpine, Texas. In 1976, Allen joined the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA), competing in tandem with his team roping dad and individually in steer roping.

Steer roping differs markedly from the more familiar calf-, or “tie-down” roping. Steer ropers rope full-grown cattle, casting a loop around the horns and placing the slack under the right hip of the steer. Then the horse sharply turns left, “tripping” the steer to the ground. The roper dismounts from the still moving horse, which is trained to stop after the steer is “logged” until the roper can get his “pigging string” on a front leg and tie three legs together. Then he signals “time.” The flagger drops his flag and checks that the steer remains properly tied for six seconds after the roper remounts and gives slack in the rope. Like saddle bronc riding and calf- and team-roping, steer roping is a ranch-related event that requires, and thus preserves, skills identical to those of historic nineteenth century Plains cowboys and contemporary ranch cowboys.

In 1977, Guy Allen became the PRCA’s youngest steer roping champion, and he was just getting started. He won the steer roping and timed-event money in many of North America’s greatest rodeos—Pendleton (OR), Huntsville (TX), Sheridan (WYO), Dodge City (KS), Deadwood (SD), Kileen (TX), and of course Ellensburg; he has won multiple Texas and Prairie Circuit Finals steer roping and All-Around titles. In 1983, James, Guy, and Gip all qualified for the National Finals Rodeo, the first and only family trio ever to do so.

During a thirty two-year career, 6’ 2”, 205 lb., Guy Allen has qualified for the National Finals Steer Roping thirty-one times (1977-2007). As noted, he has dominated the steer roping event, winning eighteen world titles (1977, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1989, 1991-2001, 2003-04); he lost the 2005 world title to Scott Snedecor by $1.67! Those eighteen world titles are the most in the history of PRCA (bettering bullrider Jim Shoulders’ 16 titles). In addition, Guy Allen at present (2007) holds the world’s record for the fastest steer roping (in 2000 in Dunmore, Oklahoma at 7.9 seconds).

“Guy Allen has perfected the art of steer roping into an exact science,” states Hall of Fame board member and longtime Ellensburg Rodeo arena director Dr. Ken MacRae. “He has refined his horsemanship and his methods of handling the slack and gathering the steer’s legs and tying them into a technique that has become the standard all other steer ropers try to copy.”

Like all timed-event competitors, Guy Allen’s teammate is his horse, or in Guy’s case, two horses. He is quick to credit much of his success to his acclaimed horses nineteen year-old Jeremiah and sixteen year-old Floppy. Jeremiah’s registered name is Two D Ole Man.

In Ellensburg, Guy Allen has won the steer roping four times (’90, ’93, ’05, and ’06) and held the arena record (9.6 in ’96) for nearly a decade. “We have been very proud to have had Guy and all the other top steer ropers compete at Ellensburg,” Dr. MacRae said. “Guy Allen’s success in this arena over the years only adds to the legend. We have witnessed the greatest steer roper of all time in action.”

When he is not rodeoing, Guy Allen ranches near family and friends in Santa Anna, Texas. He has two daughters, Cigi and Sadie, and enjoys playing golf and watching his favorite NFL team, the Kansas City Chiefs.

Stuart Anderson

Northwest restaurant entrepreneur and rancher Stuart Anderson made Ellensburg his adopted home in the early 1970s, establishing a ranch in the west valley to advertise his Stuart Anderson Black Angus Cattle Company franchise. An active Ellensburg Rodeo sponsor and host, Anderson was instrumental in televising the Ellensburg Rodeo.

He was born in Tacoma, Washington, of Swedish and Scottish parents, Dr. Roger and Susan Carver Anderson. Although Anderson aspired to be a cattle rancher from his early youth, his life initially took a different course. After graduation from Tacoma’s Stadium High School, he served as a tank driver in General Patton’s famed World War II Army Corps. Returning home, he bought and managed a hotel and restaurant in what he describes as a “rough and tumble Seattle neighborhood.” This ultimately led to the first “Stuart Anderson Black Angus” restaurant, a western-themed steak house that grew to phenomenal success throughout the American West in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

During these decades, Stuart Anderson shepherded his “Black Angus Cattle Company” to encompass 122 steakhouses, employing more than 10,000 people, and annually grossing $260 million dollars. Known for quality, affordable beef served in a friendly, western- themed setting, Anderson’s restaurants perfectly dovetailed his lifelong ambition to own and to run a cattle ranch.

His 2600-acre Black Angus Cattle Company Ranch, perched alongside Interstate 90 in western Kittitas County, soon became a showplace and calling card for his growing restaurant chain. Here, in the 1970s and 80s, Anderson learned and honed irrigation skills and raised registered and commercial cattle, sheep, and horses.

The adopted eastern Washingtonian immediately became involved in the Ellensburg Rodeo. In 1972, Anderson invited friends and rodeo volunteers to a western style barbeque at his Black Angus Ranch “party barn,” an event that continues as a rodeo tradition to this day. Anderson also served as the Ellensburg Rodeo Parade’s Grand Marshal; in 1984 his Clydesdale pulling horses were featured in the Ellensburg Rodeo’s six-horse hitch exhibition event.

“Some of Stuart Anderson’s greatest contributions to our rodeo,” states Hall of Fame board member Joel Smith, “were his sponsorships, and especially his promotions televising the Ellensburg Rodeo.” Prior to 1982, the Ellensburg Rodeo was one of the few top North American rodeos that had not been televised. “Stuart made it happen in 1982,” Smith recalls, “with a generous prize purse supplement, a television advertising contract, and numerous regional promotions.”

Meanwhile, Anderson continued his business career and became involved in myriad professional and community service endeavors. He wrote a book entitled Here’s The Beef! and served on the boards of Washington State 4-H, Washington Restaurant Association, Senior Housing Assistance Group, and Washington State Cancer Drive. He was also voted National Restaurant Association “Man of the Year.”

Anderson Family

Clarence Anderson, his children, and grandchildren, have served the Ellensburg Rodeo in many ways since the rodeo’s 1923 birth. From their horse-raising and farming days at Sunnybrook Farm, Clarence and Hazel Thurlow Anderson and children Ralph (“Dick”), Ron, Jerry, and Linda branched out into many rodeo jobs and competitions. Clarence Anderson was President and Director of the Ellensburg Rodeo and a founding member of the Ellensburg Rodeo Posse. For over eight decades, members of the Anderson family have served the Ellensburg Rodeo as roping and bulldogging competitors, volunteers, and Ellensburg Rodeo Royal court members.

The Andersons will be inducted into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame at the Thursday, August 28, 6 PM, Hall of Fame Banquet in CWU’s historic Sue Lombard Hall.

Anderson family historian Linda Anderson Dozier writes, “Like many of the early‑day Ellensburg Rodeo volunteers, Clarence Anderson and his wife, Hazel, spent a great deal of their life promoting the Rodeo and, in turn, the Kittitas Valley of eastern Washington. Their children and grandchildren have stayed close to the Rodeo and in a variety of ways made their own contributions to the Rodeo’s success, and the local economy.”

Dozier recounts that Clarence Anderson, born in Ridgeway, Iowa in 1898, came to Ellensburg on the train when he was 10. His mother’s brothers ‑ the Johnsons ‑ were early pioneer businessmen in Easton and his uncle Al Johnson built a towering home (later known as the Highway Grille) at 8th and Main for Clarence’s grandmother. While Clarence’s brothers eventually homesteaded and farmed in the Badger Pocket, Clarence built a dairy and horse farm just south of the train depot in Ellensburg. Friends often called him “Sunnybrook” as that was the name of his farm on Anderson Road, just north of where the sprawling Anderson Hay headquarters sit.

Hazel Anderson was born on a Methow Valley ranch in 1900. She was the daughter of pioneer Mason Thurlow, who staked his claim in the beautiful Methow after a wagon train trip from Texas and brief residence in the Kittitas Valley (which he reportedly thought was unhealthy after his first wife and several others died). In the late 1920s, Hazel worked as secretary to the president of Ellensburg Normal School, now Central Washington University, and it was there through friends that she met the school’s riding instructor, Clarence Anderson.

Clarence raised both light and draft horses. In 1923, he used his draft horses to help clear the grounds that are now home to the Ellensburg Rodeo. A true “horse trader” (by all accounts other than his own ‑ he did not like the term), Clarence was responsible for many from west of the mountains making their first visits to Ellensburg to look at and buy his horses. Most often, these customers would also want feed for their new purchases. Clarence’s help in finding that feed led to the start of Sunnybrook Farm Hay Company, which is now known worldwide as Anderson Hay and Grain Company. Today, the company that Clarence started contributes greatly to the Valley economy each year and is in the third generation of family leadership with Clarence and Hazel’s grandson, Mark Anderson, at the helm.

Clarence was a founding member of the Ellensburg Rodeo Posse and was first elected to the Ellensburg Rodeo Board in 1949, a directorship he held for the next 20 years. Always involved in the Rodeo’s activities, Clarence and Hazel also opened their home to many of the visitors, contestants and celebrities who came to Ellensburg for the Rodeo. Hazel did most of the cooking while Clarence invited the people—including Slim Pickens, Monty Montana and many more. Clarence served three terms (1954‑56) as President of the Rodeo Board and remained an active Board member and committee chair until his retirement from the Board in 1969.

The Anderson’s son, Ron, moved Anderson Hay and Grain (and Valley agriculture) into international markets, developing strong ties with Japan, Korea, Taiwan and other nations. He led trade missions to Asia for Pacific Northwest agricultural interests and headed the National Hay Association.

Son Jerry Anderson ‑ a Gold Card member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA)—made his name in rodeo from inside the arena ‑ first, as a calf roper and bulldogger and later a team roper. In college in 1954, Jerry helped rope and bulldog his much-respected Cal Poly (San Luis Obispo) rodeo team place into second in the nation. After turning professional, he competed in rodeos across the west, wining day money and titles. He won the Puyallup Fair and Rodeo calf-roping twice and placed in both calf-roping and bulldogging in the Pendleton Roundup (in a recent interview Jerry joked that in 1954 he held the Ellensburg Rodeo arena record in bulldogging “for about five minutes” until another cowboy beat his time!). Jerry won Ellensburg Rodeo calf roping go-rounds and the Kittitas County Wild Cow Milking buckles in 1961 and 1975. He has worked the calf chutes at Ellensburg for over 45 years.

Most of all, Jerry is known as someone who has always been ready to guide those who are just starting out in the Rodeo arena. He founded Ropers’ Supply on the old Vantage Highway and served as the PRCA’s spokesman and field man for years. For the past 19 years, Jerry has also played a prominent role in the Valley’s real estate market, specializing in farm and ranch sales. He has been responsible for helping bring a new generation of residents and volunteers to the Rodeo effort.

Jerry’s wife, Janis, has been the “roping” Grandma in the nationally famous “Ellensburg Rodeo Grandmas” since the group’s selection by Washington Mutual Bank in the early Nineties. The “Rodeo Grandmas” have put Ellensburg front‑and‑center of more national television programs than any other single story.

Clarence’s first‑born son, Ralph Richard, recalls riding in some of the earliest Rodeo parades, and the problems that arose when the horses were all ready for the parade and rolled in the manure pile before they headed to town! Richard left the Valley to find his life’s work in selling packing and shipping containers to the fruit and fishing industries.

Clarence and Hazel’s daughter, Linda, was queen of the Ellensburg Rodeo in 1959 and after a brief stint at the Yakima Daily Republic, she moved to Southern California for a career in public relations and corporate communications.

Continuing the family’s support of the Ellensburg Rodeo, Ron and his wife Robin, as well as Grandson Mark Anderson and his wife Carrie, and daughter Linda and her husband Tom Dozier, are all members of the Rodeo’s Gold Buckle Club. Jerry is a past member of the Rodeo Hall of Fame Board of Directors. Richard and his wife are annual visitors to the Rodeo as are many other family members.

It has been eighty years since Clarence Anderson first drove his draft horse team into town to help build the Ellensburg Rodeo grounds. Since that time, Anderson family members have participated in nearly all of the myriad chores necessary to conduct and maintain the rodeo. The Anderson family will be inducted into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame’s “Pioneer Rodeo Family” category.

Note: This article is based on the research and writing of Linda Anderson Dozier.

Harry Anderson

Harry Anderson was a “founding father” of the Ellensburg Rodeo. Anderson served on the Rodeo Board from 1923-26 and as its President from 1927-1941. Today, the “Harry Anderson Trophy” is awarded at the Monday Finals to the All-Around Cowboy of the Ellensburg Rodeo. Harry Anderson was born to William P. and Hulda (Border) Anderson in Ohio on February 7, 1871. In 1876, the Andersons returned to Bosquie County, Texas, where they had previously resided (and where Harry’s elder brother Charles Anderson was born). In 1882, Harry and Charles Anderson migrated to Washington Territory to work as cowboys near Walla Walla and, later, Boise. For nearly a decade they worked at running cattle and sheep, riding fences, branding, and roping on the ranges of Idaho and eastern Washington. By 1894, the Andersons had gained enough experience and capital to buy a sheep outfit of their own. They met great success over the next twenty-five years. Harry and Charles Anderson migrated to Kittitas County in 1916 and bought the McClennan and Wilson sheep outfit. They ran sheep on the range between the Kittitas Valley and the Columbia River for five years, selling out in 1921 to the Sanders Brothers.

Using the capital from their sheep ventures, the Andersons soon rose to the station of prominent Ellensburg real estate investors; they owned the Olympia block, other prime commercial properties, and Harry’s Moreland Ranch. In 1923, Harry Anderson’s cowboy past and his business acumen made him a prime contact for “Doc” H. F. Pfenning, Leonard Davis, Cliff Kaynor, and other boosters of the Ellensburg Rodeo; they invited Anderson to help organize a “Wild West Show” in Ellensburg. Thus, the former Texas and Idaho cowboy and sheepman found himself a “founding father” of the 1923 Ellensburg Rodeo and subsequently played a crucial role in the first 19 years of the Ellensburg Rodeo. Elected the rodeo’s second President in 1927 (succeeding Bill Fudge), Anderson’s next fifteen years of service were crucial to the development of the Ellensburg Rodeo. “Our show is as good as there exists,” he declared. During Anderson’s Presidency Ellensburg joined the Rodeo Association of American (1930), Red and Rose Wall became primary stock contractors (1931), and the Rodeo Board began to name its own rodeo court (1932). Entries rose to such a great number that the Board introduced “slack” time to accommodate all cowboy competitors. Facilities improved, attendance increased, and the Ellensburg Rodeo firmly established its reputation as one of North American’s best professional rodeos. Old-timers remember Harry Anderson’s crucial negotiations and dealings during the “Cowboy Turtles” union strike of 1937.

The Turtles (today’s Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association) had legitimate grievances about prize money and judging, and Anderson supported their cause. But he also opposed their boycott strategy and defied them by declaring the show had to go on. Although the 1937 Ellensburg Rodeo did not feature its usual array of talent, Anderson combined independent Turtles with other regional (including Canadian) cowboys to produce a professional show. Meanwhile, during the 1930s and 40s, Anderson served as a judge at major rodeos throughout North America, including Toronto, Cleveland, Buffalo, and New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden Rodeo. In 1941, Harry Anderson retired as President of the Ellensburg Rodeo. In his honor, the Rodeo Board created the Harry Anderson All-Around Trophy. Anderson retired to his 105 E 8th Avenue home where he and his wife lived until his March 7, 1951 death at the age of eighty. Harry Anderson’s nineteen-year term of service–four years as Board Member and fifteen years as President–stands unrivaled in the seventy-eight year history of the Ellensburg Rodeo. 

Allen Bach

Ellensburg High School graduate Allen Bach is one of the greatest team ropers of all time, with 29 National Finals Rodeo (NFR) appearances and four NFR Team-Roping World Championship buckles during his stellar career.

Bach credits his parents, Courtney and Laura, for his work ethic and drive. Courtney and Laura Bach met, married, and worked together as welders in the Seattle shipyards before moving to eastern Washington and raising a family of six. “My dad worked really hard, from morning ‘til night drilling wells,” Bach recalled in a recent interview in ProRodeo Sports News. “My mom was a real go-getter and…the most inspiring person in my life.” Bach’s parents succumbed to cancer in 1972 and 1987, respectively.

Born in Soap Lake, Washington in 1957, Allen Bach learned cowboying skills from Columbia Plateau wranglers and rodeo competitors. Kittitas Valley roper Jerry Anderson remembers first seeing Bach at the King Ranch and other ropings around Coulee City. “Riding his good little horse ‘Boots,’ Allen was a contender from the start,” Anderson recalls. Bach continued to hone his expertise in high school rodeos, ropings, and on his family’s new Wilson Creek Road home.

Anderson owned a rope business and arena on the Vantage Highway and observed the youth’s progress. “Allen was very dedicated to his roping from the start,” Anderson states. “No one has worked harder at it or been more competitive.”

Allen Bach graduated from Ellensburg High School in 1975 and joined the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association in 1978. A team-roping heeler, he won the Columbia River Circuit championship his rookie year, and qualified for the National Finals Rodeo one year later. Over the next three decades, he won championship buckles and day money at nearly every major rodeo across America and Canada, qualifying for twenty-nine NFR rodeos. Bach’s 2006 winnings were $172,986.00.

In 2006, Allen Bach and his header Chad Masters placed first and second, respectively, in the PRCA World standings and Bach won his fourth NFR Team Roping World Championship. This victory, coming as it did near the end of his third decade of professional competition, “was a huge accomplishment for me, and a blessing,” Bach reflects. “I’ve had a fairytale career.”

Despite his professional accomplishments, Allen Bach states “rodeo in and of itself would leave you pretty empty if that’s the only purpose you had for your life.” Peggy, Bach’s wife of twenty-nine years, and their children Joel, Tyler, April, and Erica, provide that extra purpose. So too does Bach’s recent ordination to the Christian ministry. Alongside some of his fellow timed event competitors, Bach runs “Forever Cowboys,” a faith-based ministry emphasizing moral values, athletic and spiritual growth, and the cowboy code of behavior. “I have just felt that God has impressed it on me to serve Him,” Bach states.

“Victory not only comes materially but on the inside,” Allen Bach reflects. “I encourage all people, especially young people, to realize the mental victories they have and learn from their failures, but then forget their failures…remember the steers you catch and build on those victories.”

Allen Bach’s victories, in both his rodeo career and his personal life, have been momentous. In his twenty-nine years as a PRCA cowboy he has, according to ProRodeo Sports News, “cemented himself as a future ProRodeo Hall of Famer and built a reputation as one of the greatest team ropers of all time.”

Bernard-Moomaw Rodeo Stock Company (1933-1945) Badger Mountain

The Bernard-Moomaw Rodeo Company, founded in 1933, provided stock during the second decade of the Ellensburg Rodeo. First teamed with Tim Bernard, the Leo Moomaw family provided bucking stock to the Ellensburg Rodeo for thirteen years between 1939 and 1991, ranking them alongside the Christensen Brothers (ERHOF ’98) in the annals of Ellensburg Rodeo stock contracting history. The Bernard-Moomaw Company won recognition throughout the 1930s and 1940s rodeo world for their bull Droopy. Bernard and Moomaw were among the first Northwesterners to breed and contract Brahma Bulls. Their most famed bucking broncs were Two Spot, Zombie, Swift Current, Blue Blazes, Jack Wade, Black Widow, Levi Strauss and, of course, “Badger Mountain.”

Dubbed “The Badger” by top hands, this famed bronc thrice won the coveted title of National Bucking Horse of the Year.

 Tim Bernard and Leo Moomaw are both Inductees to the Omak Stampede Hall of Fame in tribute their role as 1934 founders of that rodeo. In their final contracting year, the Ellensburg Rodeo Board gave each man an engraved watch expressing gratitude for their contributions to the Labor Day weekend rodeo. Leo Moomaw and Tim Bernard were north central Washington stock contractors. Leo Moomaw, one of seven children, was born to Sam and Ellen Moomaw in Addy, WA in 1894. Although he suffered polio as a youngster, his love for horses helped him overcome any ill effects as he rode to gather the wild horses that roamed the area near what is now Chief Joseph Dam above Bridgeport. That was the start of his rodeoing career as a bronc rider, roper and later a stock contractor. In 1915 a group in Davenport decided to have a rodeo and they contacted Leo to furnish horses. He and some buddies gathered from the hills and drove the wild stock to the site. That started him in the rodeo contracting business.After a stint in the U.S. Army during WWI he resumed his rodeo business with Don Condon and they were in demand whenever cowboys needed bucking stock. Most often the rodeo string was driven to the shows from the ranch near Monse. Meanwhile a cattleman-bank loan officer moved into the Okanogan Valley having trailed a herd of cattle from northern Oregon across the Columbia River to his newly acquired ranch near Loomis.Tim Bernard, born in Chinook, Mont., in 1897, moved with his family to the Prosser area where he attended high school. He worked summers on ranches in Montana, attended the University of Washington and became a loan officer in a Spokane bank. But ranching was in his blood and he was bit by the rodeo bug having had successes as a roper. Before long a partnership formed between the savvy horseman Moomaw and the cattleman-businessman Bernard. “A handshake formed their bond of trust,” daughter Peggy Moomaw Nelson writes in her book in progress, “The Buckin Horse Man,” a biography of Leo’s storied career.

Moomaw’s broncs and steers and a trained crew under his guidance provided quality rodeo and Bernard’s business and sales acumen sustained the partnership from 1933 through WWII.They shared a vision that would bring rodeo into small towns and large cities where crowds would be drawn to see top quality stock and the best cowboy and cowgirl competitors. Tim headed out to sell their idea and Leo prepared the stock to travel, which became even more difficult in 1937 by adding Brahma bulls and Mexican bulldogging steers. (It was an $1,145 investment at the time, Moomaw’s son Wade recalls.) The company was among the first to bring Brahmas to Northwest rodeos. It wasn’t long until the Moomaw-Bernard reputation grew and rodeos across the region, including Canada sought their services. By 1940 they were into Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas as well as Calgary’s Stampede and Cheyenne’s ‘Grandaddy of them All’ Frontier Days. Their partnership also was a key to the start of the Omak Stampede. In 1933 with two other men, they staged the rodeo with portable fences at the Omak athletic field. It was not a financial success and Moomaw-Bernard had to dig into their pockets to bail out that first event which now is known world-wide. Moomaw-Bernard Contracting Co. (MBC) became known for its rodeo efficiency even before bucking chutes were used. They caught and tied the stock in the order they would be used, facilitating saddling which sped up the shows. And competitors knew the prize money would be paid fairly and that MBC stock would give them a good opportunity to be at the pay window. The partnership had many great bucking horses and bulls, but its most famous was Badger Mountain.

Leo’s talent for recognizing bucking stock paid off in 1932. He had heard about a 6-year-old bald faced bay at the Williams Brothers ranch in Douglas County. Neither of the brothers could ride the horse nor break him to plow. Leo took him to the Waterville rodeo grounds for a trial. He got a young cowboy, Henry Michel, to get on the big horse. Michel had just won the Pendleton Roundup bronc riding and with it the Northwest championship. After just four jumps out of the chute, Michel was thrown and carried back to the chutes to recover. Satisfied with what he saw, Leo traded one of his broncs for the horse that would be known for the next 25 years as Badger Mountain. In his first three years in the arena, the big bay bucked off every rider who tried him. Over the years, the horse perfected peculiarities in bucking style that “laid low the aristocracy of rodeo cowboydom,” Moomaw-Nelson writes in her book. Badger Mountain was selected National Bronc of the Year three times and was rated with Midnight and Five Minutes to Midnight as the three greatest broncs of the decade prior to WWII. His rearing, slashing, shaking style had cowboys and fans talking and publications including Time magazine writing about his prowess. As for his Ellensburg Rodeo visits, Badger Mountain threw many a rider but gave championship rides in both the ’39 and’40 rodeos. He was retired in 1950 to Bernard’s ranch and in 1954 was buried on a high knoll near Tonasket. The partnership sold their bucking stock to Ring Brothers of Wilbur, WA in 1946. But in 1953 Leo returned to rodeo to partner with Joe Kelsey and they provided stock to Ellensburg (1953-58) and many other rodeos in the greater Pacific Northwest until he retired in 1960.

The late Cliff Kaynor, who was an Ellensburg Rodeo director and past president, often said Leo Moomaw and Tim Bernard were men of their word and helped Ellensburg Rodeo through some difficult times. The Colville reservation stockman ranched until his death in 1969. Bernard continued ranching and later moved to Moses Lake where he had a livestock auction business. He died in 1979. Both men have been inducted into the Omak Stampede Hall of Fame.Many rodeo men acknowledge the Moomaw-Bernard stock contracting partnership had a significant influence on the sport of rodeo, especially in the Pacific Northwest and for generations of cowboys past, present and future.

Katherine Wyss Bach and Foxy Coke

A funny thing happened at a 1970s Yakima County Fair and Rodeo barrel-racing competition. In her go-round, renowned Ellensburg barrel racer Katherine Anderson Bach took a spill on her stalwart horse Foxy Coke. Bach literally “bit the dust” as she was thrown completely off Foxy Coke. Stunned and laying on the ground, Bach was surprised to hear the crowd roaring its approval. Why would they clap at such an accident? When she looked up and turned around, she saw the reason for all the cheering: “Foxy Coke was still doing his job,” she jokes. “He was speeding around the barrels without me while the crowd cheered him on; he didn’t stop until he’d finished the entire course!”

Katherine Bach resided in Ellensburg from 1957 to 1987. A Gold Card Member of the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association and Professional Women’s Barrel Racing (a Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association subsidiary), Bach helped to pioneer the barrel racing event in the Pacific Northwest and Western PRCA venues, winning dozens of championship buckles along the way.

Katherine’s story began much earlier, in the ranching and rodeo country of northeastern Oregon. In the early years of the Great Depression, Conrad Wyss (1903-1984), a Swiss immigrant, married Jetta Bennett (1914-1991), whose family’s roots lay in the American South. The couple began a dairy farm in Reith, Oregon, near Pendleton. Katherine was born in 1936; she had a brother and sister. “Dad delivered Grade A raw milk door-to-door in Pendleton in a panel truck,” Katherine remembers. Conrad also raised oats and alfalfa, and the Wyss family kept riding horses and a team of work horses. Katherine began to ride bareback as a very small child, “as soon as I could shinnie up the horse’s leg!”

As a child, Katherine attended elementary school in Reith. She later took the bus to Pendleton Junior High and Pendleton High School, where she was a cheerleader. She also swam competitively and joined the “Mustangers” riding club. She fondly remembers Mustangers “playday” competitions, complete with precision drills, track racing, pole bending, “musical chairs,” and “egg races.” Barrel racing, the event in which Bach would one day leave her mark, was still a Southwestern (mainly Texas) competition that had not yet migrated north.

Around the age of 13, Katherine began her formal involvement with the Pendleton Roundup, playing the role of the “captive girl” kidnapped by Indians in the Happy Canyon Night Pageant. She soon rode in the Happy Canyon “quadrille” (a square dance with eight mounted cowboys and cowgirls) and competed in the Roundup’s daily relay races.

In 1954, she was selected Roundup Princess and in 1955 served in the coveted role of Queen of the Pendleton Roundup. Both years she simultaneously competed in relay racing while performing her royal court duties. “Nowadays, the Pendleton princesses and queen don’t compete in rodeo events while serving on the court,” she notes.

Katherine married Ellensburg calf roper and businessman Jerry Anderson in 1957 and moved to the Kittitas Valley, her home for the next three decades. It was around this time that the barrel racing event, which had come north from Texas, found its way into Northwest rodeo venues. Bach took up the contest mounted on an extraordinary grey quarter horse named Foxy Coke (1956-1984).

Foxy Coke was a race horse she acquired from Virgil Studebaker of Enumclaw; J.B. McMeans was one of Foxy Coke’s trainers. “He was one in a million,” Katherine notes, though she also has much praise for Whiskers and Too-Too, horses she rode from 1981-2001. “Katherine trained many very nice barrel horses,” states cowgirl and former Ellensburg Rodeo Queen Gena McNeil. “I think the highest compliment would be to say that her horses loved her.”

The decade of the mid-60s through the mid-70s was Katherine’s and Foxy’s heyday, as they won scores of Pacific Northwest Barrel-racing titles. Katherine joined the Washington Barrel Racing Association in 1960 and the Girls Rodeo Association (now WPRA) in 1974. She and Foxy Coke won championships in Ellensburg, Omak, Othello (six times), Yakima (“Yakima was one of Foxy Coke’s favorite rodeos,” she recalls), Joseph, Prineville, Bremerton, Mt. Vernon, Kennewick, Eugene, Yakima, and other rodeos. She was the Washington Barrel Racing Association champion in 1965 and WBRA Finals Champion in ‘66, ’70, ’71, and ’73. In 1974, her first year on the Columbia River Circuit of the PRCA, Katherine was Rookie Barrel Racer of the Year.

“Katherine was, and still is, a real inspiration to many of us,” states Gena McNeil. “She is a horsewoman of the highest caliber and willing to teach those who are committed to learning. She is ever the lady, always composed. I am proud to say she is my friend and is very deserving of this induction.”

Katherine Bach helped pioneer in Northwest barrel racing; she was longtime Secretary of the Washington Barrel Racing Association, and regional representative of the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association. She played a pivotal role in the movement to establish barrel racing as a featured PRCA event. Yet she is quick to give most of the credit to other women she worked alongside. “I was a competitor, not a politician,” she remembers.

Ellensburg Rodeo historian and ERHOF inductee John Ludtka remembers Katherine as a “stately horsewoman who dominated Northwest barrel racing as it became more and more accepted by rodeo producers. Her remarkable success made locals proud, and thus made it easier for the Ellensburg Rodeo Board to move barrel racing from a night show slot to a featured event in the daily Ellensburg Rodeo performance.” Ludtka adds, “Of course, Katherine won the premier 1962 competition.”

In addition to her many rodeo activities, Katherine, with Jerry, raised a son, Curtis Anderson, and worked for the Ellensburg School District from 1971-1979. Katherine later married Courtney Bach (father of PRCA champion heeler Allen Bach) in 1979 and continued to compete in PRCA barrel racing venues. In 1987, Courtney Bach succumbed to cancer; Curtis had died unexpectedly in 1985.

Katherine Bach left the Kittitas Valley for Hermiston, Oregon, in 1987. She continued to race competitively until 2001 when, sixty-five years-old, she retired. “I quit barrel racing three times before I really quit,” she jokes.

Today, Katherine Bach keeps a Pendleton mailing address but leads a roving lifestyle in her truck and camper, following the sun, visiting and working with family and old rodeo friends across the North American West. “I’m sort of a gypsy,” she jokes. She pulls a horse trailer and rides daily. “I always have my horse Boomer. I live a really simple life.”

When she learned of her induction into ERHOF, Katherine responded with typical modesty: “I’m astounded,” she said. In fact, Katherine Wyss Anderson Bach possesses an astounding record of barrel racing success that ranks her as one of the Kittitas Valley’s greatest cowgirls.

Bernard-Moomaw Rodeo Stock Company (1933-1945) Badger Mountain

The Bernard-Moomaw Rodeo Company, founded in 1933, provided stock during the second decade of the Ellensburg Rodeo. First teamed with Tim Bernard, the Leo Moomaw family provided bucking stock to the Ellensburg Rodeo for thirteen years between 1939 and 1991, ranking them alongside the Christensen Brothers (ERHOF ’98) in the annals of Ellensburg Rodeo stock contracting history. The Bernard-Moomaw Company won recognition throughout the 1930s and 1940s rodeo world for their bull Droopy. Bernard and Moomaw were among the first Northwesterners to breed and contract Brahma Bulls. Their most famed bucking broncs were Two Spot, Zombie, Swift Current, Blue Blazes, Jack Wade, Black Widow, Levi Strauss and, of course, “Badger Mountain.”

Dubbed “The Badger” by top hands, this famed bronc thrice won the coveted title of National Bucking Horse of the Year. Tim Bernard and Leo Moomaw are both Inductees to the Omak Stampede Hall of Fame in tribute their role as 1934 founders of that rodeo.

In their final contracting year, the Ellensburg Rodeo Board gave each man an engraved watch expressing gratitude for their contributions to the Labor Day weekend rodeo. Leo Moomaw and Tim Bernard were north central Washington stock contractors. Leo Moomaw, one of seven children, was born to Sam and Ellen Moomaw in Addy, WA in 1894. Although he suffered polio as a youngster, his love for horses helped him overcome any ill effects as he rode to gather the wild horses that roamed the area near what is now Chief Joseph Dam above Bridgeport. That was the start of his rodeoing career as a bronc rider, roper and later a stock contractor. In 1915 a group in Davenport decided to have a rodeo and they contacted Leo to furnish horses. He and some buddies gathered from the hills and drove the wild stock to the site. That started him in the rodeo contracting business.After a stint in the U.S. Army during WWI he resumed his rodeo business with Don Condon and they were in demand whenever cowboys needed bucking stock. Most often the rodeo string was driven to the shows from the ranch near Monse. Meanwhile a cattleman-bank loan officer moved into the Okanogan Valley having trailed a herd of cattle from northern Oregon across the Columbia River to his newly acquired ranch near Loomis.Tim Bernard, born in Chinook, Mont., in 1897, moved with his family to the Prosser area where he attended high school. He worked summers on ranches in Montana, attended the University of Washington and became a loan officer in a Spokane bank. But ranching was in his blood and he was bit by the rodeo bug having had successes as a roper. Before long a partnership formed between the savvy horseman Moomaw and the cattleman-businessman Bernard. “A handshake formed their bond of trust,” daughter Peggy Moomaw Nelson writes in her book in progress, “The Buckin Horse Man,” a biography of Leo’s storied career.

Moomaw’s broncs and steers and a trained crew under his guidance provided quality rodeo and Bernard’s business and sales acumen sustained the partnership from 1933 through WWII.They shared a vision that would bring rodeo into small towns and large cities where crowds would be drawn to see top quality stock and the best cowboy and cowgirl competitors. Tim headed out to sell their idea and Leo prepared the stock to travel, which became even more difficult in 1937 by adding Brahma bulls and Mexican bulldogging steers. (It was an $1,145 investment at the time, Moomaw’s son Wade recalls.) The company was among the first to bring Brahmas to Northwest rodeos. It wasn’t long until the Moomaw-Bernard reputation grew and rodeos across the region, including Canada sought their services. By 1940 they were into Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas as well as Calgary’s Stampede and Cheyenne’s ‘Grandaddy of them All’ Frontier Days. Their partnership also was a key to the start of the Omak Stampede. In 1933 with two other men, they staged the rodeo with portable fences at the Omak athletic field. It was not a financial success and Moomaw-Bernard had to dig into their pockets to bail out that first event which now is known world-wide. Moomaw-Bernard Contracting Co. (MBC) became known for its rodeo efficiency even before bucking chutes were used. They caught and tied the stock in the order they would be used, facilitating saddling which sped up the shows. And competitors knew the prize money would be paid fairly and that MBC stock would give them a good opportunity to be at the pay window. The partnership had many great bucking horses and bulls, but its most famous was Badger Mountain.

Leo’s talent for recognizing bucking stock paid off in 1932. He had heard about a 6-year-old bald faced bay at the Williams Brothers ranch in Douglas County. Neither of the brothers could ride the horse nor break him to plow. Leo took him to the Waterville rodeo grounds for a trial. He got a young cowboy, Henry Michel, to get on the big horse. Michel had just won the Pendleton Roundup bronc riding and with it the Northwest championship. After just four jumps out of the chute, Michel was thrown and carried back to the chutes to recover. Satisfied with what he saw, Leo traded one of his broncs for the horse that would be known for the next 25 years as Badger Mountain. In his first three years in the arena, the big bay bucked off every rider who tried him. Over the years, the horse perfected peculiarities in bucking style that “laid low the aristocracy of rodeo cowboydom,” Moomaw-Nelson writes in her book. Badger Mountain was selected National Bronc of the Year three times and was rated with Midnight and Five Minutes to Midnight as the three greatest broncs of the decade prior to WWII. His rearing, slashing, shaking style had cowboys and fans talking and publications including Time magazine writing about his prowess. As for his Ellensburg Rodeo visits, Badger Mountain threw many a rider but gave championship rides in both the ’39 and’40 rodeos. He was retired in 1950 to Bernard’s ranch and in 1954 was buried on a high knoll near Tonasket. The partnership sold their bucking stock to Ring Brothers of Wilbur, WA in 1946. But in 1953 Leo returned to rodeo to partner with Joe Kelsey and they provided stock to Ellensburg (1953-58) and many other rodeos in the greater Pacific Northwest until he retired in 1960.

The late Cliff Kaynor, who was an Ellensburg Rodeo director and past president, often said Leo Moomaw and Tim Bernard were men of their word and helped Ellensburg Rodeo through some difficult times. The Colville reservation stockman ranched until his death in 1969. Bernard continued ranching and later moved to Moses Lake where he had a livestock auction business. He died in 1979. Both men have been inducted into the Omak Stampede Hall of Fame.Many rodeo men acknowledge the Moomaw-Bernard stock contracting partnership had a significant influence on the sport of rodeo, especially in the Pacific Northwest and for generations of cowboys past, present and future.

Jake Barnes & Clay O’Brien Cooper

Although each of them has been separately inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, Jake Barnes and Clay O’Brien Cooper were a formidable duo for decades. Together they have won seven World Team Roping championships, which until recently was a record. In 1994, they established another record: the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) team-roping aggregate time for ten steers: 59.1 seconds. That sounds like the unimaginable accomplishment of Byron Nelson’s 11 straight Professional Golf Association titles in 1945. Ten consecutive runs in the NFR venue averaging 5.9 seconds is hard to imagine when you consider all that can happen: barrier breaks (plus 10 seconds), catching one back leg (plus 5 seconds), the unpredictable movements and speeds of the steers, and the odds of complete misses.

But Kendra Santos in Team Roping Journal interviewed Barnes and Cooper about their record, and Cooper said, “That record’s stood for a long time, but it’s really an easy record.  It could be broken by 10 seconds.  Average 5.9 on 10 runs is nothing. . . I don’t think you can be 3 every time. But you can be 4 every time.” The record has stood for 24 years and counting, but Cooper’s confidence and awareness of what others on the circuit are capable of show just how deeply competitive they are.

Barnes was born April 4, 1959, in Huntsville, Texas. After joining the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) in 1980, he qualified for the NFR his rookie season, heading for Allen Bach. He then partnered with Leo Camarillo, before joining forces with Clay Cooper. Barnes was a Dodge National Circuit Finals champion in 1987, 1989 and 1995. He was also the Turquoise Circuit team roping champion in 1985, 1989, 1992, 1994 and 1995.At the Ellensburg Rodeo, Barnes has won the championship buckle three times: in 1982 with Allen Bach, in 1985 with Cooper, and in 2005 with Kory Koontz.  Barnes said, “It has been my dream since I was a little kid to be a world champion. All I ever wanted was to be a champion and wear a world buckle.” At this point, he has enough buckles to outfit every pair of pants in his closet.

A tally of their victories, though, only tells half the rodeo story. Roping is a fundamentally dangerous sport.  At the Wrangler National Rodeo in 2005, Barnes had the end of his right thumb torn off, from the knuckle forward.  In November of 2015, his horse fell and then stepped on his head.  He broke his ankle and suffered a traumatic head injury. He was hospitalized and had to withdraw from the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo that year.  In an interview he said, “Cutting my thumb off at the National Finals last December gave me a whole new perspective on roping and life. There’s no telling how many people lose thumbs and fingers in this sport every year. . . I felt bad for those people. But now I have so much sympathy for every single person, because I know all about the pain and suffering they’ve gone through. And the physical part is just the start. You go through a lot of head games when this happens to you. . . . The more people come forward with their stories, the more I realize that I don’t have it half as bad as some of these people I’m meeting.”

After his thumb healed, he said, “I can’t feel my rope as much now because so much of my thumb is numb. . .I can’t really feel it when I’m feeding my rope. My rope hasn’t gotten away from me, and everything’s probably pretty much the same. . . my thumb. . .feels kind of like your face feels on Novocain after you’ve been to the dentist. You know it’s there, but you can’t really feel it or control it as well.”

Clay O’Brien Cooper, though, has been blessed.  He’s been injury-free throughout a long and illustrious career. Hewas the Turquoise Circuit All-Around champion in 1985-87, 1991 and 1993 and the circuit’s team roping champion in 1983-84. He was the Dodge National Circuit Finals Rodeo team roping winner in 1987, 1989 and 1995. He was inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1997.  He has won at Ellensburg three times, with Barnes in 1985, with Chad Masters in 2012, and was the All-Around Champion in 1992. He has been a champion at over 42 rodeos and has earned nearly 4 million dollars.

He said, “Since I was a kid, I always wanted to rope for a living. The best thing is being able to make a living for me and my family doing what I always wanted.” Clay O’Brien Cooper was born in Ray, Arizona in 1961, but grew up in California on a ranch in the San Fernando Valley.  His stepfather, Gene O’Brien, worked as a wrangler on western movies and television shows like Gunsmokeand Bonanza.  Clay started roping when he was five years old and joined a junior roping team. When he was eleven, he had a role playing Hardy Fimps in a John Wayne movie, fittingly called The Cowboys(1972); he had roles in Gunsmoke,Little House on the Prairie,The Apple Dumpling Gang, Marcus Welby, M.D, Cahill U.S. Marshal,and One Little Indian.  But it was to horses, roping steers, the arena, and competing with fellow cowboys that he was most drawn to.

Santos wrote that “Jake Barnes and Clay O’Brien Cooper teamed up for a pretty grand total of 14 gold buckles, each winning seven world team roping titles during their reign as one of rodeo’s all-time great Dream Teams. Jake and Clay have 56 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo appearances between them at 27 and 29, respectively, along with a long laundry list of records.”  Although no longer a team, they are still out there winning rodeos with other partners, making the laundry list longer.

Maude Barnett

Kittitas Valley rodeo star Maude Barnett ranks alongside the cowgirl greats of the pre-WWII golden age of North American women’s rodeo. Maude Barnett was born September 2, 1900 in Omak, WA, where her father, George Smith, was a pioneer homesteader. It was there that she learned the riding skills that would make her a famed Northwest cowgirl competitor. After marrying, she moved to the Kittitas Valley where she and her husband Arville raised two boys and ranched in the Fairview area from 1926 to 1936. All four of the Barnetts were excellent horsemen (one son rode broncs and, later, raced thoroughbreds at Longacres). During this time Maude built a reputation as a top hand and horse racer.

Maude Barnett was a skilled and savvy relay racer who, astride local horses, won many 1920s and 1930s titles in Ellensburg and beyond. She rode to first-place finishes in Calgary, Pendleton, Cheyenne, Omak, and on the Canadian rodeo circuit. Some of her most famous Ellensburg finishes came close behind legendary cowgirls Tad Lucas, Mabel Strickland, Ollie Osborn, and Vera McGinnis (while Maude always rode her own local mounts, these cowgirls rode their sponsors’ expensive pedigreed race horses). In the early days of the Ellensburg Rodeo, Barnett was also a featured trick rider, mounting a blindfolded bronc and galloping past the south grandstand to huge crowd ovations.

Barnett was a saddle bronc rider during the pre-WWII years when women still rode broncs and bulls in Turtle- and RCA-sanctioned competition and exhibition events. Maude rode buckaroo-style, with one arm in the air and her stirrups un-hobbled. She won the cowgirls’ saddle bronc event in Ellensburg in 1925. Her neighbor Henry Schnebly recalls that, in over a dozen rodeos, he never once saw her thrown. She rode broncs professionally for fifteen years, quitting only as she approached forty years of age.

Neighbors and friends such as Schnebly also remember Barnett as a spirited woman who ran her motor cars as hard as her horses–Maude drove a Stutz Bearcat and Pierce Arrow down country roads at extremely high rates of speed. And Maude Barnett was a stickler for fair play. Once, during an Ellensburg Rodeo relay race, an unsportsmanlike opponent hit her horse in the mouth with his whip, and Maude reportedly retaliated by whipping him soundly with her riding crop all the way to the finish line!

After retiring from rodeo, Maude Barnett made her living in the restaurant business; she was owner and manager of Ellensburg’s popular “Mabel’s Cafe.” She died in Omak, WA, on August 11, 1969.

Schaller Bennett, Frank Bryant, Lou Richards and Lee Scott

When asked why he became involved in so many Ellensburg Rodeo volunteer activities, Ellensburg businessman Lee Scott used to say, “Well, someone has to chop the wood.” Schaller Bennett, Frank Bryant, Lou Richards, and Lee Scott were all “wood choppers” and they have earned recognition as ERHOF “Honorees.”

Schaller Bennett was a respected Kittitas Valley “oldtime cowboy,” rodeo competitor, and rodeo volunteer. Born into a Issaquah logging family, Bennett came to love horses while driving logging teams above Lake Sammamish. Schaller craved the “cowboy life,” and in 1925 he and wife Lula moved to the Kittitas Valley to live out that dream. They ranched on the Umptanum and Parke Creeks, building a small herd of their own. Every summer Schaller ran his cattle alongside other herds on federal land near Lion’s Rock, and the Bennetts made a tradition of summering at their Lion’s Rock cow camp.

Schaller Bennett’s rodeo career began in Issaquah bronc riding competitions. He captured the Kittitas County Bronc Riding Championship an unmatched two times, in 1927 and 1931. Schaller rodeoed throughout the Northwest in the 1920s and 1930s but was seriously injured while bulldogging in the 1938 Ellensburg Rodeo. Although retired from rodeo, Schaller kept ranching through the death of Lula in 1948 and his second wife Mary in 1974. By the time of his death in 1983, Schaller Bennett had befriended and tutored scores of young Kittitas Valley cowboys who looked to him as a role model. Schaller Bennett was one of “last of the old-time cowboys.”

Frank Bryant pioneered the crucial alliance between the Yakima Indians and the Ellensburg Rodeo from 1923 through 1940s. Bryant was a local game warden, credited with introducing Chinese “ringneck” pheasant and Yellowstone elk to the valley. Bryant lived near Liberty and spoke “Chinook Jargon” a language invented by 19^th century white and Indian Northwesterners to facilitate communication. In 1923, the founding rodeo board asked Bryant to coordinate Yakima Indian participation in the first Ellensburg Rodeo. 150 Indians attended, and by 1937 Frank Bryant could report over 100 teepees in the encampment and Indians representing over 20 tribes. “It is by far the largest gathering since the rodeo’s start,” he noted. Bryant was still on board when the rodeo resumed after a two-year World War II hiatus in 1945. He met with Yakima leaders in White Swan, securing promises of 100 mounted Indian participants in full regalia for the ’45 rodeo.

Today, the Ellensburg Rodeo is well known in part for its Indian participants. The Indians’ encampment, open to visitors, and their participation in the opening ceremony, traditional dancing, parade, and rodeo flat races and other competitive events, are essential to the Ellensburg Rodeo tradition. Frank Bryant, working in conjunction with the Yakima Indian people, shares much of the credit for the establishment and nurturing of those traditions.

Lou Richards was one of the “founding fathers” of the 1923 Ellensburg Rodeo. He worked as a Rodeo Board Director and Arena Director for over two decades during the rodeo’s formative years. Richards, a local cattleman, was there in the beginning when community members began to plan the first Ellensburg Rodeo. Under County Extension Agent Leonard Davis, Richards served as “straw boss” of hundreds of volunteers who formed the work crews that built the Kittitas County Fair and Rodeo grounds in the summer of 1923. Richards and his men built an exhibit hall and a grandstand with seating for 5000, plus fences, corrals, and a race track.

Elected to the first 1923 Ellensburg Rodeo Board, Richards in 1930 took the all-important post of Arena Director coordinating the arena action and keeping the show moving. He served until 1946. It was Richards who helped to plan and coordinate the array of fast-moving and entertaining rodeo events, races, and contract acts that characterize the Ellensburg Rodeo to this day. In 1937, Richards led the Ellensburg Rodeo across the “picket line” of the Cowboy Turtles’ (precursor to today’s Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association), when the professional cowboys went out on strike. In ’38, he agreed to some of the Turtles’ demands and welcomed them, noting “It’s like a homecoming to see all the boys back.” Lou Richards served as Arena Director until 1946, leaving one of the longest and most distinguished service records in the history of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

Lee Scott (1891-1983) was an energetic and respected local businessman who became a tireless worker for the Ellensburg Rodeo. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1891, Lee and wife Anne moved to Ellensburg in 1912 to buy and operate what would become Model Laundry and Cleaners. A tireless promoter and booster, Lee Scott joined the Ellensburg Rodeo Board in 1927 and served through 1935; he remained active in the rodeo the rest of his life.

Among Lee Scott’s many rodeo chores was the coordination of downtown businessmen and service organizations in support and marketing of the rodeo. For example, Scott helped begin the practice of businessmen dressing in western clothes and selling and wearing “rodeo pins” each rodeo season; to “enforce” this practice, Lee formed a “Sheriff’s Posse” akin to the “Kangaroo Court” and “Chamber Cowboys” of the modern era. Lee Scott also organized the annual rodeo dance. Lee Scott’s son Chuck served on the Rodeo Board from 1968-1982 (President ’72-’73) and granddaughter Kelly Scott Mills was 1969 Ellensburg Rodeo Queen.

Lee Scott “chopped a lot of wood” in support of the Ellensburg Rodeo. Indeed, Scott and his contemporaries Schaller Bennett, Frank Bryant, and Lou Richards helped build the volunteer tradition upon which the rodeo was, and still is, solidly based.

Beard Rodeo Company, Homegrown

“The Ellensburg Rodeo could not have sustained its success without Frank Beard Rodeo Company stock,” states Ellensburg Rodeo Board member and past-President Steve Alder. “The Beards and the Ellensburg Rodeo have a personal connection: They are great, down-to-earth people.”

The Beard Rodeo Company, headquartered at Frank and Charlot Beard’s Naneum Road Ranch, carries on a proud tradition of premier rodeo stock contracting companies affiliated with the Ellensburg Rodeo. The Beard Rodeo Company ranks alongside legendary contractors Red and Rose Wall, Bernard-Moomaw, Christensen Brothers, and Harry Vold.

Frank Beard was born in a tent in an olive grove in Oroville, California in 1928. He grew up in his parents’ (Bill and Ruby) ranching and horse-trading family on the Yakama Indian Reservation, near Toppenish. Frank broke and trained horses from boyhood, and at age 16 began a rodeo career as a roughstock (bareback bronc and bull) rider.

Beard began to ride their “try-out” bucking horses and worked for the VanBelles as a pickup man. Frank married their daughter Charlot on September 3, 1947. Thus the two will celebrate their 59^th wedding anniversary this Ellensburg Rodeo Labor Day weekend. The Beards have five children—Casey, Tim, Kelly, Pat, and Shannon.

Joe Beaver

“I never gave up or quit,” says World Champion roper Joe Beaver recalling of one of his record-breaking rodeo seasons. “That’s what rodeo and life have in common: It ain’t over ‘til you say so.” Joe Beaver is one of the greatest ropers in the history of professional rodeo and the Ellensburg Rodeo, where he won five gold buckles, has served as a prime venue for his talents. His induction into the Ellensburg Hall of Fame will cement that distinction for posterity.

Joe Beaver was born to Walter and Bonnie Beaver of Victoria, Texas, on October 13, 1965. Standing six-foot three inches tall and 230 pounds, he entered his first PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association) rodeo at age twenty and never looked back. He Named Pro Rodeo’s 1985’s “Rookie of the Year” Beaver has consistently finished among the money leaders for nearly two decades. Much of his fame has come from calf roping competitions, but the burly Texan also earned bushels of prize money in the team roping and steer roping events.

Beaver had to overcome adversity throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s as his career paralleled that of seven-time World All-Around Champion roughstock rider Ty Murray, then the winningest rodeo cowboy of all time.

Berenice Blair Dossey Bolen

Berenice Blair Dossey Bolen is a 1999 Inductee to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame in the Participant Category. Born and raised in Ellensburg, she became a professional trick rider in 1935, achieving great acclaim during a twenty-year rodeo career. Berenice always loved performing in the Ellensburg Rodeo arena, which featured her daring feats for ten years from 1935 to 1945.

Berenice Evelyn Blair was born April 26, 1913 to Louis and Winifred “Freda” (Smith) Blair in Ellensburg. Louis (Louie) Blair had migrated to the Kittitas Valley in 1900 from Quebec, Canada. He was the only son of Louis and Sophia Blair, and had five sisters. He settled on a farm east of Ellensburg which had been homesteaded by his Uncle.

Freda’s brother Earl Smith had horses and as a little girl, Berenice loved to ride with him on her special horse, Prince. At age 16 Berenice married Jim Hailey. They had a son, Jim, Jr., who became a bulldogger and bareback rider who contested in Ellensburg.

Big Bend/Flying 5 Rodeo Company

The Big Bend/Flying 5 Rodeo Company has roots that go deep in the history of Pacific Northwest rodeo. And throughout its colorful 70-year past, Big Bend broncs and bulls have bucked in the Ellensburg Rodeo Arena.

Bill Hutsell officially founded “Big Bend Rodeo Company” (named after Washington State’s Columbia Plateau region) in 1961, but the company descended from his father Lew Hutsell’s late 1920s eastern Washington stock contracting outfit. “Over the years,” writes one rodeo historian, “this company, and its tradition of outstanding bucking stock, became interconnected with a number of prominent rodeo contractors—each of whom owned his own company, either before or after the association with what later became Big Bend Rodeo Company.”

Bosque Boy

When the subject of great rodeo animals comes up, non-cowboys often think only of the broncs and bulls of roughstock events. But in Ellensburg, a town steeped in the ways of cattle country, there is profound respect for the rodeo horses who do actual ranch work–the roping, bulldogging, and cow cutting horses that work in every rodeo performance. The Ellensburg Rodeo, unlike some rodeos, spotlights its cow cutting horses, staging an actual cow cutting demonstration in front of the main grandstand during the regular rodeo performance. Over the past 75 years, great cow cutting horses such as Lo Driver’s Yankee have shown appreciative rodeo crowds the skill with which range horses go about their daily work in working and rounding up cattle, and cutting them from the herd.

Everett Bowman

Born in Hope, New Mexico, July 12, 1899, Everett Bowman was eulogized by the Phoenix Gazette in 1971 as “both the Babe Ruth and George Washington of professional rodeo.” Raised in Texas and Arizona, Everett Bowman hit the “rodeo road” in 1924 and never stopped cowboying. Standing six feet, two inches tall and weighing in at 200 pounds, he became a dominant contender in timed events; he also founded the Cowboy Turtles Association (CTA), the first professional rodeo cowboys’ group to organize and demand better payout and judging in the sport.

Everett Bowman’s (1899-1971) role in Ellensburg dates back to the rodeo’s inception in the mid-1920s. Bowman won the Ellensburg Calf Roping buckle in ’26, the Bulldogging Championship in ’26, ’27, and ’32, and he won the Ellensburg All-Around title in both ‘26 and ’27. This is a record that places him alongside Bill McMacken and Tom Ferguson (both inducted into ERHOF in 1997) as one of the winningest cowboys in the Ellensburg Rodeo’s history.

Buff Brady, Jr.

Buff Brady was born in Butte, Montana, in 1916. His father, Buff “Big Buffalo” Brady, Sr., worked as a trick rider and roper and bulldogging and bronc riding contestant, pioneering the growth of early North American rodeos and Wild West shows. In the early 1930s, Buff Sr. married Rose Walls, the respected rodeo stock contractor, and the Brady’s moved to the east end of Kittitas County. There, Buff Sr. and Rose furnished bucking stock for the Ellensburg Rodeo from 1931-38. They also owned Brahma bulls and helped begin the exhibition and riding of Brahmas in the rodeo arena. Buff Brady, Jr., attended Ellensburg High School, graduating in 1934. Following in his father’s footsteps, he hit the rodeo road as a contract performer in 1934 (he had begun performing in 1929). Buff became a standout trick roper, described by rodeo historian Cliff Westermeier as one of an elite group of cowboys who made roping “a form of art.” Buff’s forte was his combination of gymnastics with roping.

His tricks included his wife Ruby, his step-mother Rose Walls, and his talented trick riding horses. Spinning a wide loop, Buff could somersault backwards, landing on his feet!

Trevor Brazile

Trevor Brazile’s career list of wins is full of gold: he’s the only cowboy in history to win nine all-around World Titles; he also has seven individual ones, which ties Jim Shoulders’ record of sixteen. Brazile’s nine All-Around buckles outshine the All-Around records of Tom Ferguson (five), Larry Mahan (six), and Ty Murray (seven). Brazile may just be the Michael Phelps of Rodeo. He typically competes in three rodeo events: Tie-Down (Calf) Roping, Team-Roping, and Steer Roping. He is the third cowboy in history to have multiple Triple Crown seasons (where he wins the all-around, as well as two of his three events).

In 2010, Brazile was the first contestant in ProRodeo history to earn $500,000 in one year (he earned $507,921), and has earned over $4,275,000 in his rodeo career. And at thirty-six years old, he shows no signs of slowing down. So far this year at rodeos from Colorado to Texas, he has earned three team roping titles, three tie-down roping titles, four steer roping titles, and seventeen all-round titles.

Brazile is from Texas, born in Amarillo, now living in Decatur. He joined the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) in 1996 and has been breaking records ever since. The Ellensburg Rodeo has been part of Brazile’s regular itinerary: he has won two championships in Tie-Down (’03, ‘06), one in Steer Roping (’01), and earned the All-Around Championship four times (’03, ’06, ’07, ’09). 

Schaller Bennett, Frank Bryant, Lou Richards & Lee Scott

When asked why he became involved in so many Ellensburg Rodeo volunteer activities, Ellensburg businessman Lee Scott used to say, “Well, someone has to chop the wood.” Schaller Bennett, Frank Bryant, Lou Richards, and Lee Scott were all “wood choppers” and they have earned recognition as ERHOF “Honorees.”

Schaller Bennett was a respected Kittitas Valley “oldtime cowboy,” rodeo competitor, and rodeo volunteer. Born into a Issaquah logging family, Bennett came to love horses while driving logging teams above Lake Sammamish. Schaller craved the “cowboy life,” and in 1925 he and wife Lula moved to the Kittitas Valley to live out that dream. They ranched on the Umptanum and Parke Creeks, building a small herd of their own. Every summer Schaller ran his cattle alongside other herds on federal land near Lion’s Rock, and the Bennetts made a tradition of summering at their Lion’s Rock cow camp. 

Burkheimer Family

John and Frances Burkheimer moved to Ellensburg in 1950. They quickly became involved in the local community and formed many long-standing friendships over their twenty-eight years of ranching.

John was a cattleman and investor who served on the Rodeo Board for nearly a decade. His vision for the Ellensburg Rodeo’s future helped move it into the national spotlight by developing new sponsors, increasing the prize money, and professionalizing the entertainment. He helped bring in national acts like Gene Autry and Slim Pickens, and as parade director moved it from all-horse to floats and motorized vehicles. Without using a bridle on his horse Bimbo, he also performed cow-cutting exhibitions on the rodeo’s old track.

His community involvement did not stop at the rodeo. He helped form the Kittitas County Public Hospital District and chaired its Board of Commissioners for twelve years; he also served on the Thorp School Board, was a member of the Ellensburg Elks Golf and Country Club, and the Yakima Golf and Country Club. Together, John and Frances enjoyed many worldwide adventures, most notably safaris in Africa, India, and Asia. Frances chronicled her travels extensively, conveying her interest in the people and customs of those countries, making many long-lasting friendships along the way.

Calgary Stampede Ranch

The Calgary Stampede Ranch has been providing stock for the biggest rodeos in the country, as well as college rodeos and rodeo schools since 1961. Their aim then was to provide quality stock for the Calgary Stampede, but they soon helped revolutionize bucking stock business. Instead of using rough stock off ranches in the rodeos, they created a program called “Born to Buck” with the intent of breeding high octane animal athletes whose job it was to compete with high octane human athletes. They are bred to buck harder and higher, which means high scores if the stock gets ridden and good entertainment value for the fans.

Vern Castro

Californian Vern F. Castro (1922-70) competed and won calf roping, team roping, steer roping, wild cow milking, and bulldogging championships across the West throughout the 1940s-50s “Golden Age” of American professional rodeo. A ranch-raised cowboy from San Pablo, California, Castro learned how to rope and wrestle steers as a youngster on his family’s ranch. Standing 5’ 9’ and weighing 195 lbs., he held RCA (Rodeo Cowboys Association, now PRCA) Card #358. Castro’s career, which included two world team roping titles, lasted from the late 1930s until he retired from competitive rodeo in 1957. He died unexpectedly in 1970, at 48-years of age.

Harry Charters

Harry Charters, of Melba, Idaho, was a 250 lb. mountain of a man who gained regional and national fame as a bulldogger, calf and steer roper, and wild cow milking “mugger” from 1958-1968. Charters is one of the most accomplished and respected timed-event competitors in the long history of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

Born to central Idaho potato farmers in 1925, Harry Charters did not become a professional rodeo cowboy until 1958, at the (relatively) old age of thirty-three. “If he would have started back as a young as a young guy, he probably would have won more than anyone else in (the history of) bulldogging,” Idaho friend and fellow World Champion Dean Oliver noted. Charters grew up on a small farm surrounded by horses and livestock. He always had a horse and rode bareback to school; on the farm he “rode ditch” (irrigating), developing the unusual habit of dismounting his horse on the right hand side. In high school, Harry lettered in three sports and turned down college athletic scholarships. In the 1940s and 50s, Harry Charters married, farmed, raised six children, and competed only in amateur and local rodeos.

Christensen Brothers Rodeo Company

“The Christensens, as a family, gave everything they had to the rodeo business. I don’t think you can ask more than that.”
-Bob Thain, quoted in 100 Years of Rodeo Stock Contracting

For nearly forty years, from 1950 to 1986, the Christensen Brothers Rodeo Company served the Ellensburg Rodeo as its primary stock contractors. Their exemplary service, wrangling and pickup skills, and the renowned quality of their bucking and rodeo stock, has earned them the honor of being 1999 Inductees to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame.

Clay O’Brien Cooper

Although each of them has been separately inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, Jake Barnes and Clay O’Brien Cooper were a formidable duo for decades. Together they have won seven World Team Roping championships, which until recently was a record. In 1994, they established another record: the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) team-roping aggregate time for ten steers: 59.1 seconds. That sounds like the unimaginable accomplishment of Byron Nelson’s 11 straight Professional Golf Association titles in 1945. Ten consecutive runs in the NFR venue averaging 5.9 seconds is hard to imagine when you consider all that can happen: barrier breaks (plus 10 seconds), catching one back leg (plus 5 seconds), the unpredictable movements and speeds of the steers, and the odds of complete misses.

Cooke Family

The immediate family members and descendants of George B. and Emma (Rader) Cooke figure prominently in every aspect of the origins, birth, and early development of the Ellensburg Rodeo. Whether in positions of high-level administrative and financial leadership, or positioned aboard the backs of bucking broncs, the Cookes are part of the Ellensburg Rodeo tradition. And the beginnings of the Cookes’ important family story lie in pre-Civil War America.

Family historian Marion Cooke Hayes writes that her great-grandfather Charles P. Cooke was born in Ohio in 1827 and served in the Mexican-American War. He crossed the Great Plains via wagon train bound for California in 1849 and, in 1851, married Susan Brewster in Salem, Oregon.

Jimmie Cooper

“Winning is what rodeo’s all about,” World Champion roper and bulldogger Jimmie Cooper told ProRodeo Sports News in the early 1980s, at the height of his career. Cooper’s father “Jimmie T.,” a 1950s rodeo roper standout, noted Jimmie was “probably better prepared than lots of others. He goes harder, makes more rodeos, and is very serious about his arena work.” This focus and dedication earned Cooper induction into both the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and ProRodeo Hall of Fame.

Jimmie Cooper was born in the far southeast corner of New Mexico in 1956 to a family of world-class timed event (roping and steer wrestling) cowboys. Raised on his parents’ cattle ranch, he graduated from New Mexico State University with a B.S. in Agricultural Economics. Although Jimmie joined the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) in 1977, he did not compete full-time until 1980, when he was chosen as the PRCA’s Rookie of the Year. Cooper’s events were calf roping, team roping, and bulldogging (steer wrestling).

Deb Copenhaver

Deb Copenhaver is a 1999 Inductee to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame in the National Competitor Category. A native Washingtonian, Deb twice earned the coveted World Championship in Saddle Broncs–in 1955 and 1956–and placed second in ’51, ’53, and ’54, third in ’52, and fourth in ’58. Copenhaver was a crowd favorite in Ellensburg, where he is remembered for his spectacular bronc rides on Snake, War Paint, and Miss Klammath.

Deb Copenhaver was born on January 21, 1925 in Wilbur, Washington. “I worked ranches all around here, got that background, and made it through the Depression,” he recounted in a recent Ketch Pen (National Cowboy Hall of Fame) interview with Doris Rogers. Inspired by his bronc rider cousin Tommy Kunz, Deb caught and rode wild horses near the Colville Indian Reservation and soon hit the rodeo road.

Clint Corey

“I’ve always been able to ride pretty much any kind of horse the same,” observed World Bareback Champion Clint Corey in a 2002 interview. “As long as you can do that, it’s going to be like any sport; if you can be consistent at it, you’re going to be at the top, no matter what.”

It is that very “consistency” that catapulted Corey to the top of his profession and induction into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame. Most local rodeo experts agree Corey is the greatest bareback bronc rider to have ever competed in the Ellensburg Rodeo.

Clint Corey was born November 29, 1961, to Nick and Coleta Corey, in Bremerton, Washington. By age 6, Clint was riding calves and steers; by age 11 he was aboard bareback broncs. He soon won his first junior rodeo: “I kinda liked it right then,” he remembers. “Bareback seemed to come more naturally than any of the other events.” World Champion Joe Alexander was young Clint Corey’s hero, and he patterned his career and style after that rodeo great.

Leonard Davis

Leonard Davis was instrumental in the creation of the Ellensburg Rodeo and Kittitas County Fair grounds and the orchestration of the first Ellensburg Rodeo in 1923.

William Leonard Davis was born October 20, 1884 in Placer County, California. In 1889 the Davis family immigrated via covered wagon to Okanogan County, homesteading south of Mallot. Because the public schools there did not teach past Grade 8, Leonard and his siblings attended Grades 9-12 in Pullman, at a secondary school attached to the Washington State College (then WSC, now WSU). Leonard stayed on and graduated from WSC in 1914, earning a degree in agriculture. After a brief stint teaching school in Oroville, he and his wife Mary moved to Ellensburg where he was appointed Kittitas County Extension Agent, a post he held until his death in 1928.

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Driver Family

“The Driver family has donated many hours of service to the Ellensburg Rodeo, not as a chore, but with pleasure. The rodeo has always been an important part of our family life.” Driver Family History

The Driver Family members are 1999 Inductees to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame in the Pioneer Rodeo Family Category. The Drivers’ roots in Kittitas Valley rodeo history run deep, and they come with a Texas accent. Ray (1900-1978) and Scott Driver were sons of James Harvey and Adora Gray Driver, who farmed and ranched in Dickens County, Texas. In 1917, however, the Driver brothers grew restless with life in Texas, and they began to work their way to the Northwest. Scott spent a stint in Jerome Idaho.

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Dynamite

There is an iconic photo of the wonderfully well-named saddle bronc rider, Buck Hand, at the Pendleton Roundup in 1936. Buck is one shutter frame away from being bucked off a well-formed black gelding named Dynamite. Just beyond Dynamite’s left shoulder is the “snub” horse and rider. In the days before bucking chutes, the bucking horse was led into the arena by another rider and the cowboy mounted the bucking horse from the back of the saddle horse. The photo captures the moment of release. The snub rope is still dangling in mid-air, and Dynamite is shown exploding into his bucking action. The arena director is cautiously peering under the neck of the snub horse. The day sheet is tied to his leg and his performance production card is in his back pocket where he shoved the paper in order to free his hands to help Buck Hand get on the back of the amazing bucking horse “Dynamite.”

There are a number of wonderful details to notice about the photo, but the bucking horse, Dynamite, dominates the frame. This is appropriate because, in 1936, Dynamite was the focus of everyone’s attention. Cowboys could measure their careers based on a successful ride on Dynamite, and spectators were buying tickets to see the result of the contest. At the time of the photo, Dynamite’s bucking prowess had been a featured attraction at rodeos across the Northwest for seventeen years.

Dynamite was a top bucking horse from 1919 to 1937. Over Dynamite’s lengthy career, he performed at almost every regional rodeo large and small, including the prestigious rodeos of the time: Ellensburg, Lewiston, and Pendleton. He bucked off many of the top bronc riders: such as World Champion Howard Tegland at the Ellensburg Rodeo and World Champion Frank Woods, who was flown in during the barnstorming period of aviation for a match ride at the rodeo in Okanogan, Washington. Leo Moomaw, legendary Northwest stock contractor from 1915-1960 and Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame Inductee (2002), said about Dynamite, “I always consider Dynamite the best bucking horse I ever owned.”

In 1919, Leo Moomaw traded a team of work horses to Joe Hudspeth in order to obtain Dynamite. “Joe owned him first but found out he could not ride him and no one else could either.” The black gelding would not be a saddle horse, and Leo Moomaw had found his superstar bucking horse. Leo’s connection to Dynamite would grow along with his pioneering rodeo company and establishment of rodeo itself as an event and an industry.

There are two types of photos of Dynamite. Many photos from the time show Leo proudly holding the halter and lead rope with a completely relaxed Dynamite calmly looking into the camera. The second type of photos show Dynamite in action in the rodeo arena- jumping in the air and kicking, and most likely tossing the cowboys who tried to ride him. Dynamite was Moomaw’s first animal star and remained the star for a long, distinguished career. For eighteen years, Dynamite travelled the Northwest by truck, rail car, and by trail from rodeo to rodeo. Dynamite was always a feature bucking horse and the highlight of the rodeo performance. Because of his high level of performance and the length of his career, Dynamite is recognized as one of the extraordinary animal athletes worthy of the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame.

Leo Moomaw relates the story of Dynamite’s passing. “In July 1937, I took him to a rodeo at Nespelem, Wasington, but he didn’t act right, so I did not buck him there. On the way home, about 5 miles from the pasture, he dropped out of the horse herd, so I left him and left the gates open after we got home. Next morning, he was with the saddle horses and seemed to be alright, so I put him with the rest of the horses. He went about 2 miles and died, and my men and I buried him where we found him and put up a marker. This was on July 7, 1937, about 10 miles NW of the ‘Wild Goose Bill’ Ferry.”

Dynamite received the respect of a rodeo superstar until the end. The Moomaw family was among the first rodeo “stock contractors.” Their business innovation was to make the animal athletes the stars of the performance. Leo Moomaw traded for Dynamite when he was first beginning his rodeo company, and Dynamite was the headliner of Moomaw’s rodeo herd for almost two decades. Dynamite’s success was essential to the success of the Bernard-Moomaw Rodeo Company and also essential to the success of rodeo events in Ellensburg, Lewiston, Pendleton, Omak, and many others in the Northwest.

Rodeo is a partnership of men and animals to accomplish something great, and Dynamite is an example of that partnership both in the arena and beyond the rodeo performance.

Ellensburg Rodeo Posse

Dr. J. P. Richardson founded the Ellensburg Rodeo Posse with five other prominent members in 1939. Richardson (father of Rodeo Princess Dorothy Vaughan and grandfather of Queen Heidi Vaughan) had admired San Francisco’s mounted Posse at the Cow Palace Rodeo and wanted to organize a similar group. The Ellensburg Rodeo Posse thus became the first mounted drill team in Washington State (Oregon boasted the Governor’s Mounted Guard). Original members included Robert McConnell, the President of Central Washington College of Education and other community professionals, businessmen, and stockmen. In 1940 they began riding in the rodeo and parade and by 1941 had become an integral part of the community team, which organized, promoted, and executed the Ellensburg Rodeo.

World War II pushed the Ellensburg Rodeo Posse into prominence. Posse men began service as a mounted search and rescue unit during the war. More importantly, as John Ludtka writes in his book The Tradition Lives On, it was the Posse that kept the rodeo tradition alive when governmental fuel rationing edicts forbade rodeo performances during the years 1942, ’43, and ’44.

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Ellensburg Rodeo Royalty

From its 1923 birth onward, the Ellensburg Rodeo has featured a royal court consisting of an Ellensburg rodeo queen and princesses. This is a tradition handed down from the earliest (late nineteenth century) North American rodeos, where cowgirl competitors were honored with the titles of rodeo queen and princess. Over the 89 years of Ellensburg Rodeo history, the Rodeo Board and a select committee annually have chosen a royal court. The queen of the Ellensburg Rodeo is a local cowgirl, as is the princess. Until recently, there was a King County princess; throughout the years princesses represented various northwest communities, from Spokane to Wenatchee to Tacoma. The queen and princess are chosen on the basis of horseback riding skills, oratory, appearance and fashion sense, and poise.

The Ellensburg Rodeo queen and her princess serve as ambassadors and representatives of the rodeo. Throughout the year, they travel around the Pacific Northwest, riding their horses in neighboring rodeo parades and appearing at a variety of events. During August and September, they are booked daily at myriad venues—charity events, social gatherings, newspaper, radio, and television interviews—preceding and during the Ellensburg Rodeo. At each Ellensburg Rodeo performance the rodeo royalty demonstrate their horse-riding skills during high speed entrances into and around the rodeo arena.

Ellensburg Rodeo Wranglerettes

Induction of the Ellensburg Rodeo Wranglerettes into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame is a tribute to these cowgirls’ thirty-two years of service as ambassadors for the Ellensburg Rodeo and the Kittitas Valley. From 1954 to 1986 the all-girl mounted drill team traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest, appearing in parades and drill team competitions as well as performing in the Junior Rodeo Night Show, Grand Entry, and as a featured act in the Ellensburg Rodeo.

The Wranglerettes made their first appearance at the Ellensburg Rodeo Junior Night Show on Friday, September 3, 1954, and at the Central Washington Fair in Yakima the same year. These ten girls were known simply as the “Kittitas Wranglers”; two years later they became the “Wranglerettes” and two years after that the “Ellensburg Rodeo Wranglerettes.” They were originally coached by Bryce Baker and Lois Clerf, with Bonnie Indermuhle as advisor.

Allen Faltus

In 1974 the Ellensburg Daily Record interviewed the young President of the Ellensburg Rodeo Board, auto dealer Allen Faltus. “My interest in the rodeo has grown because it is really fun to work with 14 fellows who are so dedicated,” Faltus observed, while wife Jan added, “We have met so many fine people and during the years when we travel around we had so many wonderful experiences, we can’t help but enjoy it all.” Nearly forty years later, Allen and Jan Faltus still retain their love of the rodeo they worked so hard to build.

Allen Faltus’ father Otto was born in Belfair County, Ohio, in 1903 and came to Ellensburg in 1925. He married Elizabeth Allen in Olympia in 1932. Otto started out in the service station business (Texaco) and founded Faltus Motors Sales and Service (Chrysler) in 1930.

Ferguson Family

The Ferguson family created and hosted what was probably the first rodeo ever held in the Kittitas Valley at the family homestead four miles east of Ellensburg. The family went on to play a significant role in the creation and growth of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

Elizabeth McEwen (b. 1851) and James Ferguson (b. 1839) were both Iowans who migrated West with their families over the overland trail. They met in Washington Territory and were wed in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1867. Elizabeth and James first arrived in the Kittitas Valley in 1872, building a ranch near Naneum Creek on what is now called Ferguson Road. Their ten children were Olive, John, Emily, James, Lottie, Addie, George, Lillie, Benjamin, and Bessie. James Ferguson died in 1917. The connections of the Fergusons to other Pioneer Rodeo Families is evident in Elizabeth’s maiden name (McEwen) and Lillie’s marriage to Thomas Jefferson Morrison. Much of the Ferguson family history has been researched and written by their great-grand daughter with another famous valley surname, Sandy Thomas.

Tom Ferguson

A six-time World All-Around Champion cowboy, Tom Ferguson is one of the greatest cowboys to ever compete in Ellensburg. Ferguson was an Ellensburg Rodeo crowd-pleaser and timed-event champion throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s.

Born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Ferguson moved to San Martin, California, as a child with his parents, Maxine and Ira. As soon as he was old enough, Tom became an adept arena-trained calf roper and bulldogger and competed in youth and high school rodeos. During his college days he became a Cal Poly State star.

In 1972, Ferguson turned professional and joined the Rodeo Cowboys Association. From that point on Ferguson swept the rodeo circuit, winning six consecutive World All-Around Titles (one shared with Leo Camarillo in 1979).

Tom Ferguson competed in Ellensburg at the height of his career, and today expresses profound respect for and good memories of the Ellensburg Rodeo and his time here.

During his many visits to Ellensburg Ferguson garnered three calf roping buckles (‘79, ‘80, ‘82) and two bulldogging championships (‘74 and ‘82), all the while winning an amazing six Ellensburg All-Around titles in ‘76, ‘77, ‘78, ‘79, ‘81, and ‘82. Tom Ferguson is thus one of the greatest cowboys to ever compete in the Ellensburg Rodeo.

Fitterer Family

1860s pioneer emigrants to Washington Territory, Ellensburg’s Fitterer family has played a pivotal role in the history of the Ellensburg Rodeo. The Fitterers have marched at the forefront of the rodeo’s volunteers, royalty, and participants from its 1923 inception until this very day.

The saga of this family began in 1867, when Phillip George Fitterer was born to German-Anglo Catholic immigrants Theodore and Marianna Walters Fitterer. Theodore, a Mankato, Minnesota, homesteader, was a veteran of the Sioux Indian wars. After a childhood on the northern Great Plains, Phillip bought passage on the Northern Pacific Railroad to Yakima, in Washington Territory, to make a start in the hotel business; his brother Frank soon followed.

John P. Foster

Ellensburg photographer goes to Smithsonian. John Foster again makes top 10 list. Russell and CWU photographer among White House guests. Headlines such as these typify the career of lensman John P. Foster who is an inductees to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame. Foster’s photos of rodeo ‑‑ many from the Ellensburg Rodeo were picked eight straight years on the “Top 10” photos by Horse and Rider Magazine. His photo of world champion cowboy Larry Mahan being dragged across the Ellensburg arena was selected for the Smithsonian National Portrait gallery to represent rodeo in its sports section. That photo, published in the Daily Record, Seattle Times, Rodeo Sports News and carried on AP and UPI wires, was voted top rodeo photo of year by the International Rodeo Writers’ Association. 

Foxy Coke and Katherine Wyss Bach

A funny thing happened at a 1970s Yakima County Fair and Rodeo barrel-racing competition. In her go-round, renowned Ellensburg barrel racer Katherine Anderson Bach took a spill on her stalwart horse Foxy Coke. Bach literally “bit the dust” as she was thrown completely off Foxy Coke. Stunned and laying on the ground, Bach was surprised to hear the crowd roaring its approval. Why would they clap at such an accident? When she looked up and turned around, she saw the reason for all the cheering: “Foxy Coke was still doing his job,” she jokes. “He was speeding around the barrels without me while the crowd cheered him on; he didn’t stop until he’d finished the entire course!”

Katherine Bach resided in Ellensburg from 1957 to 1987. A Gold Card Member of the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association and Professional Women’s Barrel Racing (a Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association subsidiary), Bach helped to pioneer the barrel racing event in the Pacific Northwest and Western PRCA venues, winning dozens of championship buckles along the way.

Gage Family

The descendants of Reece and Miranda America German Gage rode into the history of the Ellensburg Rodeo in 1923 and remain there to this day. Reece and Miranda Gage migrated from Texas to the Kittitas Valley in 1885 and ranched in the northeast corner of the Valley near the mouth of the Clockum Canyon on what is now Gage Road. Their children were Joy, Robert, German, Calvin, Doma, Pearl, Mirtie, Merle, and Alice. Their sons Joy and Robert took up cowboying early on and led the transition of the Gages from the cattle range into the rodeo arena. Both would impact the Ellensburg Rodeo as volunteers and competitors and through the work and cowboy skills of their children and grandchildren.

Phil Gardenhire

When respected rodeo announcer Phil Gardenhire died in an Oklahoma automobile accident on April 14, 1999, the shock reverberated throughout the professional rodeo world. The shock came to Ellensburg, where Gardenhire had served as announcer since 1985. “It was a big, big loss for all of us,” Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame and Rodeo Board Director Joel Smith noted recently. “Phil was a very important part of the growth and direction our rodeo, and we miss him.”

Born in Poteau, in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma, on September 29, 1952, Phillip Duane Gardenhire spent his youth in California and Oklahoma. He graduated from Poteau’s Howe High School in 1970 and served in the United States Army from 1970-1973. Phil married his wife Kay Deere in 1971, and their son Tyler was born in 1985. Phil Gardenhire studied at Northeastern Oklahoma State University in Tahlequah and worked as a radio disc jockey before beginning his life on the rodeo road.

Grated Coconut

With a white blaze and two white stockings on his back feet, he is a stocky dark bay stallion whose power rocketed cowboys to high scores or into the dirt. Cowboys who have successfully ridden him have set arena records and taken home the cash. Two cowboys set arena records on him with 91 points, and Davey Shields Jr. clocked in a score of 95 to win $50,000 at the Calgary Stampede in 2005.

Grated Coconut was honored as the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association’s (PRCA) top bareback riding horse of the year six times (2003-04, 2006-09); he was also a five-time Canadian bareback horse of the year. 

Dick Griffith

“Who was that old man?,” asked a flippant Pendleton, Oregon boy after seeing a 43-year old cowboy win a bullriding go-round at the 1957 Pendleton Roundup. The answer, according to the Rodeo Sports News reporter who overheard the conversation, was “Dick Griffith, one of the greatest cowboys to ever set foot in a rodeo arena.” Griffith’s ’57 Pendleton win, immediately preceded by day-money and a fourth-place finish in Ellensburg, was just one of several “comeback’s” this flinty roughstock and trick riding athlete made in his impressive 37-year rodeo career.

Dick Griffith (1913-1984) belongs to a five-generation rodeo family which helped found and develop the sport of North American rodeo. Young Dick traveled the rodeo circuit with his dad Curley, an early rodeo trick rider and bronc riding competitor. As he matured, Dick also rode broncs, helped found the Cowboy Turtles Association, and competed in the new event of bullriding. Dick Griffith went on to win five bull riding world titles (’39-’42, ’46) while simultaneously building a career as a trick riding contract performer.

Katherine ‘Kay’ Forbes Hageman

The late Kay Hageman (1926-2007) was, for over three decades, the key player in the Ellensburg Chamber of Commerce’s marketing the Ellensburg Rodeo and coordinating many rodeo events. Known for her intelligence, professionalism, wit, and sociability, Hageman gained a regional reputation as an effective representative of Ellensburg and its rodeo. She loved Kittitas County and spent her entire life here.

Kay Hageman born on September 10, 1926 to Harold and Bessie Vincent Forbes, the youngest of five children and the only one born in a hospital. Kay’s parents were territorial pioneers, having come to the Swauk Creek District (at the base of Blewett Pass) in the late 1880s, and she grew up on the family’s Swauk homestead in a world with strong connections to the pioneer past. The Forbes family farmed, ranched, logged, and mined to earn a living.

Miles Hare

Bullriding is one of the most dangerous sports in the world, and only the bullfighter makes the job less dangerous, by running in front of a 1,500 pound bull, diverting its attention, and becoming its new target. Bullfighters have to be agile, wary, strong, and able to read the bodies and minds of angry bulls. Nebraskan Miles Hare was one of the country’s premier rodeo bullfighters for over thirty years. He was invited to the National Rodeo Finals (NFR) six times, two more times as an alternate.

Devere Helfrich

The National Cowboy Hall of Fame describes Inductee DeVere Helfrich as the “Dean of Rodeo Photography.” ProRodeo Sports News declared him “the world’s greatest rodeo photographer” and, following his 1981 death, stated Helfrich “will forever be ranked as one of the top rodeo photographers of all time, no matter who comes along with what degree of talent in the future.”

DeVere Helfrich was a premier rodeo photographer of the “golden age” of post-World War II professional rodeo. Born near Prineville, Oregon, in 1902, Helfrich learned cowboying on his Uncle Walt McCoin’s Bend, Oregon ranch. “He never rodeoed, but he had his own horse and they had moved cattle,” daughter Delores Scott recalled. “So he knew how animals thought and acted better than a lot of people.”

DeVere married Helen Grace Reed in 1926 and worked in the irrigation business and as an ice cream maker until World War II. When wartime food ingredients rationing made his ice cream business untenable, Helfrich searched for another profession. He had long been a proficient hobbyist in photography. Combining this expertise with his ranch background and love of the sport of rodeo, DeVere, with Helen at his side, entered the world of rodeo photography.

Nell Henderson

The timer’s function is to accurately and reliably provide times for events, even those done electronically, in case of a malfunction. As Ken MacRae, a recent inductee of the ERHOF, points out “The timers have a very specific and critical task. Thousands of dollars are paid out often with only tenths of a second separating winners from non-winners. Up until about the middle 1960s, the committees could use local people as timers but since then a timer must have a PRCA timer’s card, and undergo training. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association always uses two timers. There is a degree of judgment involved as the exact moment the barrier flag signals the beginning of the run and the exact moment the flag judge in the field signals the end of the run by dropping his flag.” Henderson’s precision and reliability when reading these flags are what earned her the honor of timing for the NFR. It is the accuracy of her judgment that rodeos came to rely on.

As MacRae further explains, “In the Ellensburg riding events, the start of the eight second duration of the ride is signaled by a flagger at ground level in front of the bucking chutes.

Charmayne James and Scamper

Charmayne James is the greatest barrel-racing cowgirl in the history of North American rodeo. Born in Amarillo, Texas in 1970 and raised near Clayton, New Mexico on a small feedlot and cattle marketing operation, Charmayne James was by three years of age already showing great promise as a cowgirl. She remembers riding “soon as it got light in the morning until night.” As she matured, she routinely defeated women twice her age in local barrel-racing and breakaway roping competitions. She remembers “My dad told me I could rodeo if I could pay my own way.”

Charmayne also showed great skill as a horse trainer. She bought a rank, six year-old feedlot horse, Gill’s Bay Boy, for $1200 and trained him to barrel-race. At age fourteen Charmayne and Gill’s Bay Boy—who she nicknamed Scamper—turned professional and hit the rodeo road. So consuming was her rodeo career that Charmayne graduated with honors from high school on the road via correspondence courses that she completed somehow during her busy rodeo schedule.

Charmayne James’ rookie 1984 season was nothing short of sensational. She consistently finished in the money all year and went on to take both the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association and National Finals Rodeo championship buckles.

John W. Jones, Jr.

Steer Wrestling is a big man’s sport, requiring the strength and weight and agility to grab a running 600-pound steer by the neck and wrestle it to the ground using its horns and nose as leverage.  Kendra Santos, in an article celebrating the Salinas and Pendleton rodeo centennials and John W. Jones Jr’s dominance at both, wrote “many consider [Jones, Jr.] the most technically correct bulldogger of all time, in part because he had to overcome a considerable size deficit.”  When he was on the rodeo circuit he weighed 185 pounds, which is small by today’s standards.

In Ellensburg, Jones Jr. was all-around champion in 1983, won the steer wrestling in 1984, and tied for first in 1987.  He said, “Ellensburg has been one of my favorite rodeos.  The Rodeo Committee always made us feel welcome and produced a top notch rodeo, had the best cattle, and had the best arena conditions for an equal chance for all contestants.”

In 1980, Jones bought his Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association (PRCA) permit, and in 1981 was named Rookie of the Year.  According to the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame notes about him, he ultimately qualified for the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) ten times,  won three world bulldogging titles (‘84, ‘87-88), won the NFR aggregate in 1988, and twice qualified for the NFR in tie-down roping.  He won the buckle in Steer Wrestling at Salinas, CA, four times, and he won it twice at Pendleton.

J.C. ‘Cliff’s Kaynor

“This rodeo is to the Indian a continuation of their old potlatches, feasts, races, and sports which they held in this valley for hundreds of years before the white man came. To the long-hair, the primitive Indian, the Ellensburg Rodeo is a continuation of sacred rights.”
-Cliff Kaynor, Editor and Publisher, Ellensburg Evening Record

Newspaperman Cliff Kaynor was a founder of the Ellensburg Rodeo and a tireless booster of the rodeo for over five decades of his life. Born in Ames, Iowa, February 20, 1887, to Henry G. and Sarah Ann Stamp Kaynor, Kaynor learned the newspaper trade as a young Iowa reporter. He moved West in 1907 and worked for the Seattle Times, Yakima Daily Republic, and Seattle Post-Intelligencer while attending the University of Washington.

Smokey Kayser

“Why do we call him ‘Smokey’? Each time he left the roping box, he moved so fast that he smoked. I mean, he SMOKED. He was that fast.”
-Dick Powers

Smokey Kayser was born in 1929 and raised on a working cattle ranch near The Dalles, Oregon. Although Smokey’s family was a ranch family, they were not rodeo cowboys. However, Smokey had wanted to rope competitively since he was a small child. At age 17, he hit the road and began his rodeo career.

Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s Smokey Kayser competed full-time as an RCA cowboy in roping, bulldogging, and wild cow milking competitions. He was a contemporary of George Prescott (ERHOF ’98) and even team-roped with him on occasion.

He also lived and worked (and shared roping horses) with Wayne McMeans. One of Smokey’s favorite horses was Spook, a mount he purchased from Ellensburg’s Larry Wyatt (ERHOF ’97).From the earliest days of his career, Smokey was a leading contender; a combination of athletic prowess, speed, technique, and good horses often put him in the money. He traveled the rodeo road throughout the 50s, working 25-30 shows a year. His favorite rodeos were in Sherman County and Joseph, Oregon, and of course the Ellensburg Rodeo.

His record is impressive: During the fifteen years when Smokey Kayser was at the height of his game, he won or placed in his events in Roseburg, Sisters, St. Paul, Portland, Joseph, and Prineville, Oregon; Spokane, Omak, Tonasket, Colville, and Puyallup, Washington; and Cloverdale, BC, in Canada and several other rodeos.

Of course Smokey Kayser’s notoriety in Ellenburg rests on a score of strong performances, event and go-round victories, and the coveted Ellensburg All-Around title in 1959. Smokey is only the second Kittitas County cowboy (the other is Frank Wood, ERHOF ’97) to have won the All-Around, but he hailed from Goldendale, not Ellensburg, when he did so. How he came to live in Ellensburg is a good story, told by John Ludtka in The Tradition Lives On. After winning the Ellensburg All-Around, Smokey never cashed the check, but instead carried it in his pocket until 1960. Then he and his wife Clem used the money to make a down payment on their Ellensburg ranch. “That story is true,” Smokey reported in a recent interview at the same ranch. “But of course I carried a check of that size in my wallet, not my shirt pocket!”

Smokey is quick to credit the role of Clem, who he married in 1950, in his ranch and rodeo career. When he was competing in 25-30 rodeos a year, Clem often stayed home to feed cattle, irrigate, and take care of the kids; she has herself spent years in the saddle. Clem remembers the endless string of rodeo cowboys Smokey brought home for a meal—in fact they still arrive regularly! Sometimes the whole Kayser family hit the road together, with Smokey and Clem and Sam, Lynette, Lori all in the seat of their Ford pickup.

A good purse in those days averaged around $500, but Smokey had to pinch pennies to make ends meet. He often had to cross the Columbia River, and in those days it cost $1.00 toll for a horse and trailer. “I finally figured out that if I crossed early in the morning and gave them a $100 bill, they wouldn’t have change and I could cross free,” he recalls. That trick worked several times before the toll collectors figured Smokey out. “The last time I tried it, those guys handed me ninety-nine $1-dollar bills and I needed a paper bag to carry my change home!”

Smokey began to cut back on his competitions in the 1960s but kept his hand in for several decades. Nowadays [1998] he still ropes at home; but mostly he enjoys following the horsemanship and achievements of his son, grandson, granddaughter, nieces, and nephews at their own rodeos. Smokey may have at one time been the first rodeo cowboy in his family, but today this roper from The Dalles has left a legacy to rodeo, and especially timed-event competitions, throughout the Pacific Northwest.

In good cowboy fashion, Kayser shuns the limelight and feels somewhat awkward with the praise and notoriety that has accompanied his induction into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame. He is quick to give credit to his wife and his fellow cowboys. And he speaks highly of those who organize and conduct the Ellensburg Rodeo. “The Rodeo Board has worked long and hard to make the Ellensburg Rodeo the top rodeo that it is today,” he stresses.

Smokey Kayser’s cumulative record in calf and steer roping, team roping, wild cow milking, and bulldogging combine with his 1959 Ellensburg All-Around title to make him, without a doubt, one of the top hands in the history of Pacific Northwest rodeo. Although he is today [1998] an aged cowboy with his own grandchildren competing, he nevertheless retains the steely-eyed qualities of the superb athlete who, in the 1940s and 1950s, ‘smoked’ out of the roping box and into Ellensburg Rodeo history.

Smokey Kayser died in 2000.

Joe Kelsey Rodeo Company

A December 1966 issue of Rodeo Sports News touted the Joe Kelsey’s Tonasket, Washington rodeo stock company as “one of the oldest and most reliable stock contracting firms in the sport of rodeo.” The Joe Kelsey Company furnished bucking stock for the Ellensburg Rodeo for more than four decades, from 1947 to 1991.

Born in Butte Montana on April 16, 1910, Joe Kelsey (1910-1985) moved with his family to Washington State’s Okanogan Valley as a young boy. Kelsey made his start in rodeo as a saddle bronc rider and founding Cowboy Turtle (predecessor to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association [PRCA]) in the late 1920s and 1930s. Among other honors, he won the Ellensburg saddle bronc riding buckle in 1945; he won the Omak Stampede saddle bronc competition in ’43 and ’44, and was inducted into the Omak Stampede Hall of Fame.

Kelsey entered the stock contracting business as an employee of Moomaw and Bernard (ERHOF Inductees in 2002), and worked alongside Moomaw for over a decade. 

He bought his first bucking string in 1949. “From the time on,” writes one rodeo historian, “Joe Kelsey provided top-notch bucking and roping stock for rodeos in Washington, Montana, Idaho, and western Canada,” including Pendleton, Calgary, and Ellensburg. Kelsey’s son, Joe Jr. (“Sonny”), worked in the family business from 1945 to 1991. The Kelsey Company’s tenure at the Ellensburg Rodeo ranks them alongside ERHOF Inductees Christensen Brothers, Harry Vold, and Moomaw-Bernard Stock Contractors. The Joe Kelsey Company worked the Ellensburg Rodeo from 1947 to 1958 and then, sometimes in new partnership arrangements, supplied stock from 1983-84 and, after Joe’s death, from 1985-91.

The Kelsey Stock Company produced many famous bucking horses and bulls. The mere sound of these animals’ names would, according to one rodeo historian, “numb the heart–or the britches–of any cowboy”! Among over two dozen award-winning Kelsey bucking broncs were Widow Maker, Snake, Hell to Set, Slingshot, Set to Velvet, Velvet River, Big Sky’s Velvet, Pee Wee, White Hope, Whiz Bang, John Doe, Try Me, Brown Jug, Little Rubber Doll, Devil’s Dream, Shake ‘em Down, Hot Seat, Smuggler, Pete Taggares, Sky High, Sky Rocket, and Yukon. Kelsey’s most famous bulls were Red One, 0 (“Ought”), Geronimo, Big John, Bull #17, Bull # 53, and Velvet Hour.

Kelsey’s 0 (“Ought”) a 1997 ERHOF Animal Inductee, was named after the numerical score cowboys almost always earned after he threw them! Kelsey’s bulls and broncs earned the Columbia Circuit Horse of the Year, Calgary Stampede Outstanding Horse, and National Finals Rodeo Saddle Bronc and Bull of the Year Awards.

Two legendary Kelsey animals inducted alongside “Ought” and the Kelsey Company are the bronc “Widow Maker” and bull “Red One,” both 1970s-era buckers. Widow Maker worked two decades in the arena and was chosen to be a National Finals Rodeo bronc.

Kelsey originally purchased Red One from an Oregon rodeo school and, although he was “a little scrawny,” several cowboys thought the bull had great potential. He won the 1976 National Final Rodeo’s Top Bucking Bull award, where World Champion Donny Gay became the first cowboy to ever ride him, earning a record-tying 95-point score (this record held until 1996). In a two-year period of 1977 and ‘78, Red One was ridden only twice in 158 appearances. It is a record reflective of Kelsey’s great rodeo stock contracting company.

Loyd Ketchum

When asked to describe the aim of a hard day’s work as a professional rodeo “bullfighter,” Loyd Ketchum responds earnestly, “When every bullrider walks away safe, it’s been a great day at the office.”

Rodeo bullfighting clown Loyd Ketchum holds one of the longest tenures—fifteen years—of any Ellensburg Rodeo contract performer. Ketchum first came to Ellensburg in 1989, at the beginning of his clown/bullfighter career. Ellensburg was Ketchum’s first major rodeo and former arena director Ken MacRae remembers the local board immediately agreed Ketchum “was a real find.”

A native of Montana’s “Big Sky” rodeo country, Loyd Ketchum grew up in and around Miles City, Montana. It was while studying auto mechanics at Miles City Community College that he began rodeoing, choosing the dangerous bullriding event as his specialization. 

When he decided to forego a career as a professional bullrider, it was not for fear of an arena accident. Joining the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association) in 1987, Ketchum immediately went to work in the related and more dangerous business of a bullfighting clown. The work of a bullfighting clown is three-fold. His main jobs are to arouse the bulls and make them buck harder during the rides and then protect the bullriders after they have been thrown or have dismounted the beasts at the end of their rides. This means the clown purposely puts himself in harm’s way during and after each and every ride (six to ten per performance), compelling the enraged bulls to buck and then distracting the beasts while the cowboys pick themselves up and (hastily) exit the arena.

The final facet of the bullfighter’s job is to compete in the freestyle bullfighting event. This portion of the rodeo program features the clowns and bulls, without the cowboys, engaging in a timed battle of wits and speed in which the clowns are scored for their athletic and strategic prowess.

Decked out in a big white straw cowboy hat, full clown paint and garb, and cleated professional sports running shoes, the five-foot five-inch tall, 150 pound Ketchum has saved cowboys’ lives on many occasions. “Bullfighting is something you have to live and breathe,” Ketchum says. “My main goals are to protect the cowboy and make the bull buck to the best of his ability.”

For nearly two decades Ketchum has worked professional rodeo’s premier venues, including the National College Finals and Dodge Circuit Finals Rodeos. He was chosen four-times (1992-96) to be a National Finals Rodeo bullfighter and earned the title of World Champion Bullfighter in 1991. Ketchum helped inaugurate freestyle bullfighting in Ellensburg in the early ‘90s and won the championship several times (the event is no longer on the program). Still in his prime, Ketchum continues to work dozens of rodeos each year.etchum’s peers attribute his success and longevity to professional acumen. “He grew up in the back pens, learning how to read bulls,” fellow bullfighting clown Joe Baumgartner notes. Rodeo cowboy Justin Andrade concurs: “Hank can read the bulls and bull riders” and “reacts on instinct.” Ketchum assesses his work with typical cowboy understatement: “If you know where wreck is going to be, you can be there to prevent it.”

ERHOF Board and Rodeo Board member Joel Smith commented that Loyd Ketchum is highly respected throughout the world of North American rodeo and “is a world class human being.” When Smith informed Ketchum of his selection for this year’s Induction, Ketchum replied he was “humbled and highly honored” at his selection.

Butch Lehmkuhler

Rodeo clown Butch Lehmkuhler has been an Ellensburg Rodeo crowd favorite for nearly two decades. Born in 1954, Lehmkuhler attended Chadron State College in western Nebraska, earning degrees in Physical Education and Psychology in 1976. He joined the PRCA in 1977 and throughout his rodeo career has simultaneously worked as a high school drafting and woodworking teacher and coach. He resides in North Platte, Nebraska with wife Melanie and their children Bailey and Dean.

Rodeo aficionados call Lehmkuhler a “contract performer”—an entertainer who performs in-between rodeo events. Costumed in clown garb, he jokes with the crowd and cowboys, and performs acrobatics on a trampoline. During the bullriding finale, however, he performs one of his most important duties as a barrelman, assisting the bullfighting clowns in protecting thrown or dismounting bullriders. The term “barrelman” is derived from the clowns’ use of a barrel to protect themselves in tight situations, confuse the animals, and create comic effects when ‘hiding’ inside. Some call the barrel a “can,” and Lehmkuhler has won several of the prestigious annual “Coors Man in the Can” awards.

Retired Ellensburg Rodeo Arena Director and ERHOF Board Member Dr. Ken MacRae remembers, “Butch Lehmkuhler really set the bar for rodeo funny men during his career. His banter with the late announcer and ERHOF Inductee Phil Gardenhire throughout the 1990’s rodeos proved to be some of the most funny, memorable moments in the history of the Ellensburg Rodeo. This man is gifted in spontaneous chatter, and filled those slow times during the rodeo performance. They were a very important part in our success for the many years they worked together here. They both were very special to me and it was Butch who called me to let me know of the tragic accident that took Phil Gardenhire’s life.Butch was always willing to suggest ways of improving our show for both the fans in the seats and the rodeo athletes participating in our events. Their knowledge and support were greatly appreciated.”

Hall of Fame Board Member Nip Tucker echoed MacRae’s sentiments: “Our children came of rodeo going age during the Lehmkuhler years. Butch’s unique form of entertainment, especially his trampoline act, was one of the highlights of the Ellensburg Rodeo for our kids. Butch Lehmkuhler exemplified the Ellensburg Rodeo theme of family fun.”

Joking about his dual status as a professional rodeo clown and public school teacher, Lehmkuhler says, “I go back to the classroom and learn for nine months, and [then] get to go back out and get paid to do all those things the kids get in trouble for doing at school!”

Rod Lyman

Montanan Rod Lyman  joined the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) as a steer wrestler in 1984 and never looked back. During an impressive career that continues to this day, Lyman has qualified for the PRCA National Finals Rodeo (NFR) sixteen times. He has won dozens of event and all-around buckles, including the Southwestern PRCA Circuit Finals steer wrestling and All-Around titles. His lifetime earnings amount to well over $1,500,000.00.

A native Montanan born in 1961, Rod Lyman wrestled and played football before turning to rodeo timed-event competitions. He competed for, and graduated from, Montana State University in Bozeman. When not rodeoing, Rod and his wife Stefani raise and train horses and divide their time between Texas and Montana “Flying R” ranches.

Bulldogging friend and fellow Montanan Brad. Gleason ascribes Rod Lyman’s greatness in large part to his unwavering professionalism. “He showed his seriousness,” Gleason states, “by staying a full year with the steer wrestling Duvall Family in Oklahoma, learning from them, training himself in the technical side of the sport and riding their horses for the first year he made the NFR. Since then, he has always found and kept good horses, practiced hard and been a steady winner.”

In Ellensburg, Rod Lyman has won the bulldogging a near record four times (’90, ’94, ’96, & 2000) and won the Ellensburg Rodeo All-Around Championship in 1990. “The outstanding record of money won at Ellensburg,” notes Gleason, “has often made the difference between Rod making the NFR or not.”

Bill Linderman

Bill Linderman is a 2001 Inductee to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame. Linderman’s is a giant name in the history of 1940s and 1950s North American rodeo and was a regular in Ellensburg during that legendary period. William E. (Bill) Linderman was born on April 13, 1920 in Bridger, Montana, to a family that produced five professional rodeo cowboy brothers. Bill went to work in the hard rock mines of Montana as a young man. With massive arm and shoulder strength he built as a miner, the six-foot, 175 lb. Linderman “hit the rodeo road” in the early 1942. Bill Linderman worked both sides of the arena–he regularly competed in bareback bronc, saddle bronc, calf roping, and bulldogging events. Because of his great prowess in the post-World War II years, his fellow cowboys dubbed Linderman “The King.” During a near-fifteen year professional career, Linderman won RCA World Championships in Saddle Broncs (’45, ’50), Bareback Broncs (’43) and, evincing his timed-event expertise, Steer Wrestling (’50). Linderman also captured world three World All-Around Cowboy titles (‘45, ‘50, and ‘53). 

During this time Linderman was, according to one historian, “spectacularly beaten up…he broke his back, fractured his skull, broke his arm three times as well as his neck, foot, leg, and collarbone.” Linderman could be stoic yet witty about the pitfalls and uncertainties of the rodeo sport: “Rodeo is about the only sport you can’t fix,” he once remarked. “You’d have to talk to the bulls and the horses, and they wouldn’t understand you.” As his arena career was ending, Bill Linderman began a new career as an officer in the Rodeo Cowboys Association (RCA). He served the sport from 1950 to 1965 as the RCA’s president, secretary-treasurer, and board member. In this capacity Bill Linderman became an official spokesperson for the professional rodeo cowboys, and he tackled the chore with characteristic dramatic flair. He once drolly explained to a journalist: “In rodeo, if a competitor’s broke, [his fellow cowboys] will not only loan him transportation and entry fee, we’ll throw in a saddle. Besides that, we’ll tell him how the horse he draws bucks.” In Ellensburg, Bill Linderman made many friends and won much respect as a competitor and RCA officer. Linderman consistently won day money in Ellensburg, and in 1955 he made an impressive three-buckle sweep, winning the Saddle Bronc, Bareback Bronc and Ellensburg All-Around buckles. On November, 11, 1965, the rodeo world was shocked to learn that Bill Linderman had died in a commercial airplane crash in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was forty-five years old.

John Ludtka

It is telling that John Ludtka was genuinely surprised to learn of his selection for 2006 induction into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame (ERHOF). Ludtka— former Daily Record editor and publisher and author of The Tradition Lives On: A 75-Year History of the Ellensburg Rodeo (1997)—personally reported on the Ellensburg Rodeo for more than one-third of its history. Ludtka’s modesty evinces a genuine Western candor and belief in the community volunteerism that has built and strengthened the rodeo he knows so well.

“John Ludtka has given so much to this community and the Ellensburg Rodeo,” stated ERHOF President Teri Phillip. “John’s induction into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame is a very good way to preserve the long history of his work and dedication.”

John Ludtka was born in Huron, South Dakota in 1930. His father was a newspaperman. John attended South Dakota State University, earning his BS and MS degrees in Journalism.

A stint as a platoon leader in the U.S. Army’s 2^nd Armored Division (West Germany) preceded a long and successful career as a journalism professor and newspaperman.

Although John was raised in the ranch and cattle country of the Dakotas, he first grew seriously interested in the sport of rodeo in New Mexico. As a young journalism professor at Eastern New Mexico State College (now Eastern New Mexico University), home to one of the oldest college rodeos in North America, John came to share his students’ enthusiasm for rodeo. He jokingly remembers having “barely resisted” their “efforts to get me to ride a bull.” And, though they decked him out in cowboy duds for their annual rodeo, John’s students “good-naturedly” concluded he “looked more like a ‘sheep herder’ than a ‘Marlboro Man’”!

John, with wife Janice and children Mark, Cathy, Karol, and Lynn, moved to Ellensburg in 1963 and he took a post as Central Washington State College (now CWU) Professor of Journalism and public information officer. John and

Janice purchased the Record Printing Company in 1968. John became editor (and, later, publisher) of Jim and Joy McGiffin’s Ellensburg Daily Record until the paper was sold in 1993.

During their three decades in Ellensburg, the Ludtkas figured importantly in the community’s economic, cultural, and institutional growth, with active involvement in the Kittitas County Fair, 4-H, Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, Swim Team, Western Art Association, Community Hospital Foundation, CWU (including the Chimpanzee Center), the Clymer Museum of Art, and myriad volunteer endeavors.

John Ludtka’s involvement with the Ellensburg Rodeo has been continuous and has ranged from writing and publishing the official rodeo souvenir program to helping his Swim Team children serve as rodeo ushers and sweep up the grandstands after night show and daily performances. He reported from the press box after each performance.

Ludtka published the all-important “day sheets” listing the competitors and stock in each rodeo performance. He remembers this painstaking and time-consuming job “became a bit easier in later years when the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association) sent out the draw and electronic printing took the place of the hot type used for many years. And it made it much faster for Record print foreman Frank Oechsner when offset printing replaced the letterpress operations….” With the old technology, Ludtka remembers, printing day sheets took until “well after midnight each night” of the rodeo weekend.

“John Ludtka is the historian of the Ellensburg Rodeo,” notes ERHOF founder and University of Washington, Tacoma, History Professor Mike Allen. “Frankly, many communities have failed to retain accurate data and the firsthand accounts of their early rodeos,“ Allen states. “Despite the best of intentions, their history is lost simply because no one has taken the time and care to preserve it. The Tradition Lives On, John’s official 75-year anniversary history of the Ellensburg Rodeo, has recorded for posterity the story of our rodeo and its legacy to our community and the world of North American rodeo.”

Ludtka was a founding ERHOF Board member. “It was exciting,” he states, “to have the opportunity to help put the spotlight on great rodeo participants and supporters.”

John and Janice divide their time between Leavenworth and Las Cruces, New Mexico and remained interested and active in Ellensburg affairs and visit often.

In recognition of three decades of work for the Ellensburg Rodeo, the Ludtka Family was designated Kittitas County Honor Family by Top Hands. John was the first recipient of the Rodeo Board’s prestigious “Maynard Linder Spirit of the Rodeo” award for rodeo volunteers. And upon retirement from the Daily Record, the Rodeo Board and Chamber awarded him an “Honorary Rodeo Champion” buckle.

Despite his “Rodeo Champion” buckle, John Ludtka jokes that his Eastern New Mexico State College students were probably correct when they said he was “more sheep-herder” than “Marlboro Man.” Yet in his modesty and reluctance to take the limelight, John Ludtka evinces one of the strongest tenets of the “Cowboy Code” of behavior.

Reflecting on his induction into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame, Ludtka stated simply: “All our family activities with the Rodeo, the Fair and other community endeavors were in keeping with the traditions that so many others have kept alive here and continue to improve on. We were just trying to do our part.”

King County Posse

“‘Silver Saddles and Golden Horses’ has become not only the King County Posse’s slogan, but its standard as well,” states an essayist honoring Washington State’s most colorful horsemen and women. The King County Posse formed as the “King County Sheriff’s Posse” in 1941, led by Wilfred Hall of Auburn and Daniel Bekins of Seattle. The Posse emulated other groups that had arisen in the early twentieth century West. 

These horsemen aimed to keep alive the old nineteenth century “posse” traditions in a much tamer form, supporting local government and helping foster civic pride while participating the burgeoning professional rodeo scene.

Like other hobbyists across the West, King County Possemen were deputized lawmen holding honorary commissions and serving without wages. Their commissions came from the King County Sheriff; they wore official sheriff’s badges, carried sidearms, and assisted law enforcement officers in mounted “search and rescue” assignments.

Early King County Posse literature noted, “Each of us is a volunteer deputy sheriff obligated to render such service as he may be called upon to perform in case an emergency should arise.” The coming of World War II certainly loomed on Westerners’ minds as these words were written.

Ellensburg’s older Ellensburg Rodeo Posse (ERHOF Inductees 1998) advised and assisted the King County Posse from the beginning. Dr. J. P. Richardson had helped found the Ellensburg Rodeo Posse in 1939. Richardson (father of Rodeo Princess Dorothy Vaughan and grandfather of Queen Heidi Vaughan) had admired San Francisco’s mounted Posse at the Cow Palace Rodeo and wanted to organize a similar group. The Ellensburg Rodeo Posse thus became the first mounted drill team in Washington State. King County joined them, and the two posses have been mounted comrades for nearly seven decades.

Since 1943, King County Posse riders have ridden in the Ellensburg Rodeo Parade and Grand Entry, and competed in the rodeo’s mounted racing events and the Sunday Posse Night Show’s drill and riding competitions. In addition, King County Posse families have often been the source of an Ellensburg Rodeo Princess representing King County on the royal court.

One King County Posse family—the Brown family—has for three generations been involved as posse riders and rodeo princesses in the Ellensburg Rodeo.

The King County Posse’s most famous job in the Ellensburg Rodeo is its crucial role in the rodeo’s introductory ritual. Following the Grand Entry, it is King County Posse riders who “post the American colors”—stationing flag-carrying horsemen at posts around the rodeo arena while the Star Spangled Banner is sung. Only then do Yakama Indians ride down Craig’s Hill into the arena to commence each rodeo performance.

The “Silver Saddles and Golden Horses” of flag-carrying King County Posse riders are visually stunning. Two decades ago a King County Posse rider estimated the cost of his saddle and tack at $2,000.00. He described their famous drill:

We gallop the horses and we lope ‘em through the maneuvers and this is where the practice and the timing come in. It’s colorful: Fourteen Palominos with sterling silver saddles and bridles. Guys all dressed in the same uniforms. And each man carries a four-foot-by-six-foot American flag. And when you use flags like these, you’re blind on one side and can’t see what’s coming at you. If you’ve ever seen us do the “thread the needle,” you’ll know it’s quite a challenge.

In addition to their annual trek to Ellensburg, King County riders stage their own horse shows, playdays, and get-togethers. They have served as the “lead unit” in the Portland Rose Parade. They also appear at Wenatchee Apple Blossom Festival, the King and Yakima County Fairs, Puyallup Fair, Seattle Seafair’s Grand Parade, and many other local and regional venues.

Over the years, the King County Posse has seen changes. Members deleted the term “Sheriff” from their title even though they remain honorary deputies. Recently, the King County Posse admitted its first female members, a move emulated by other posses and rodeo boards across the country.

But some things stay the same. Flag-carrying King County horsemen will no doubt continue their annual trek to Ellensburg, race the relays, and perform their precision drill. And of course they will continue to “post the colors” in the Ellensburg Rodeo’s Grand Entry for the foreseeable future.

When asked why he was a King County Posseman, Gary Lewis was quick to respond: “I get to ride nice horses. I get my exercise, with lots of nice guys. And there’s something about riding a nice horse and wearing a badge and carrying that American flag. I’m really proud of carrying that American flag when I’m riding a horse.”

Kittitas County Roping Club

It began as a way to have some Sunday fun. Local ranchers built their own arenas so neighbors and area friends would come to rope calves…and a competitive spirit took over. It became a part of life in the Kittitas Valley. Roping calves was not just a Sunday activity ‑ it was a necessary skill frequently used in every day ranch work. Today that spirit still exists and the Kittitas County Calf Roping Club continues to be a growing ground for ropers and horsemen–and women–to improve their abilities as it has for more than 60 years.

Harry Knight

“Has rodeo changed much since the 1920s and 30s?” a reporter once asked the great Canadian saddle bronc rider Harry Knight. Knight answered in the frank and down-to-earth manner that characterized his generation of rodeo cowboys: “It sure has,” he said. “Today the emphasis is on the athlete and his scientific sport. Back then, it was just cowboys dolling up their regular chores in the arena.”

Harry Knight, a 2002 Inductee to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame, certainly did his share of the “regular chores” in cowboy country before achieving glory in the rodeo arena.

Born in Quebec City in 1907, Knight soon moved west with his family to Alberta. Young Harry loved animals, especially dogs and horses, and he worked as a livery stable groom and packhorse wrangler at his father’s resort on Banff’s Lake Louise. At age 14, he became a working cowboy, wrangling and breaking horses on Alberta’s ranchlands. Interestingly, Harry also mushed dog-racing teams in Canadian and international competitions, building the tremendous leg muscles he would soon use as a saddle bronc rider. Harry Knight entered his first rodeo in Sundre, Alberta in 1925, thus beginning a half-century career in professional rodeo.

Pete Knight

Pete Knight, one of early professional rodeo’s greatest cowboys, was a mainstay competitor in Ellensburg Rodeos for nearly a decade in the late 1920s and early 1930s. During that time, he earned the Ellensburg Rodeo’s highest awards and abundant credentials for induction into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame.

Pete Knight was born in 1903 in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but he was destined to live a legendary life, and suffer a tragic death, under Western skies. Knight’s family moved first to Oklahoma before settling in Crossfield, Alberta, Canada in 1914 (Pete was not related to fellow Albertan and ERHOF Inductee Harry Knight, though the two were close friends). At age 12, Pete began to break horses on his family’s ranch; he also learned to train and handle workhorse pulling-teams of up to 16 head. Pete entered the local Crossfield Rodeo in 1918 and won second place in the bronc riding. By 1923, at 20 years of age, he had decided upon a career as a professional rodeo roughstock rider.

Dr. Ken MacRae

In a recent interview, Dr. Ken MacRae reflected on his three-decade service to the Ellensburg Rodeo. “Well, the Ellensburg Rodeo was, after my family and veterinary medicine, the most important thing my life,” he recalled. “We directors all took our responsibility very seriously. The all-important goal was to present the very best rodeo in our power.”

“Ken MacRae came on board and he cared about the cowboy’s side and sort of educated us about the cowboy’s needs,” remembered retired Ellensburg Rodeo Board member Allen Faltus in an interview with the late John Ludtka. At its inception in 1923, the Ellensburg Rodeo Board of Directors was a diverse group, with ranchers and farmers serving alongside businessmen and other town-dwelling professionals.

As a ranch-raised Idahoan, college bull-riding champion and roper, and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, Ken MacRae brought a varied and unique perspective to long and distinguished service as Arena Director of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

Bill McKay

Bill McKay, longtime Ellensburg Rodeo chute boss, was raised on a wheat ranch near Wilbur, Washington. He graduated from Wilbur High School in 1951 and attended Eastern Washington College of Education (now EWU), interrupting his studies to serve with the U. S. Army 38^th Infantry in Korea. When Bill returned, he enrolled at Washington State College (now WSU), where he studied Education and competed in intercollegiate rodeo with his friend and fellow student Ken MacRae. Bill McKay was a steer wrestler, wild cow mugger, and roper; he joined the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association after college and competed for most of his life.

McEwen Family

According to Mack, son of Oscar McEwen, the McEwens came to the Kittitas Valley in 1871. Originally from North Carolina, John McEwen and his wife Jerusah Morrow McEwen crossed from their Fremont, Iowa, home, making that long trek across the Great Plains to the Pacific Northwest. They originally settled near Shelton but crossed the Cascades in search of prime cattle grazing country in 1871. They homesteaded up the Naneum, five miles east of Ellensburg. John and Jerusah had five children, Elizabeth, James, Harvey, Laura, and Etta. It is the children of Harvey and Martha Grewell McEwen that historians of the Ellensburg Rodeo know best. Harvey McEwen and his boys ranched in the southeastern Kittitas Valley and soon gained a reputation as top horsemen, both on the ranch and at local rodeos and horse racing tracks.

Ken McLean

In 2002, the world of professional rodeo was shocked to learn that respected saddle bronc rider, calf roper, and bulldogger Kenny McLean had died on horseback at a Taber (Alberta) Rodeo. McLean was waiting his turn at a Senior ProRodeo Association calf roping event when he suffered a massive heart attack. Interestingly, McLean’s mount was standing near the bucking chutes, a spot the sixty-three year-old McLean knew well in the world of 1960s North American Rodeo.

Kenny McLean was born in Okanogan Falls, British Columbia, in 1939; he started riding colts at age twelve and entered his first rodeo at age seventeen. As an RCA (Rodeo Cowboys Association, predecessor to the PRCA) cowboy he competed across North America in prime Canadian and American venues, including Calgary, Pendleton, Cheyenne, and Ellensburg.

Bill McMacken

South Dakotan Bill McMacken dominated bronc riding and bulldogging competitions during the 1935-45 decade of the Ellensburg Rodeo. Born in Pierre and residing in Trail City, South Dakota, Bill grew up on his father’s cattle ranch surrounded by seven older brothers and sisters and a lifestyle that revolved around cowboying and rodeo. Bill was only fourteen years-old when he hit the rodeo road with his older brothers Joe, Fritz, and Bud McMacken. As he matured, dark and handsome McMacken was described by rodeo historian Cliff Westermeier as the “epitome” of a rodeo cowboy, with the “look, personality, and the ability of the ideal Western character.”

McMacken exhibited the skill and versatility of early rodeo men who “worked both sides of the arena”–excelling at both timed and roughstock events.

McManamy Family

“The Ellensburg Rodeo is a family affair,” writes John Ludtka, author of The Tradition Lives On (1997). “And for over seven decades, the McManamy’s—including the Hands, Seuberts, and Oechsners—have played the role of rodeo volunteer family with aplomb.”

Joe McManamy was born in New York City in 1907, but lost his father at age one. “My mother remarried in 1909 to James Hand who had been a childhood sweetheart in Ireland,” Joe later wrote. The same year, the family moved to the northwestern part of the Kittitas Valley to farm and raise cattle. Upon reaching maturity, Joe and his half-brother James Edward Hand, inherited their parents’ farm. Thus, Kittitas County’s respected “Hand/McManamy Farms” partnership was born.

Larry Mahan

Larry Mahan is a 2001 Inductee to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame. Mahan revolutionized the rodeo world on his way to winning six PRCA World All-Around Championships (’66, ’67, ’68, ’69, ’70, ‘73) and two World Bull Riding Championships (’65, ’67). Larry Mahan combined athleticism, grit, and a keen business sense to move 1960s rodeo cowboys into the world of modern American professional athletes. Larry Mahan was born in 1943 in Brooks, a town adjacent to Salem, Oregon. When he was not at work sacking groceries after school, young Mahan was at the local fairgrounds, earning his spurs in youth calf roping clubs. He entered his first junior rodeo in Canby, Oregon, in 1957. Mahan graduated from high school in Arizona, winning the 1962 state high school rodeo All-Around buckle. Back in Oregon in 1963, he began his professional career tutored by top Oregon hands Sterling Green and Bob Cook.

Mickey – Dean Oliver

Born in Dodge City, Kansas in 1929, young Dean Oliver moved with his parents Vernon and Vesper to Nampa, Idaho in the 1930s. After the untimely death of his father, eleven-year old Dean began roping, first practicing on dairy calves and later entering rodeos and going professional as a calf roper and bulldogger. He joined the RCA is 1953. During a two decade career, from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s, Oliver garnered ten world championship buckles, winning the All-Around Championship in 1963, 1964, and 1965. His record of gross earnings stood unbroken for nearly two decades.

 The durability of Oliver’s money-winning records is especially surprising because purses were low in the mid-1950s when he first began to win consistently. He possessed an expertise in the sport that still awes professional cowboys. His calf-roping technique resembled what Willard Porter calls a “chocolate-syrup smoothness. His runs on his good horses–Mickey, Vernon, and a few others–were so coordinated that it was impossible to fault him. From chute-box to tie-down, he made it look easy….” This expertise enabled Oliver to win “bunches” of rodeos consecutively, piling up huge winnings and catapulting him to the top of prize-winners.

Gene Miles

“I was so proud to be a part of the Ellensburg Rodeo for the twenty years I contested and judged. And now to be inducted into your great Hall of Fame means that me and my horse Shorty get to be a part of the Ellensburg Rodeo forever and ever. I’m mighty proud.”
-Gene Miles,Ellensburg Rodeo Steer Wrestling Arena Record-Holder

“The greatest bulldogger to compete in the Ellensburg Rodeo,” Art Driver once said, “is Gene Miles.” Gene Miles is a 1999 Inductee to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame in the National Competitor Category. A resident of Klammath Falls Oregon, Miles worked the Ellensburg Rodeo for nearly two decades, returning later as a stock contractor and judge. Gene Miles is known for his gentlemanly yet highly competitive demeanor and his fine ‘dogging horse “Shorty,” who he shared with his fellow cowboy competitors.

Minor Family

Ellensburg Rodeo historian John Ludtka noted in a recent interview, “There is little that the Minor family hasn’t done for the Ellensburg Rodeo. From its early beginnings to the present day, the Minors’ dependability and talent have been ever-present in Ellensburg Rodeo history.”

Ludtka also states that the modest cowboy ways and demeanor of Buck, Peg, and B.J. Minor have, in the past, kept them out of the limelight of Ellensburg Rodeo notoriety and fame.

Floyd P. and Jean Hentz Minor, their three children Floyd A. (“Buck”), Peggy Ellen (“Peg”), and Bette Jean (“B.J”) Minor, and all of their descendants, form a seven-decade Kittitas Valley rodeo dynasty. The Minor family has produced literally dozens of tie-down, team-roping, wild cow milking, breakaway roping, and bronc riding champions, trick ropers and riders, rodeo royalty, fair and rodeo board members, and country musicians to insure the growth and vitality of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

Montie Montana

Montie Montana, world famous trick roper and rider, first appeared in the Ellensburg Rodeo of 1927 and has been an Ellensburg crowd favorite ever since.

Born on a Montana homestead in 1910, Montie hit the rodeo road with his parents at a young age. During his illustrious career, Montie Montana has performed around the world, and was a perennial favorite in the Pasadena Tournament of Roses New Year’s Day Parade. He appeared in numerous western movies alongside John Wayne, Hopalong Cassidy, Will Rogers, Hoot Gibson, Slim Pickens, Bob Hope, Shirley Temple, Jimmy Stewart, and others. His most famous movie role was in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Montie Montana first appeared in Ellensburg as a 17 year-old trick roper in 1927; his mother and father performed a bullwhip act in the same show. Since then he has appeared eleven times, often with wife Louise and children Montie, Jr., and Linda Marie. One of Montie’s signature pieces was tossing a huge loop around the entire family while they rode towards him mounted. After completing his daily act in the rodeo, Montie would sometimes work in a night performance at the Audion Theater on 3rd Street. Montie’s father, a firm believer in the church, had a favorite pastime while in Ellensburg in the early days–he preached an annual sermon at the Methodist Church on Third Street.

In 1972, Montie Montana returned to Ellensburg for the 50th Anniversary show, and he served as Grand Marshall of the 75th Anniversary Ellensburg Rodeo Parade. He died the following winter.

Morrison Family

Three generations of Morrisons have helped to build the strong ranch/rodeo connection in the history of the Kittitas Valley. William Morrison came to the Kittitas Valley in 1873. He had served in the Civil War at 13 years of age and in the Yakima Indian Uprising as a lieutenant. He married Catherine Wheeler in Yakima in 1876. Their son Thomas (Tom) Jefferson Morrison married Lillie Ferguson (daughter of James and Elizabeth McEwen Ferguson) in 1885, thus combining the lineage of three great ranch/rodeo families into a new line. It was Tom who first made his mark as a top hand, bronc rider, and roper on the range and at the Kittitas Valley’s “Sunday rodeos” during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Tom’s and Lillie’s two children, Chet, born in 1907, and Gladys, born in 1909, would inherit and carry on the horsemanship and rodeo traditions of the Morrisons. In 1922-23, Tom and son Chet furnished three teams of horses with scrapers to help level the grounds for the Ellensburg Rodeo. Gladys Morrison Sisk participated in several riding clubs, competing in the rodeo night shows and organizing the Flying Hoofs Riding Club.

Chet Morrison entered the bronc riding at the first (1923) Ellensburg Rodeo (his father Tom had to sign a waiver to allow the 16 year-old Chet to compete). He went on to win the first-ever Ellensburg Rodeo cow-cutting competition.

Chet was the County bronc riding champion in 1930; he won the County calf roping in 1936, 1944, and 1946; and he won several day monies in World bronc riding. He rodeoed throughout Montana, Idaho, and Washington in the late 1930s. With Bud McNeil, he founded the Kittitas County Roping Club. Chet built several arenas on his ranch and the Morrison ranch became a mecca for young local beginners. Chet continued to rodeo into the 1940s, moving from bronc riding into roping and timed-event competitions. He died in 1980.

In 1938, Chet married Bertha (Zumbrunnen) Morrison, who added her own ranch and rodeo expertise to their many activities. Bertha was a skilled cowgirl and horse racer who worked rodeo relays and flat races for over a decade. She was a founder of the Rodeo Valley Riders, the first women’s riding club to participate in the Ellensburg Rodeo Grand Entries and Night Shows and put on a square dance. Moreover, Bertha’s personal background in rodeo made her one of the most knowledgeable living historians of the Ellensburg Rodeo and, over the past seventy years, she has amassed an archive of photographs, news stories, programs, and other artifacts of local rodeo history. She has served as a consultant to historians like John Ludtka, (The Tradition Lives) and the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame Association, who have relied on her expertise in writing the history of the Ellensburg Rodeo. Bertha was also chairman of the Kittitas County History Book project. Bertha’s brother, Fred Zumbrunnen, rode saddle brons at the Ellensburg Rodeo and also bulldogged at some smaller rodeos.

Bertha and Chet’s sons, Chet Jr. (Tuffy, b. 1940) and Tommy (b. 1942) were the third generation of Morrisons to follow the rodeo road. Both boys took up rodeoing early on, working all events except bull riding, and they continue to help out today with the roughstock chutes. Tuffy brought the Morrison skills to the RCA (now PRCA) national circuit from 1964-1980, working both ends of the arena as a bronc rider (saddles and bareback) and in calf roping and steer roping events. He won numerous events and go-rounds, and All-Around Championships at Omak (WA), Libby (MT), Logan (UT), Blackfoot (ID), Polson (MT), Kamloops (BC), and Yakima (WA) for three years, and others. Moreover, he served five years on the Board of Directors and the Executive Board of the PRCA’s Columbia River Circuit. Tuffy is a life member of PRCA.

Tommy Morrison was the WRA All-Around cowboy for the whole year in 1969 and won many other WRA rodeos. He served two years in the Army in Germany. Tommy and Tuffy are now owners of the ranch and old Ferguson rodeo grounds, which has been owned by the family for over 100 years.

Today [1998], Bertha Morrison resides on the same Kittitas Valley ranch where she was born and raised. Her sons Tuffy and Tommy are the co-owners. She continues to research the history and traditions of the Ellensburg Rodeo in which her family has played so large a part.

Bud Munroe

Bud Munroe first registered with the PRCA in the Bareback division, but soon found his niche in Saddle Bronc riding. In 1977, he qualified for the National Finals Rodeo in Saddle Broncs, and for twelve consecutive years, he qualified for the National Finals, winning the Gold Buckle in 1986. Eight times in that string of years, he finished among the top five in the world, and he was second in the standings in 1978 and 1980. In 1986, he became the first Saddle Bronc rider to earn over $100,000.

Munroe grew up in Lewistown, Montana, but moved to Billings with his parents and attended Billings Senior High. His father, Dan, was also a saddle bronc rider, and his mother and sister were involved in rodeo as well. Because of its rodeo team, Bud attended Montana State University in Bozeman where he earned a degree in agricultural business and competed in the bareback and saddle bronc riding. For the Bobcats, he won a National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association saddle bronc title in 1975.

According to ProRodeo Hall of Fame bronc rider Kyle Pendergraft, Munroe is a “living legend, respected and revered throughout the rodeo system because of his simple, uncomplicated, but thoughtful, perspective on life and the sport.”

Joe Kusek of the Billings Gazette said that Munroe’s riding had a “metronome quality.” He was more methodical than flashy or charismatic. Ken MacRae, another Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of fame inductee, remembers him as a “rather quiet, business-like person who rode as well or better than anyone in his era.” Munroe himself said “Rodeo is just a natural extension of the Western way of life. It’s a very pure thing, just you and the animal. I think it’s ingrained in you if you come up around it so much that it’s a part of who your are and you never lose the love for it. At least I never have.”

At Ellensburg, he won the saddle bronc competition in 1977, 1978, and tied with John Smith in 1987.   Munroe retired in 1989 and moved to Valley Mills, Texas, which is 25 miles from Waco. He never really retired from rodeo because he stayed involved with the PRCA: as its saddle bronc director, member of the Grievance Committee, or Properties Board member for over twenty years. He was also a committee member of the Heart O’ Texas Rodeo in Waco for a number of years. He has been inducted into other halls of fame: Montana State University’s Athletic Hall of Fame, Montana ProRodeo Hall of Fame, the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame, and in 2007 the National ProRodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, CO. His wife, Jimmie, is a former world champion barrel racer and served as president of the WPRA for thirteen years and was the first chairwoman of Professional Women’s Barrel Racing, a subsidiary of the PRCA. Their daughter, Tassie, competed on the equestrian team for Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, and Bud joked “It’s way more expensive than barrels and you don’t get any money back.”

Nason Aronica Family

The members of the Nason and Aronica families trace their ancestry to Owhi, the great warrior Chief of the Kittitas Band of Northwest Plateau Indians. The family first came to the Kittitas Valley as hunters and gatherers, establishing encampments on the Valley’s western and eastern rims to gather Camas root and berries, fish for trout and salmon, and hunt deer and elk. In the early twentieth century, Owhi’s daughter Sienwat Owhi (known to white settlers as “Old Julie”) encamped on the site of the Ellensburg Rodeo grounds. There are photographs of Sienwat’s teepee at the foot of Craig’s Hill in the northeastern corner of the grounds (east of Wilson Creek, where horse barns stand today).

Raised near Cashmere as a Wenatchee Indian, Ida Joseph (1888-1992), Sienwat’s granddaughter, returned to her ancestral home at age 17 to marry John (“Johnny”) Sohappy Nason (1895-1937). In the early 1900s, they settled on land allotted by the federal government to Johnny’s grandfather Charlie, near the mouth of the Naneum Canyon, where the family ranch stands today. Their children were Helen, Charles, William, Minnie, John, and Joanne.

Because of close ties to the Yakama Indian Nation, the Nasons were on the forefront of Indian involvement in the 1923 creation and subsequent development of the Ellensburg Rodeo. From the beginning, Indians have played a three-fold role. First, the Yakamas always encamp near the rodeo grounds, recreating a tepee village like those of their hunter/gatherer forbearers. Second, Yakama Indian cowboys and cowgirls have competed in the rodeo. Third, and perhaps most important, the Yakamas perform the ritual which commences every Ellensburg Rodeo. The rodeo begins with Indians performing traditional dances in the arena.

Then, as the announcer tells their history to the rodeo crowd, mounted Yakama horsemen ride down Craig’s Hill into and across the rodeo arena. The announcer tells of the Indians’ annual trek to the Kittitas Valley each fall as that trek is acted out by the Indians riding down Craig’s Hill; they enter the rodeo arena and pass before the crowd, riding fully adorned in tribal dress. Only after this ritual does the first bareback bronc burst out of the chute and the Ellensburg Rodeo continue.

Near the Nason ranch and Caribou Creek, Indians from the Wenatchee, Snoqualmie, Wanapum, and Kittitas bands fashioned a flat track to race their ponies, a custom that found its way into the first (1923) Ellensburg Rodeo. The Nasons participated in all of the early rodeos in the Indian encampment, performing native dances, riding in the rodeo parade and opening ritual, and performing in the night pageant, “Spirit of the West” (‘06 ERHOF Inductee).

Ida Nason rode her horse to victory in the first Ellensburg Rodeo “Squaw Race,” while husband John won the “War Bonnet Race” (these two flat track, circular racing events were named by non-Indians). Johnny Jr. (“Junior”), an early member of the Kittitas County Ropers, competed in the County Roping event. In 1929, Ida and Johnny’s daughter, Helen, was crowned Queen of the Ellensburg Rodeo; her sister Minnie served as Princess. The sisters later married the Cleveland brothers, Mose and Sleepy, members of the Colville Tribe who also raced horses.

As the twentieth century progressed, the Nason family and their descendants continued to participate in the Ellensburg Rodeo, dancing in the Indian village and rodeo arena and riding in the parade.

Following John’s death, Ida married Tony Aronica. Ida’s and Tony’s son Allen (1947-   ), encamped and danced in the rodeo throughout the 1950s and 60s. In the late 1980s, Allen began work with Rex Buck, a Wanapum Band elder, and others, to coordinate the Indian Village encampment, dancing, and other Indian activities. Now an elder of his people, Allen works with the rodeo board and the Yakama Indian Nation to coordinate Indian participation in the Ellensburg Rodeo. Like his half-brother Charlie, Allen is a decorated U. S. Army combat veteran.

Local historian and ERHOF Board member Bertha Morrison grew up along the Naneum and has many memories of the Nason family. “I went to school at the Upper Naneum School with Minnie and Charlie until 7^th Grade,” she recently recalled. “Their father Johnny Sr. served on the Upper Naneum School Board.” Bertha Morrison also recalled how Johnny Sr. loved to raise and train race horses: “My brother and sister rode for Johnny in the rodeo flat races,” she remembers. “The Nasons are a very important family in the history of Kittitas County,” says Morrison, herself a Pioneer Rodeo Family Inductee to ERHOF (1997).

As Ida Nason Aronica grew old, Allen joined local historians to preserve her stories and traditions; a documentary film recorded her memories growing up in the Kittitas Valley. The movie, Everything Change, has aired on PBS television. Ida died in 1992 and is buried in the family graveyard atop a sagebrush covered hill in the northeast corner of the ranch. Today, hundreds of descendants of the Chief Owhi are spread across the Pacific Northwest and American West, all with important ties to the history and traditions of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

Harry Vold and Neck Lace

Harry Vold, inductee to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame, is an old hand at receiving accolades for his long service to the sport. His John Wayne-looks and demeanor prompted his colleagues to call him the “Duke of the Chutes.” The legendary Harry Vold of Fowler, Colorado, has been named ProRodeo Stock Contractor of the Year 11 times and was inducted into The PRCA Hall of Fame in 1994. His talent and his great string of broncs and bulls helped Ellensburg’s rodeo become one of the nation’s finest outdoor rodeos. The 79-year-old stockman provided Ellensburg’s performances with saddle broncs, bareback horses and bucking bulls from 1961 through 1989. The late Art Driver, who was Ellensburg’s “Mr. Rodeo” during much of that period, said of Vold, “He was the best at his trade – he knew rodeo, he knew his animals, he knew the cowboys and he knew how to make it all work. When things seemed to get tangled up, he straightened things out right now. Everyone listened and got busy when he rode up to the chutes and it was all business.” Ken MacRae, arena director who followed Driver in that key job–and an Ellensburg Rodeo director named in the recent past as national rodeo committeeman of the year–says, “Harry Vold helped make our rodeo one of the nation’s finest. His stock and his know-how put us among the best.”

The Vold Rodeo Company, the largest in this business, provides livestock for eight of the top rodeos in the U.S. including Frontier Days in Cheyenne, Rodeo de Santa Fe (N. Mex.), National College Finals, Dodge City (Kans.) Rodeo, the all-Indian Finals in Window Rock, Ariz. and Prescott (Ariz.) Frontier Days. Many of his animals are used in the National Finals in Las Vegas. His work in Ellensburg’s arena was shared with the Christensen Bros., Oregon stockmen, who like most in the rodeo business praised Vold’s participation. “He built a reputation that can’t be rivaled,” says Bobby Christensen, who alongside his brother Hank, is also a member of the Ellensburg Hall of Fame.

Vold’s celebrated career began in Alberta, Canada where, after a brief rough-stock riding challenge, he opted to be a stockman. He bought and sold bucking horses to other rodeo contractors before he began to put on his own rodeos as well as provide stock as far west as Washington and British Columbia and as far east as Toronto. He moved his business to the U.S. in 1967 leaving his Canadian operation to his son, Wayne. Vold first partnered with two names well known in rodeo circles, Beutler Brothers and Harry Knight, prior to a move to his Colorado ranch. Red Top Ranch, some 30,000 acres, is located east of Pueblo near the towns of Avondale and Fowler. While he has had bucking bulls of the year, Harry Vold takes the most pride in his bucking horses–those that he bred and raised as part of his “born to buck” program which dates to the early 1970’s. He realized early in his career that the supply of good bucking horse was dwindling and if he hoped to stay in business he’d have to breed his own. He breeds nearly 100 mares a year producing about 80 foals, and of those less than 30 percent go on to become bucking horses. A Western Horseman article quotes the Canadian turned Coloradoan: “People worry about the welfare of these (bucking) horses and bulls, and I’ll tell them at a rodeo like Cheyenne, each animal will buck no more than twice in 10 days; that’s 20 seconds of work in 10 days, not a bad life.” Vold willingly defends rodeo against its Gavin Ehringer, a free-lance writer, writes “Harry Vold is impressive when the spotlights burn. With his slow, clear speaking voice and rolling gait, he does bear a reasonable resemblance to John Wayne who…embodies the virtues of strength, determination, hard work and western individualism…those same virtues (that) have made Harry Vold…one of the greatest stock contractors of this and perhaps any era.” “Neck Lace,” a Harry Vold Rodeo Company bareback bronc, was a roughstock legend of the 1960s rodeo circuit. Neck Lace bucked at, literally, every major rodeo in the world. She made a score of appearances at the Ellensburg Rodeo where fans will long remember her athletic prowess as well as that of the great cowboys who rode, or attempted to ride, her. Neck Lace was named Champion Bareback Horse of the National Finals Rodeo (Oklahoma City, OK) in 1964, 1966, 1968, and 1970. Neck Lace joins the famed cutting horse Bosque Boy, champion barrel-racer Scamper, the fierce Kelsey bull Ought, and bucking broncs War Paint and Grated Coconut as an animal inductee to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame.

Dean Oliver

Born in Dodge City, Kansas in 1929, young Dean Oliver moved with his parents Vernon and Vesper to Nampa, Idaho in the 1930s. After the untimely death of his father, eleven-year old Dean began roping, first practicing on dairy calves and later entering rodeos and going professional as a calf roper and bulldogger. He joined the RCA is 1953. During a two decade career, from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s, Oliver garnered ten world championship buckles, winning the All-Around Championship in 1963, 1964, and 1965. His record of gross earnings stood unbroken for nearly two decades.

The durability of Oliver’s money-winning records is especially surprising because purses were low in the mid-1950s when he first began to win consistently. He possessed an expertise in the sport that still awes professional cowboys. His calf-roping technique resembled what Willard Porter calls a “chocolate-syrup smoothness. His runs on his good horses–Mickey, Vernon, and a few others–were so coordinated that it was impossible to fault him. From chute-box to tie-down, he made it look easy….” This expertise enabled Oliver to win “bunches” of rodeos consecutively, piling up huge winnings and catapulting him to the top of prize-winners.

In Ellensburg, Dean Oliver became a crowd favorite as he won the calf roping competitions in ‘62, ‘63, ‘64, and ‘71.

When he quit calf-roping, Dean Oliver remained active in rodeo on the “administrative” end of the business as the PRCA Calf Roping Director. He moved from Nampa to Boise, where he now resides.

OUGHT 

A December 1966 issue of Rodeo Sports News touted the Joe Kelsey’s Tonasket, Washington rodeo stock company as “one of the oldest and most reliable stock contracting firms in the sport of rodeo.” The Joe Kelsey Company furnished bucking stock for the Ellensburg Rodeo for more than four decades, from 1947 to 1991.

Born in Butte Montana on April 16, 1910, Joe Kelsey (1910-1985) moved with his family to Washington State’s Okanogan Valley as a young boy. Kelsey made his start in rodeo as a saddle bronc rider and founding Cowboy Turtle (predecessor to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association [PRCA]) in the late 1920s and 1930s. Among other honors, he won the Ellensburg saddle bronc riding buckle in 1945; he won the Omak Stampede saddle bronc competition in ’43 and ’44, and was inducted into the Omak Stampede Hall of Fame.

Kelsey entered the stock contracting business as an employee of Moomaw and Bernard (ERHOF Inductees in 2002), and worked alongside Moomaw for over a decade. He bought his first bucking string in 1949. “From the time on,” writes one rodeo historian, “Joe Kelsey provided top-notch bucking and roping stock for rodeos in Washington, Montana, Idaho, and western Canada,” including Pendleton, Calgary, and Ellensburg. Kelsey’s son, Joe Jr. (“Sonny”), worked in the family business from 1945 to 1991.

The Kelsey Company’s tenure at the Ellensburg Rodeo ranks them alongside ERHOF Inductees Christensen Brothers, Harry Vold, and Moomaw-Bernard Stock Contractors. The Joe Kelsey Company worked the Ellensburg Rodeo from 1947 to 1958 and then, sometimes in new partnership arrangements, supplied stock from 1983-84 and, after Joe’s death, from 1985-91.

The Kelsey Stock Company produced many famous bucking horses and bulls. The mere sound of these animals’ names would, according to one rodeo historian, “numb the heart–or the britches–of any cowboy”! Among over two dozen award-winning Kelsey bucking broncs were Widow Maker, Snake, Hell to Set, Slingshot, Set to Velvet, Velvet River, Big Sky’s Velvet, Pee Wee, White Hope, Whiz Bang, John Doe, Try Me, Brown Jug, Little Rubber Doll, Devil’s Dream, Shake ‘em Down, Hot Seat, Smuggler, Pete Taggares, Sky High, Sky Rocket, and Yukon. Kelsey’s most famous bulls were Red One, 0 (“Ought”), Geronimo, Big John, Bull #17, Bull # 53, and Velvet Hour.

Kelsey’s 0 (“Ought”) a 1997 ERHOF Animal Inductee, was named after the numerical score cowboys almost always earned after he threw them! Kelsey’s bulls and broncs earned the Columbia Circuit Horse of the Year, Calgary Stampede Outstanding Horse, and National Finals Rodeo Saddle Bronc and Bull of the Year Awards.

Two legendary Kelsey animals inducted alongside “Ought” and the Kelsey Company are the bronc “Widow Maker” and bull “Red One,” both 1970s-era buckers. Widow Maker worked two decades in the arena and was chosen to be a National Finals Rodeo bronc.

Kelsey originally purchased Red One from an Oregon rodeo school and, although he was “a little scrawny,” several cowboys thought the bull had great potential. He won the 1976 National Final Rodeo’s Top Bucking Bull award, where World Champion Donny Gay became the first cowboy to ever ride him, earning a record-tying 95-point score (this record held until 1996). In a two-year period of 1977 and ‘78, Red One was ridden only twice in 158 appearances. It is a record reflective of Kelsey’s great rodeo stock contracting company.

Fred Palmiero

Life on the farm was never boring. There was much work to be done…We had bees (honey), we hunted, we fished, we bootlegged, we worked, we lived….” Fred Palmiero, History of Kittitas County

Fred “Freddy” Palmiero (1916-2006) exemplified the volunteer spirit that fuels the Ellensburg Rodeo. In 1910 Fred’s parents, Italian immigrants John and Maria Gracia Fiorella Palmiero, settled an eighty-acre farm in the Woldale District of the Kittitas Valley. Fred was born December 6, 1916, and, alongside five siblings, spent the first seven years of his life on their Woldale farm. In 1923, the Palmieros moved to higher and better ground in the Manashtash District. There, Fred attended the two-room Cove Schoolhouse, where he mastered the English language while his parents spoke Italian at home. The family attended Ellensburg’s Saint Andrews Catholic Church at the corner of Pine and Eighth Street.

Fred worked hard on his parents’ farm, and he remembered doing everything by hand: “Cows milked, milk separated, wood sawed and chopped, garden hoed, water pumped and hauled….the only running water we had was Keach Ditch.” Like many Kittitas Valley farmers, Fred also learned the skills of a ranch cowboy and worked as a “cow herder” during summers.

Following his graduation from Ellensburg High School, Freddy recalled that he did “some rodeoing. Brahma bulls and bareback horses, then we used a loose rope for horses, as well as bulls. YaaHoo!” Ellensburg Rodeo day sheets show Palmiero competed in the wild horse race from 1935-39; in 1936 he competed in all three (Saturday, Sunday, Labor Day) wild horse races. Freddy always downplayed his rodeo skills, joking that he “never finished a bronc ride” in the Ellensburg arena. He rode bareback broncs in the 1945 Ellensburg Rodeo but was soon thrown from a bronc at Walla Walla Frontier Days. A September 5, 1945 Spokesman Review article reported Fred was “recovering from a brain concussion.”

It was apparently time for Fred Palmiero to quit rodeoing and settle down, for on October 1, 1945, he married Francis Joy Urquhart, a Burien girl he met at the Lazy F Dude Ranch. They moved to Kittitas and started a family. Fred and Joy had two sons, Francis (Frank) Ralph and Fred (Freddy) Joseph. Both attended Lourdes Academy, Kittitas High School, and Washington State University; both served in the U.S. Army. Joy worked at Mills Saddle and Togs for twenty-two years. An avid horsewoman, she raised, trained, and showed her prize-winning Palo Tequila and belonged to several riding clubs she helped to form. Fred went to work for the City of Ellensburg’s utilities division in 1951.

Palmiero’s most important contributions to the Ellensburg Rodeo came as a volunteer. The late Lee Scott, a tireless rodeo supporter and ERHOF Honoree, once described the crucial importance of rodeo volunteers: “Somebody has to chop the wood and carry the water.” Palmiero was such a man.

Beginning in 1954, Fred assisted in various capacities, most notably as an usher, or “ticket taker.” “I enjoy the opportunity to assist and working with others in the community,” he said in a 1984 Daily Record interview celebrating his thirtieth year as a volunteer usher. Fred worked under Rodeo Board Directors Jimmie Smith, Bob Neeley, and Chuck Scott. Some of his fellow volunteers were Orrie Pratt, Kurt Linder, Ernie Hadley, Jean Kuhn, Wendell Saville, Chris and Loretta Marshall, Bob and Andy Cooper, and Dee Waters. Together, Fred estimated, volunteer ushers seated “24,000 fans” per rodeo weekend. To this day, many Ellensburg Rodeo fans remember Fred working near the bucking chutes where he had once competed.

Always a talkative jokester, Freddy Palmiero was a popular volunteer known to all. His love of western apparel—“duds”—and trademark handlebar moustache brought him instant recognition. Freddie even enjoyed a very brief brush with fame, acting out a “bit part” in a Dick VanDyke movie filmed in upper Kittitas County, The Runner Stumbles.

Fred retired from the City of Ellensburg water department in 1981, after thirty years of service. But even in retirement, “I never forsook the sod,” Fred recalled. “I am a volunteer with the rodeo and other community organizations.” Fred Palmiero lived out his days with Joy on their acreage on No. 81 Road, near Kittitas. “Palmiero Park,” Fred and Joy’s gift to the city of Kittitas, stands at the corner of No. 81 Road and the Kittitas Highway. Fred died August 3, 2006, a few months shy of his 90^th birthday and only a few weeks away from the annual rodeo that he loved so well.

John Payne, ‘The One Arm Bandit’

John Payne, the “One Arm Bandit,” has had one of the most entertaining and sought-after acts in pro rodeo. He has been chosen as the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s (PRCA) “Specialty Act of the Year” twelve times. The voting for this award is done by professional rodeo cowboys, announcers, stockmen, and the specialty performers themselves, so it’s quite an honor to be recognized so many times in this way by his associates and peers.

Payne is called the “One Arm Bandit” because in 1973 he lost his right arm while working at a construction site when 7200 volts of electricity went through his body for ten seconds, and he was dead for five minutes. He was told that he should have his right leg amputated as well, but knowing he couldn’t ride a horse with one leg, he refused. Doctors told him the infection might kill him, but he took that chance to be able to ride.

As soon as he could walk again, he was training animals. He has trained a lot of animals in his life—including horses, mules, zedonks, zorses, Corrientes, Watusi longhorns, mustangs—but he has called buffalo “the meanest critter in North America.” He said the “buffalo tried to kill me almost every day for two years, and they’ve hooked me off the top of the trailer, twice, horse and all.”

He brings to the rodeo and Ellensburg a touch of the Wild West Shows that characterized our earliest rodeos. His act requires extraordinary training, horsemanship, and an appetite for daredevil danger.

He also has a healthy respect for his mule, Moe. In an interview for a video called “Horse Country USA,” Payne talked about Moe: he’s a “dirty, rotten sonofagun. He’ll run off with ya, buck ya off, he’s bucked me off three times during a performance, one time he kicked me and knocked my arm off.” He said when he got Moe he had six problems: “you couldn’t catch him, you couldn’t bridle him, you couldn’t saddle him, you couldn’t get on him, and you couldn’t ride him. And he’d run off with you if you tried.” But they have reached a mutually suspicious compromise. Payne said that “I used a horse for twenty years. I was the cowboy who said, when all the horses die, and I get tired of walking, I’ll get a mule.” But since Moe has been in the show, Payne likes how he works: “he’s surefooted on the ramp. If it rains and it’s muddy and that ol’ ramp is wet and slick, he’s really good at keeping his feet under him…I do parades and when I jump off the trailer onto asphalt, he slides on all fours. A horse would be straddle-legged. He’ll outwork two horses, but he’ll outwork two horses trying to get out of work and being a little pillbox. . . I’ve been offered $20,000 for him, but nobody could handle him but me.”

It’s this understanding of and respect for the animals he trains that makes his show so appealing. He and Moe round up buffaloes or Watusi longhorns in the arena, make them climb a steep ramp and stand on top of an eighteen-foot trailer while Payne cracks a whip with his left hand. Then the animals go quietly back down and out of the arena. Usually. Boyd Polhamus, a four-time Rodeo Announcer of the Year, said Payne “is by himself an 8 minute Wild West Show. . . If his act goes according to plan, it’s going to be awesome. If it doesn’t go as planned, it’s going to be awesome.”

And the plan has failed. He’s been knocked off his trailer during a show several times, horse and all, yet he got back up and finished his act. In fact, Ken MacRae, a roper and veterinarian who helped with the Ellensburg Rodeo for years, and is a member of the Hall of Fame board, said “I was Arena Director the first year John Payne came to Ellensburg.

In those early years, the act included Catahoula Leopard Dogs that helped get the giant horned Watusi bulls onto the trailer. The dogs were pretty tough. I believe it was also that first year that John’s horse made a misstep and fell off the trailer backwards. Horse and John both survived, and he resumed the act. John is obviously a great animal trainer and showman. We have developed a friendship over the years, and I’m proud and happy that he is going into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame.”

John Payne has a gritty, homespun outlook on life that is about as tough as the buffaloes and the mule he admires. He said “I’m a cowboy, a hardcore, redneck, Okie cowboy, through and through. . .I’m happy being that. I want to earn everything I get. . .I don’t want nothin’ easy. . . Never give up, never give up, there’s a way of doin’ everything, and when they cut my arm off, I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I can do anything I wanted to do with this hand and this arm, if I can’t do it with this hand and this arm, it don’t need done.”

The One Arm Bandit lives in Shidler, Oklahoma where he was born and raised with four brothers which he said taught him to “get out of the way or get run over.” His son and daughter now participate in some of his performances.

Buz Peth

“Buz Peth was the youngest of a family of athletically talented rodeo cowboys,” recalled Kittitas County cattleman and roper Sam Kayser in a recent interview, “but Buz took that natural athletic ability to the next level. He worked hard to master the techniques of roping and bulldogging, and he ranks among the greatest competitors in the history of Northwest rodeo.”

Dale “Buz” Peth was born into a ranch and rodeo family near Bow, Washington, in 1937. His father John was a rodeo stock contractor, brother Wick became an acclaimed bullfighting clown, and brother Jerry won the 1959 Ellensburg Steer Wrestling title.

Wick Peth

The Ellensburg rodeo’s roster of bullfighter/clowns includes the best in the business. Names like Slim Pickens, Elmer and Homer Holcomb, Jasbo Fulkerson, Wilbur Plaugher, Chuck Henson, Gene and Bobby Clark, Bob Romer, Rob Smets, Miles Hare, Loyd Ketchum, Butch Lehmkuhler. The list goes on. But the man honored by the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame is the man with the grey wig, denim shorts, striped shirt and cleated shoes, Wick Peth. His peers voted him the premier bullfighter throughout his long career. He’s known as the “father of the modern, cleated bullfighter,” He appeared at Ellensburg seven years, his first in 1955 and his last in 1982. He was inducted into the Professional Rodeo Cowboys’ Association Hall of Fame in 1979. Soon after he began his work in the arena he noted he’d be better prepared as a bullfighter if he didn’t have to “clown” earlier in the show. That only enhanced his abilities as did his use of cleated shoes, but didn’t lessen his desire to be in the best possible physical condition.

H.E. ‘DOC’ Pfenning

Dr. H. E. Pfenning helped conceive, organize, and produce the first Ellensburg Rodeo in 1923. Although many community members share responsibility for the first Ellensburg Rodeo, Pfenning’s vision, organizational skills, and hard work looms large in its history.

Trained in large-animal veterinary medicine, H. E. “Doc” Pfenning was an integral member of the 1920s Ellensburg ranching and cowboy community. Pfenning visited the roundups and “Sunday rodeos” held in the Kittitas Valley, and he dreamed of one day staging a large-scale “Wild West Show” in the town of Ellensburg. When other community members expressed an interest in this plan, Pfenning led the organizing committee. He traveled to Pendleton, Oregon to observe the staging of their famed Roundup. This background, combined with Pfenning’s wide exposure to cattle roundups and rodeos and Wild West Shows, took form in his program for the 1923 Ellensburg Rodeo.

The September 13-15, 1923, Ellensburg Rodeo featured 18 major events advertised as the “greatest Wildwest Roundup in the State.” Valley residents remembered its myriad components. Chalmer Cobain described the gala grand entry parade, bucking broncs, calf roping, relays, bulldogging, and special Indian horse racing. Cobain said the 1923 contestants were “real cowboys” not “these drugstore cowboys”! They competed in “wild horse races, stagecoach races [and] chariot races.” Howard Thomas remembered the first rodeo was “a good one” and Mrs. Lillian Pope agreed, noting, “You knew pretty much everybody that was riding in it…it really made a difference because it was more of a local show.” The Ellensburg Record was equally complimentary, reporting that the rodeo’s “Riders are Skillful and the Horses and Steers are Wild.”

By all accounts, Doc Pfenning and his committee had done a superb job.

In addition to organizing and producing the rodeo, Doc Pfenning also organized the selection and coronation of the rodeo royalty and negotiated the historic annual participation of the Yakima Indian Nation in the Ellensburg Rodeo. After doing all of this, Doc Pfenning then proceeded to announce the show. Microphones and public address systems were unheard of in 1920s Ellensburg. Using only a megaphone in Ellensburg’s large new arena, Pfenning’s voice boomed out and over the crowd of approximately 2500.

Moreover, Pfenning organized and produced the first Ellensburg Rodeo parade. Locals remember him as a leader of that parade, decked out in western duds astride his black horse Midnight. The next year Pfenning pressed local business people and townsmen to “dress western” for the rodeo, sporting hats, boots, ‘kerchiefs, and snap-button western shirts. He believed this “costuming” would please the tourists from Seattle and make the Ellensburg Rodeo even more popular.

After more than two years of immense labor, Dr. H. E. Pfenning stepped down as producer of the Ellensburg Rodeo in 1925. He left a legacy that has endured these 75 years. He is survived by his daughter Barbara Pfenning Wright, a former Ellensburg Rodeo Queen.

Slim Pickens

In the summer of 1934, teenaged California rodeo cowboy Louis Burton Lindley, Jr. had a big problem. “My father was against rodeoing and told me he didn’t want to see my name on the entry lists ever again” Lindley later recounted. Burt’s desire to be a cowboy was so strong, however, that he disobeyed his father. Traveling to a nearby rodeo, he asked the arena director if he could use an alias to enter the competition. Sizing up the young upstart’s chances in that day’s competitions, the director answered, “Son, no matter what name you use, it’ll be slim ‘pickins out there today.” Louis Burton Lindley, Jr., immediately signed up for the rodeo as “Slim Pickens,” a name he used for the next 49 years as a famed rodeo clown and Hollywood movie star.

Slim Pickens (1919-1983) was born to dairy farming parents in Kingsburg, California (near Fresno) on June 29, 1919. Although a native Californian, Slim always spoke with the strong southwestern drawl of his Texas-born father, Burton Sr., and Missouri mother, Sally Mosher Lindley. By age 4, Slim was riding his own horse. At Hanford High School, the witty teenager was active in Future Farmers of America, 4-H horse shows, and what we today call junior rodeo.

Slim started entering professional rodeos at age fifteen and, after graduating high school in 1938, joined the Cowboy Turtles Association (later called the Rodeo Cowboys Association and Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association). The 6’ 3” cowboy rode broncs and bulls and roped steers with mixed success until one night when a clown failed to show up to work a rodeo where he was competing. Pickens, whose athleticism was complemented by showmanship and a flair for humor, took the clown’s job for $5.00 and never looked back.

During the years before and after World War II, Slim Pickens became the most famous clown in North American rodeo. Bull riding was emerging as a staple rodeo event, and one of Slim’s jobs was to protect thrown cowboys from the fierce animals. Using techniques that he learned during two winters spent in Mexico, Pickens introduced a comic version of Spanish Toreador (also known as Torero) bullfighting style to North American rodeo performances. Dressed in full Spanish matador attire and wielding a red cape, he pioneered the transition of rodeo clowns to the status of professional bullfighters. Today’s rodeo bullfighters do not use the Spanish style, and Pickens remains its most accomplished practitioner in rodeo history.

The advent of World War II temporarily ended rodeo performances and many cowboys joined the Armed Services. When Slim wrote “rodeo” as his civilian occupation on his U.S. Army enlistment form, it was mistaken for “radio” and the talkative cowboy was posted at an Armed Forces Network radio station in the Midwest! At war’s end, professional rodeos resumed and Slim Pickens picked up right where he had left off.

Although he played an untitled role in the 1946 Hollywood Western Smoky, Slim continued to make his living on the rodeo road, working his way up to jobs at the San Francisco Cow Palace, Calgary Stampede, Cheyenne Frontier Days, and other premier North American rodeo venues, including Ellensburg. The Ellensburg Rodeo was the first Pacific Northwest rodeo to recognize Pickens’ talent and hire him to clown and fight bulls.

Slim Pickens worked the Ellensburg Rodeo in 1947, ’48, ’49, and ’50, and he returned in 1955. Fans cheered his Toreador bullfighting and his many arena antics. Slim, who was an animal trainer, brought his mule “Judy” to amuse the crowd. Judy would sit down on her haunches, refusing to move until Slim gave the command. “I remember how funny he looked riding that mule in the rodeo parade,” recently recalled Janet Haworth Bates, who saw Pickens in Ellensburg in 1947. “He was so tall and lanky that his boots nearly touched the ground!”

Pickens made many friends in Ellensburg and developed a devoted following among Northwest rodeo fans. But his 1955 appearance coincided with his transitioning from life on the rodeo road to an acting career. Slim had married Margaret Harmon in 1950 and they had a growing family at home—daughter Margaret, son Thomas, and step-daughter Daryle. Moreover, Slim’s bullfighting was taking a physical toll. During his two-decade rodeo career, he suffered a skull fracture, two broken legs, five broken feet, a broken collarbone, wrist, and hand, and he was gored several times. His final 1955 Ellensburg appearance included an unplanned ambulance ride to the old Ellensburg Hospital on 4t street.

Of course, Slim Pickens went on to Hollywood movie and television stardom. He joined the “Hollywood Posse”–a small, select group of rodeo cowboys and cowgirls who used their rodeo skills to work in Western-genre movies as stuntmen, actors, and actresses. Slim’s big break had been a role alongside Errol Flynn in Rocky Mountain (1950), and in 1954 he played the Sundance Kid in television’s Stories of the Century.  By the late 1950s, Slim Pickens was earning a good living playing rural characters in scores of mid-twentieth century television shows and feature movies.

On TV, he appeared on The Lone Ranger, Maverick, Daniel Boone, The Virginian, Kung Fu, and many other shows. Slim’s movie credits include Major Dundee (1965, with Charlton Heston) The Cowboys (1972, with John Wayne), and Blazing Saddles (1974). Perhaps his most famous role came when he played U. S. Air Force Major T. J. “King” Kong in Dr. Strangelove (1964). In an outrageous and unforgettable scene, Pickens’ Major Kong  mounted a hydrogen bomb and rode it like a bucking bronco to its target (and movie history)!

“I plan to retire from the picture business only when they shovel dirt in my face,” Slim once stated. “There’s no use retiring if you like what you’re doing and you’re making money.” Louis Burton Lindley, Jr.—Slim Pickens—died of a brain tumor, on Dec. 8, 1983. In addition to ERHOF, Pickens is an inductee to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame (Oklahoma City, OK), the ProRodeo Hall of Fame (Colorado Springs, CO), and the Pendleton Roundup and Hall of Fame (OR).

George Prescott

For four full decades, George Prescott, the “Voice of the Ellensburg Rodeo,” was one of the most talented and respected announcers on the Northwest and national rodeo circuit. His voice and performance demeanor exemplified the classic era of the “gentleman announcer” during the golden age of Northwest Rodeo.

George Prescott was born August 19, 1921, in Tacoma, to W. F. and Gladys (Bowen) Prescott. He was educated in Tacoma schools (graduating from Stadium High) yet spent considerable time on the nearby farms of his uncles and other family members and friends. It was there Prescott learned about horses, cattle, and calf and team roping competitions. He entered the Navy in 1938 but lost a leg in the line of duty on board the USS Hull; he was discharged from Navy in 1941 and returned home. Soon, while working as a newsman in Tacoma, he renewed his interest in roping and, subsequently, rodeo and rodeo announcing.

At the same time Prescott was honing his announcing skills, he became a successful competitor in timed rodeo event competitions. Although hindered by loss of his leg, he competed and won in calf roping, wild cow milking, and team roping contests across the Northwest. Prescott twice won buckles in Moses Lake, and in the Woodinville Rodeo. Ultimately focusing on team-roping, Prescott worked the circuit and on several occasions roped alongside the legendary Ike Rude. His announcing career began at a July 4 horse show in Sedrow Wooley when, he remembers, simply, that “Don Wood left the announcer’s box and handed me the microphone!”

He turned professional and, by the time he accepted a job with the Ellensburg Chamber of Commerce and Ellensburg Rodeo in 1949, he was already a seasoned and successful rodeo announcer.

During the next two and a half decades Prescott combined a career in public relations with an active road schedule of rodeo announcing. He worked rodeos from southern California into British Columbia. In addition to Ellensburg and Pendleton, Prescott announced rodeos in Puyallup, Toppenish, Kennewick, Lebanon (OR), Omak, Cloverdale (BC), Spokane’s Diamond Spur Rodeo and dozens more venues. Prescott’s forte was a lively speaking style combined with audience education and the demeanor of the “gentleman announcer.” This was an age of rodeo announcer greats, such as Pete Logan, Mel Lambert, and Cy Taillon (who worked Ellensburg in ’49 and who Prescott especially admired). Prescott carried his weight among these legendary characters. He used his words judiciously, adding color and an educational component to his exacting descriptions of the events taking place in the rodeo arena. “As a roper myself, I could tell the audience about the loops, saddles, riggin’, competitor techniques, and the general rules of the game,” he remembers. Prescott also improved the show by introducing ‘animal ambulances’ (horse-drawn sleds) and educating the audiences about the humane treatment of rodeo animals. George Prescott’s stately Western voice evinced the dignity and traditions of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

While he worked for the Ellensburg Chamber of Commerce from 1950-56, Prescott announced the rodeo as a “volunteer”; when he took a new job in Seattle, he returned for sixteen consecutive seasons as a contracted announcer. His twenty-one year tenure has yet to be surpassed. Prescott’s memories of the 50s and 60s rodeos are fascinating and, often, amazing. Asked for one of his most vivid memories, Prescott answered “that would have to be Larry Mahan’s 1971 wreck on Paper Doll.” As Mahan was dragged around the arena (for what “seemed like ten minutes” according to one local), Prescott kept the shocked audience accurately apprised of the situation. He talked them back to a calmer state as Mahan was loaded into an ambulance and whisked out of the arena (and out of reach of a consecutive string of All-around titles); later he informed the audience of Mahan’s medical status. Somehow, he kept the show moving. “It was an unforgettable day,” Prescott remembers.

After leaving Ellensburg in 1956, Prescott served in many important city and state governmental posts while continuing his rodeo announcing career. His helped the city of Seattle promote the 1962 World’s Fair, and he served in state government positions and as chief administrative aide to Governor Albert Rosellini. In 1967, he opened his own advertising and public relations firm in Olympia. Meanwhile he continued to announce the Ellensburg (until ’72) and Puyallup rodeos; he later announced all the Main Grandstand nighttime venues at the Puyallup Fair. He retired completely in 1990 and alternated between his Arizona and his Olympic Peninsula homes.

On the wall of his Shelton home, George Prescott displayed the numerous prize buckles and symbols of a fifty-year career in rodeo. Alongside his team-roping buckles stand the Puyallup Fair’s award to its “Voice of the Grand Old Fair.” There are also records of his PRCA Gold Card Membership and his status as a Charter Member of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Posse. There is a commemorative rifle engraved to “Puyallup’s Champion Announcer.” The Ellensburg Rodeo Board conferred its highest accolade by dedicating a 1992 performance of the Ellensburg Rodeo to George Prescott. He was inducted into the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1998.

Flint Rasmussen

Reflecting on his 30-year career as a professional rodeo clown, Flint Rasmussen stated, “I can tell you that to be a rodeo clown takes a lot of… patience, knowledge, and timing.” Rasmussen emphasizes that his famed arena style is not drawn from other rodeo clowns. “The greatest influences for my comedy come from…real-life experiences, stand-up comedians, and stage performers.”

Montanan Flint Rasmussen ranks alongside the most accomplished clowns and barrelmen in the history of professional rodeo. He earned the title of Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association “Clown of the Year” eight consecutive times and Coors “Man in the Can” honors seven times. At present, he clowns and serves as barrelman (named for the large barrel clowns use to defend themselves from bucking bulls) for Professional Bullriders Association (PBR) events across North America.

Flint was born in 1968 to Stan and Tootsie Rasmussen in Havre, Montana, and raised in nearby Chouteau. The son of a rodeo announcer, he recalls that “growing up in a cowboy household and community made me… creative, active, and appreciative of the amazing childhood I experienced.”

Flint was an All-State Football and Track star at Choteau High, and went on to compete in, and announce, sporting events and earn academic honors at the University of Montana Western in Dillon. Before graduating in history, math, and secondary Education, he worked his first rodeo as a professional barrelman in Superior, Montana, in 1987. Although he taught math and history and coached track and football at Havre High School, Flint yearned to follow the rodeo road. He became a fulltime Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) clown in 1998, working alongside fellow Montanan Loyd Ketchum (a 2004 ERHOF inductee).

There are two types of rodeo clowns. “Bullfighters” wear clown paint and costume, but their job is the dangerous business of protecting dismounted bullriders from bulls following each ride. Clowns like Rasmussen, however, work for the entire rodeo performance. They entertain the crowd with banter and specialty acts, and then serve as barrelmen, assisting the bullfighters and cowboys during the rodeo’s bullriding finale.

MacRae, retired Ellensburg Rodeo arena director, recalls, “Frank Beard introduced me to Flint (and) we ended up hiring him to clown the Ellensburg Rodeo in 2000.” Regarding his replacing the retiring Butch Lehmkuhler (2009 ERHOF Inductee), Flint recalled, “I knew the first year that Butch’s shoes were big ones to fill!”

Rasmussen immediately became an Ellensburg crowd favorite, ranking alongside the legendary Slim Pickens. Flint combined athleticism and comedy into a unique style that brought him both awe and laughter from Labor Day weekend audiences.

All rodeo aficionados agree Rasmussen revolutionized the clown’s role in the sport. One Montana newspaperman observed: “For audience members, whether they are familiar or not with Western culture….Rasmussen’s performance is surprising because it pushes the cultural boundaries of the macho cowboy world. One minute he will get the crowd singing Bon Jovi, then he might act effeminate” or perform a dance-crawl across the arena or PBR stage.

Rasmussen’s unique style is anchored by both his athleticism and his dry, sarcastic sense of humor. Ellensburg Rodeo fans had never seen anything like the Montana All-State quarterback’s ‘dance moves’ (emulating both Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley), or his ability to exactly replicate female high school cheerleader routines (without the pom poms). And Flint’s humorous banter poking fun at announcer Justin McKee and the arena cowboys also delighted the crowds.

Reflecting on his clowning style, Rasmussen notes, “I just thought it needed a new energy, a young guy who could relate and get young people to get back to rodeo.”

In 2005, Flint signed an exclusive contract with the Professional Bullriders Association, increasing his fame while simultaneously insuring an easier commute home to Montana and his young family. Rodeo fans who missed seeing Flint in traditional PRCA venues now turned to the PBR, where their favorite clown was up to many of his old tricks. “The one thing I know for certain about bulls,” Flint states drolly, “is that they all have different personalities, and some like to party a little.”

Flint and his ex-wife, PRCA barrel racer Katie Grasky, have two daughters, Shelby and Paige. Both young Montana cowgirls are talented riders and barrel racing competitors, cheered on by their proud parents.

Although a 2009 heart attack briefly sidelined Flint, he returned to the PBR and worked another decade outfitted with a heart rate monitor. Now, he is ready to pursue a less taxing and dangerous vocation in professional rodeo. He has produced and hosted pilot episodes of a live talk show called “Outside the Barrel,” and “after 30 years as a rodeo clown I’m ready to try… being more involved in production, and a little more talk-show hosting on TV.”

The loss for live rodeo fans is the rodeo television audience’s gain. But like countless North American rodeo admirers, Ellensburgers already miss Flint Rasmussen. Ken MacRae summed up their feelings: “Flint parlayed a natural good sense of humor and wit to become probably the most famous rodeo clown in the history of rodeo.”

Gary Rempel

“Cowboying was all I ever wanted to do, and all I ever did,” recalls Calgary Stampede Pickup Man Gary Rempel. Rempel jokes that he was so focused on the cowboy life, “they had a hard time keeping me in school to learn to read and write.”

Gary Rempel is lead pickup man for the Calgary Stampede stock operation, one of North America’s leading rodeo stock contracting firms. Calgary Stampede Ranch will also be inducted into ERHOF August 29, as will their prize-winning bucking bronc “Grated Coconut.”

A mounted Pickup Man’s job is to assist bronc riders in safely dismounting their bucking horses and exiting the rodeo arena following the conclusion of their rides; furthermore, Pickup Men rope and herd broncs and bulls out of the arena into chutes and holding pens so the rodeo events can flow safely and without pause.

Gary Rempel is one of the most acclaimed pickup men in the history of rodeo. Born September 5, 1951 in Elrose, Saskatchewan, Rempel grew up on the expansive Matador Ranch where, he recalls, “I was raised on horseback.” Although he became an accomplished calf and steer roper, it was the pickup man’s game that drew the young Canadian cowboy to the professional rodeo road. He first learned the trade from his father John and Alberta rodeo stock contractor Wayne Vold. In 1985, he joined the team of the legendary Calgary Stampede rodeo.

In his demanding work, Rempel personally trains and travels with six horses. Some of them have been special, like the dapple dark palomino “Cowboy” and his red roan “Rainbow.” Pickup work around broncs and bulls is demanding and dangerous, and his horses must be fast. “Speed covers up so many mistakes,” he says modestly.

“Oh, there have been a lot of wrecks,” Rempel continues. “You just hope you can get ‘em handled. In a hang-up, the quicker you can do it the better.” Rempel’s stellar reputation is built on his skill in preventing or “handling wrecks.” In 2010, he prevented a disaster by roping a 1300 pound bull just as it jumped a fence and plunged into the grandstands at the Canadian Finals in Edmonton, Alberta. Four spectators were injured, but if the bull had gone on unrestrained into the audience the results would have been disastrous.

Rempel has worked all of the major North American rodeos, including San Antonio, Houston, Denver, Nampa, Omak, Pendleton, Calgary, and Ellensburg. His skills garner him regular invitations to work the prestigious Canadian Finals, Montana and Columbia River Circuit Finals, and National Finals Rodeos. The Ellensburg Rodeo is an annual stop on Rempel’s rodeo road, and Ellensburg fans, cowboys, rodeo organizers, and volunteers admire and praise his skills and sociable ways.

Gary’s wife, Jody, a former Miss Rodeo Washington, works as a Great Falls television marketer. The two live on a 140 acre ranch near Fort Shaw, Montana.

Scott Repp

Explaining the many dimensions of her husband Scott, Jo Repp sometimes refers to his unique college degree. “When Scott graduated from Central Washington State College in 1970, he majored in Physical Education with an Art minor,” Jo notes. “That’s an unusual combination that helps us understand Scott. The PE major explains his love of sports and the need to make everything a game. The Art minor explains why he is known as the idea guy and the creative one.”

Repp was born and raised near Endicott, amid the rolling hills of the Palouse, where his father farmed wheat and bred and raced thoroughbred horses.

Scott grew up in the saddle and loved competing in school sports. He came to Ellensburg in 1966 to earn a Bachelor’s degree in Physical Education and Art Education at Central Washington State College. He married Jo Emerson and has resided here ever since, first teaching PE and Art at Easton High School and then launching a business career.

Scott’s first business venture was the ‘In Seam’—a clothing shop. Scott then began investing in residential and commercial properties. A love of history combined with his art background led to historic architectural restoration projects. Scott Repp was an important player in the historic downtown Ellensburg revival of the 1970s and 80s, and he won awards for his Davidson, 1888, and Kelleher Building projects. Scott founded and co-owned Jennison Repp Real Estate (now Windemere) and did volunteer work in myriad community projects. He and Jo raised their two daughters Rusti and Kaley, and Jo, also a CWSC graduate, taught Business Education and served as Career and Tech Ed Director at her alma mater, Ellensburg High School.

Scott’s rural Palouse childhood and love of competitive sports naturally led to involvement in the Ellensburg Rodeo. Repp joined the Ellensburg Rodeo Board in 1985 and served as President during the 1999 and 2000 rodeos. “Scott was never one to ramble on at Rodeo Board meetings,” fellow board member Joel Smith recalls. “But when he started explaining one of his well-prepared proposals, the rest of us sat quietly and listened.” During his 20-year tenure, Repp was instrumental in creation of the Gold Buckle Club, and he helped plan and execute new arena seating, roping chutes, the Western Village, and the east arena Gold Buckle Club Building projects.

The Western Village—a collection of western-themed storefronts on a replica Old West street—now serves as the formal entry point to the new northern Ellensburg Rodeo complex. The move north created ample parking and cleared up the old bottlenecks on 5^th and 6^th streets. The Western Village was the frosting on the cake, adding a historic touch to one of most important infrastructure projects in the history of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

Smith adds, “Scott not only came up with ideas and plans for major improvements to the facility and event, he showed us how to pay for his creativity.”

Repp stepped down from the rodeo board in 2005. He received the Driver Award for significant contributions to the rodeo, and he was a finalist for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) Committeeman of the Year.

During his professional and service career, Scott Repp has won the Washington State Historic Preservation Award and Ellensburg Community Service Award, and he has been named Best Realtor in Kittitas County; in 2002 Scott won induction into the CWU Athletic Hall of Fame.

The Repp family—Scott, Jo, and daughters Rusti (Jadon McClure) and Kaley—are all active in rodeo activities. Kaley was a high school breakaway and team roper and Rusti was Ellensburg Rodeo Queen and is herself an inductee to the Hall of Fame as Past Rodeo Royalty. Scott, Kaley, Rusti, and Jadon are all team ropers. Meanwhile, grandsons Waylon and Clayton McClure are growing up in a world of horses akin to that of grandfather Scott’s Palouse childhood.

Together, the Repp family hosts the annual WestStar Best of the Best Open Tie-Down and Open Team Roping. They donate the proceeds to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame. Known for their generous hospitality to PRCA cowboys, the cowboys reciprocated with a popular YouTube video produced by Drew Horner and other PRCA ropers.

The Scott Repp family was chosen Top Hands Kittitas Valley Family of the Year in 2010. In retirement, the Repps cherish their family activities, produce local roping jackpots during the summer months, and enjoy spending winter months in Arizona, where roping and horses are never far away.

HONOREES 1923-1945

Schaller Bennett, Frank Bryant, Lou Richards and Lee Scott

Inducted in 2003

When asked why he became involved in so many Ellensburg Rodeo volunteer activities, Ellensburg businessman Lee Scott used to say, “Well, someone has to chop the wood.” Schaller Bennett, Frank Bryant, Lou Richards, and Lee Scott were all “wood choppers” and they have earned recognition as ERHOF “Honorees.”

Schaller Bennett was a respected Kittitas Valley “oldtime cowboy,” rodeo competitor, and rodeo volunteer. Born into a Issaquah logging family, Bennett came to love horses while driving logging teams above Lake Sammamish. Schaller craved the “cowboy life,” and in 1925 he and wife Lula moved to the Kittitas Valley to live out that dream. They ranched on the Umptanum and Parke Creeks, building a small herd of their own. Every summer Schaller ran his cattle alongside other herds on federal land near Lion’s Rock, and the Bennetts made a tradition of summering at their Lion’s Rock cow camp.

Schaller Bennett’s rodeo career began in Issaquah bronc riding competitions. He captured the Kittitas County Bronc Riding Championship an unmatched two times, in 1927 and 1931. Schaller rodeoed throughout the Northwest in the 1920s and 1930s but was seriously injured while bulldogging in the 1938 Ellensburg Rodeo. Although retired from rodeo, Schaller kept ranching through the death of Lula in 1948 and his second wife Mary in 1974. By the time of his death in 1983, Schaller Bennett had befriended and tutored scores of young Kittitas Valley cowboys who looked to him as a role model. Schaller Bennett was one of “last of the old-time cowboys.”

Frank Bryant pioneered the crucial alliance between the Yakima Indians and the Ellensburg Rodeo from 1923 through 1940s. Bryant was a local game warden, credited with introducing Chinese “ringneck” pheasant and Yellowstone elk to the valley. Bryant lived near Liberty and spoke “Chinook Jargon” a language invented by 19^th century white and Indian Northwesterners to facilitate communication. In 1923, the founding rodeo board asked Bryant to coordinate Yakima Indian participation in the first Ellensburg Rodeo. 150 Indians attended, and by 1937 Frank Bryant could report over 100 teepees in the encampment and Indians representing over 20 tribes. “It is by far the largest gathering since the rodeo’s start,” he noted. Bryant was still on board when the rodeo resumed after a two-year World War II hiatus in 1945. He met with Yakima leaders in White Swan, securing promises of 100 mounted Indian participants in full regalia for the ’45 rodeo.

Today, the Ellensburg Rodeo is well known in part for its Indian participants. The Indians’ encampment, open to visitors, and their participation in the opening ceremony, traditional dancing, parade, and rodeo flat races and other competitive events, are essential to the Ellensburg Rodeo tradition. Frank Bryant, working in conjunction with the Yakima Indian people, shares much of the credit for the establishment and nurturing of those traditions.

Lou Richards was one of the “founding fathers” of the 1923 Ellensburg Rodeo. He worked as a Rodeo Board Director and Arena Director for over two decades during the rodeo’s formative years. Richards, a local cattleman, was there in the beginning when community members began to plan the first Ellensburg Rodeo. Under County Extension Agent Leonard Davis, Richards served as “straw boss” of hundreds of volunteers who formed the work crews that built the Kittitas County Fair and Rodeo grounds in the summer of 1923. Richards and his men built an exhibit hall and a grandstand with seating for 5000, plus fences, corrals, and a race track.

Elected to the first 1923 Ellensburg Rodeo Board, Richards in 1930 took the all-important post of Arena Director coordinating the arena action and keeping the show moving. He served until 1946. It was Richards who helped to plan and coordinate the array of fast-moving and entertaining rodeo events, races, and contract acts that characterize the Ellensburg Rodeo to this day. In 1937, Richards led the Ellensburg Rodeo across the “picket line” of the Cowboy Turtles’ (precursor to today’s Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association), when the professional cowboys went out on strike. In ’38, he agreed to some of the Turtles’ demands and welcomed them, noting “It’s like a homecoming to see all the boys back.” Lou Richards served as Arena Director until 1946, leaving one of the longest and most distinguished service records in the history of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

Lee Scott (1891-1983) was an energetic and respected local businessman who became a tireless worker for the Ellensburg Rodeo. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1891, Lee and wife Anne moved to Ellensburg in 1912 to buy and operate what would become Model Laundry and Cleaners. A tireless promoter and booster, Lee Scott joined the Ellensburg Rodeo Board in 1927 and served through 1935; he remained active in the rodeo the rest of his life.

Among Lee Scott’s many rodeo chores was the coordination of downtown businessmen and service organizations in support and marketing of the rodeo. For example, Scott helped begin the practice of businessmen dressing in western clothes and selling and wearing “rodeo pins” each rodeo season; to “enforce” this practice, Lee formed a “Sheriff’s Posse” akin to the “Kangaroo Court” and “Chamber Cowboys” of the modern era. Lee Scott also organized the annual rodeo dance. Lee Scott’s son Chuck served on the Rodeo Board from 1968-1982 (President ’72-’73) and granddaughter Kelly Scott Mills was 1969 Ellensburg Rodeo Queen.

Lee Scott “chopped a lot of wood” in support of the Ellensburg Rodeo. Indeed, Scott and his contemporaries Schaller Bennett, Frank Bryant, and Lou Richards helped build the volunteer tradition upon which the rodeo was, and still is, solidly based.

HONOREES 1923-1945

Schaller Bennett, Frank Bryant, Lou Richards and Lee Scott

Inducted in 2003

When asked why he became involved in so many Ellensburg Rodeo volunteer activities, Ellensburg businessman Lee Scott used to say, “Well, someone has to chop the wood.” Schaller Bennett, Frank Bryant, Lou Richards, and Lee Scott were all “wood choppers” and they have earned recognition as ERHOF “Honorees.”

Schaller Bennett was a respected Kittitas Valley “oldtime cowboy,” rodeo competitor, and rodeo volunteer. Born into a Issaquah logging family, Bennett came to love horses while driving logging teams above Lake Sammamish. Schaller craved the “cowboy life,” and in 1925 he and wife Lula moved to the Kittitas Valley to live out that dream. They ranched on the Umptanum and Parke Creeks, building a small herd of their own. Every summer Schaller ran his cattle alongside other herds on federal land near Lion’s Rock, and the Bennetts made a tradition of summering at their Lion’s Rock cow camp.

Schaller Bennett’s rodeo career began in Issaquah bronc riding competitions. He captured the Kittitas County Bronc Riding Championship an unmatched two times, in 1927 and 1931. Schaller rodeoed throughout the Northwest in the 1920s and 1930s but was seriously injured while bulldogging in the 1938 Ellensburg Rodeo. Although retired from rodeo, Schaller kept ranching through the death of Lula in 1948 and his second wife Mary in 1974. By the time of his death in 1983, Schaller Bennett had befriended and tutored scores of young Kittitas Valley cowboys who looked to him as a role model. Schaller Bennett was one of “last of the old-time cowboys.”

Frank Bryant pioneered the crucial alliance between the Yakima Indians and the Ellensburg Rodeo from 1923 through 1940s. Bryant was a local game warden, credited with introducing Chinese “ringneck” pheasant and Yellowstone elk to the valley. Bryant lived near Liberty and spoke “Chinook Jargon” a language invented by 19^th century white and Indian Northwesterners to facilitate communication. In 1923, the founding rodeo board asked Bryant to coordinate Yakima Indian participation in the first Ellensburg Rodeo. 150 Indians attended, and by 1937 Frank Bryant could report over 100 teepees in the encampment and Indians representing over 20 tribes. “It is by far the largest gathering since the rodeo’s start,” he noted. Bryant was still on board when the rodeo resumed after a two-year World War II hiatus in 1945. He met with Yakima leaders in White Swan, securing promises of 100 mounted Indian participants in full regalia for the ’45 rodeo.

Today, the Ellensburg Rodeo is well known in part for its Indian participants. The Indians’ encampment, open to visitors, and their participation in the opening ceremony, traditional dancing, parade, and rodeo flat races and other competitive events, are essential to the Ellensburg Rodeo tradition. Frank Bryant, working in conjunction with the Yakima Indian people, shares much of the credit for the establishment and nurturing of those traditions.

Lou Richards was one of the “founding fathers” of the 1923 Ellensburg Rodeo. He worked as a Rodeo Board Director and Arena Director for over two decades during the rodeo’s formative years. Richards, a local cattleman, was there in the beginning when community members began to plan the first Ellensburg Rodeo. Under County Extension Agent Leonard Davis, Richards served as “straw boss” of hundreds of volunteers who formed the work crews that built the Kittitas County Fair and Rodeo grounds in the summer of 1923. Richards and his men built an exhibit hall and a grandstand with seating for 5000, plus fences, corrals, and a race track.

Elected to the first 1923 Ellensburg Rodeo Board, Richards in 1930 took the all-important post of Arena Director coordinating the arena action and keeping the show moving. He served until 1946. It was Richards who helped to plan and coordinate the array of fast-moving and entertaining rodeo events, races, and contract acts that characterize the Ellensburg Rodeo to this day. In 1937, Richards led the Ellensburg Rodeo across the “picket line” of the Cowboy Turtles’ (precursor to today’s Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association), when the professional cowboys went out on strike. In ’38, he agreed to some of the Turtles’ demands and welcomed them, noting “It’s like a homecoming to see all the boys back.” Lou Richards served as Arena Director until 1946, leaving one of the longest and most distinguished service records in the history of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

Lee Scott (1891-1983) was an energetic and respected local businessman who became a tireless worker for the Ellensburg Rodeo. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1891, Lee and wife Anne moved to Ellensburg in 1912 to buy and operate what would become Model Laundry and Cleaners. A tireless promoter and booster, Lee Scott joined the Ellensburg Rodeo Board in 1927 and served through 1935; he remained active in the rodeo the rest of his life.

Among Lee Scott’s many rodeo chores was the coordination of downtown businessmen and service organizations in support and marketing of the rodeo. For example, Scott helped begin the practice of businessmen dressing in western clothes and selling and wearing “rodeo pins” each rodeo season; to “enforce” this practice, Lee formed a “Sheriff’s Posse” akin to the “Kangaroo Court” and “Chamber Cowboys” of the modern era. Lee Scott also organized the annual rodeo dance. Lee Scott’s son Chuck served on the Rodeo Board from 1968-1982 (President ’72-’73) and granddaughter Kelly Scott Mills was 1969 Ellensburg Rodeo Queen.

Lee Scott “chopped a lot of wood” in support of the Ellensburg Rodeo. Indeed, Scott and his contemporaries Schaller Bennett, Frank Bryant, and Lou Richards helped build the volunteer tradition upon which the rodeo was, and still is, solidly based.

Rodeo Grandmas

The Rodeo Grandmas of Ellensburg, Washington–Janis Anderson, Judy Golladay, Peggy Minor Hunt, Lorraine Plass, and Chloe Weidenbach–were all Kittitas Valley ranch women when they filmed a series of 1990s television commercials for Washington Mutual Bank of Seattle. The bank was launching a new advertising campaign called “That’s Different” aiming to use regional human interest stories to attract attention. When the idea of an “off-beat” commercial about grandmas and their activities arose, Jim Walker, of the McCann Erickson/Seattle Ad Agency who produced the commercials for Washington Mutual, mentioned it to his friend Arley Harrel, a Seattle attorney who grew up in the Kittitas Valley. 

Harrel suggested the bank use Kittitas Valley ranch women for the commercial, and his sister Jan assisted the McCann Erickson Advertising Agency when they arrived in Ellensburg in 1993 to interview twenty grandmothers. After much deliberation, and two separate casting calls, they chose Anderson, Golladay, Hunt, and Plass. Weidenbach, Plass’s daughter, who traveled with ladies from the beginning, became a Rodeo Grandma five years later after Golladay’s passing.

At the heart of the filmed Washington Mutual commercial was the fun-loving notion of older women (the four were aged from 52 to 82) riding the range and “Keeping the Northwest safe for truth, justice, and FREE CHECKING”! The bank dubbed the Ellensburg quartet the “Rodeo Grandmas.” Astride their horses and decked out in full western attire, the Rodeo Grandmas defended the traditions of the Old West, keeping “bad bankers” on the run and making sure the “good guys and gals” won the day. The commercial first aired on January 17, 1994, and Northwesterners immediately liked it and talked about it. The commercial caught fire.

In later years, the “Rodeo Grandmas” filmed two follow-up commercials for Washington Mutual. The second was filmed in Kittitas County in Caribou Canyon near the Colockum and the other in Los Angelos, CA. Meanwhile, after the first commercial and with an Associated Press story written by Aviva L. Brant in the Yakima Bureau and a photo by Molly Morrow that went out on the wire on April 17, 1994, the Grandmas’ phones were ringing, and they were invited to make what turned out to be scores of personal appearances. Accompanied by their friend, manager and photographer Molly Morrow, they became celebrities, known for their western lifestyle and skills at riding horses, performing roping tricks, yodeling, storytelling, and working with and roping cattle.

Much of the success of Washington Mutual’s campaign was due to choosing four women who were authentic cowgirls. Janis Capezzoli Anderson was born and grew up in a ranching family in Standish, California. She and sister Joanne helped their parents with ranch chores–working and branding cattle and also herding sheep and doing agricultural work. “My dad didn’t have any sons and so my sister and I became the boys of the family,” Janis told journalist Hanoch McCarty. “My dad called me ‘Toughie’ and he taught me how to ride. Horses have always been in my blood.”

Janis Capezzoli married Jerry Anderson (also a roper and ERHOF inductee) and her daughters Mary Minor and Lori Fishburn attended school here and married local men. Janis has three grandsons, one granddaughter and one great grandson. In years past, Janis and Jerry assisted her daughter and son-in-law Mary and Brent Minor in working their ranch, and her grandchildren include NFR multi-finalist team ropers Brady and Riley Minor. A team roper herself, Anderson has competed and won prize money at roping jackpots, including a second place at Cave Creek, Arizona.  “Rodeo is very dear to me and I have wonderful memories of riding in the Grand Entry with the Rodeo Grandmas,” she recalls. “I rode with a great sense of honor and pride.”

Peggy Minor Hunt came to Ellensburg from the small town of Thoeny, Montana with her family at the age of four, and grew up on her parents’ ranch on Wilson Creek, ranching, riding horses, and roping.  Peggy (previously inducted to ERHOF as a member of the Minor Family) was a 1947 Ellensburg Rodeo Princess.  She married Gerald Hunt, and together they worked rodeos in the US and Canada when they were not ranching. Peggy and Gerald Hunt raised four children: Wayne Hunt, Kenneth Hunt, Sheri Hunt Wippel, and Kristine Hunt Olson, whose children made Peg a “Rodeo Grandma.”

When she was a young woman, Peg bought a trick riding saddle from famed trick roper Monte Montana (also an ERHOF inductee), and with her horse, Pepper, was in business as a professional trick rider and roper. Peg Hunt’s trick riding included the Hippodrome Stand and the dangerous Cossack Drag (also called the “Death Drag”) which involves hooking one’s right foot in the stirrup and laying out over the left side of the horse with one’s head almost to the ground.  To trick riding, she also added trick roping and would perform the “flat loop, Wedding Ring, Texas Skip and jump through” which involved standing on a horse, twirling a rope, and jumping through the loop. There is a picture in the Ellensburg Public Library’s archives showing her spinning four loops at once: one with each arm, one from her raised right foot, and one from her teeth. It was Peg’s ranch and rodeo background and her rope skills that lassoed her position as a Rodeo Grandma in 1993.

“The sky is my ceiling and the ground is my carpet,” cowgirl Judy Golladay once reflected. She was born Judy Hastings in Everett, Wa and grew up on her grandparents’ western Washington farm. Judy first learned to ride as a child on a borrowed donkey, and she bought her first horse with money she earned picking strawberries. Soon she was racing barrels and pole-bending with western Washington riding clubs and in playdays.

In 1968, Judy moved east to Colockum Springs Ranch, in the northeast corner of the Kittitas Valley. She bred and raised horses and trained cattle dogs (later a crowd favorite at the Grandmas’ appearances). In 1979, she married Max Golladay, a former Kittitas County Commissioner. Judy and Max had a foster daughter, Peggy Mead of Lake Stevens and two grandchildren.

Judy had been hiring out as a cowhand, riding for the famed Schnebly Bar Balloon Ranch (also ERHOF inductees) and other area ranchers. She could be seen moving cattle with her three well trained cow dogs, Tar, Quil and Jude.  She formed the Sage Scrappers, her crew of veteran lady cowhands who worked and rounded up cattle Peg Hunt said Judy “just loved to ride up there on the high range. She said she was near God up there.” And former Ellensburg Rodeo Board
member Brad Fitterer noted Judy was “a really talented horsewoman who understood cattle and always had a smile for people.”

Judy Golladay died of breast cancer on August 16, 1998 at age 57. She fought the disease to end, evoking the spirit of a saying she loved—“Get western and don’t weaken.” Her wish was to beat the disease and then help and give inspiration to others who were suffering from the same affliction. The 1998 Labor Day performance of the Ellensburg Rodeo was dedicated to the Rodeo Grandmas.

At 82 in 1994, Lorraine Plass was the oldest of Rodeo Grandmas and became their story teller. A native Nebraskan and Coloradan, Plass had a long history of riding, roping, and chasing down cows.  She met her husband George at the Denver National Western Stock Show in 1928, and they had two daughters, Betty Swisher and Chloe Weidenbach. Daughter Chloe became a talented roper and Queen of the Adams County, Colorado Rodeo. Chloe married rancher Eldon Weidenbach and settled in the Kittitas Valley in 1972. Chloe and Eldon had four children, Gwen Green, Wade Weidenbach, Barbara Sheldon and Chris Weidenbach along with 11 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. Lorraine and George joined them in the Kittitas Valley in 1975 and helped out on their 800 acre ranch. At the time the Rodeo Grandmas gained popularity, Lorraine had nine grandchildren and nineteen great-grandchildren.

The Grandmas’ manager and photographer Molly Morrow said that Plass was “funnier than Heck,” and Lorraine herself said that at the Grandmas’ performances, “Judy takes her cow dogs, Peggy puts on her rope tricks, Janis ropes, and I just open by big mouth.”  This was her way of saying that one of her skills was yodeling. In her green fringed-leather jacket, plaid shirt and red neckerchief, faded jeans, and a felt “flat top” weathered cowboy hat, she looked like the grandma lovers of the West wish they had.

As noted, the Rodeo Grandmas of Ellensburg, Washington, enjoyed popularity that spanned far beyond their Washington Mutual Bank commercials.  For nearly a decade, they traveled across the Pacific Northwest and United States. They were special guests at the grand opening of the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas. The Rodeo Grandmas appeared at conferences on aging with Senator Orrin Hatch and his wife Elaine, fundraisers, fairs, rodeos, festivals, parades, schools, commercial promotions, retirement homes, and hospitals on behalf of the bank as well as their individual group. They appeared in the Ellensburg Rodeo. Accompanied by Molly Morrow, the Grandmas were also featured on radio broadcasts and regional and national television programs, including the “CBS News This Morning,” “Entertainment Tonight,” the “Rosie O‘Donnell Show” and NBC’s “Today” show. They produced a line of “Rodeo Grandma” merchandise and even wrote a cookbook.

A funny thing happened to the Rodeo Grandmas of Ellensburg, Washington, on Interstate 90 in the mid-1990s. Journalist Hanoch McCarty recounts the story of how the Grandmas, who had become media personalities after filming a series of popular Washington Mutual Bank commercials, were driving home from SeaTac Airport after a bank appearance in Salt Lake City, Utah. The ladies, with their manager Molly Morrow driving the van, encountered a huge traffic jam that formed a bumper-to-bumper standstill near Snoqualmie Pass.

The Grandmas were sitting patiently in the van when they heard a tap at the window. “Are you the Rodeo Grandmas?,” a driver who had gotten out of an adjacent car asked them. They answered yes. “IT’S THE RODEO GRANDMAS!,” the woman then yelled out to the surrounding cars. “IT’S REALLY THEM!” Instantly, folks left their vehicles and gathered around the Grandmas’ van, chatting and wishing them well. The traffic jam had turned into a freeway autograph party.

As noted, the great popularity of their 1994 Washington Mutual commercial set the Rodeo Grandmas’ phones ringing with dozens of requests for personal appearances. Inexperienced in their new role as media stars, the Grandmas–Lorraine Plass, Peggy Minor Hunt, Janis Anderson, Judy Golladay, and Chloe Weidenbach, asked their friend Molly Morrow, a local business woman and award-winning rodeo photographer, to act as their manager.

The ladies formed an LLC, filed their own Washington State brand (Rocking RG), and secured their Rodeo Grandma Trademark.  Tacoma-based attorney (and Kittitas Valley rancher) Bill Viert’s guidance and counsel was invaluable to the troupe. Tracy O’Day from the O’Day Group in Seattle was their first publicist, and in later years Lois Rogers from Washington Mutual Bank arranged bank appearances, media interviews, commercials and travel. Dorothy Wilhelm, a Northwest celebrity speaker and television and radio host, became a great friend, interviewer, and on-stage working partner.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, the Rodeo Grandmas became national celebrities. They appeared at regional festivals, parades, schools, commercial promotions, hospitals, and in the Ellensburg Rodeo, and were known for their western lifestyle and skills at riding horses, performing roping tricks, yodeling, storytelling, and working with and roping cattle. “We’re having a ball. We’re having a blast with this,” Judy Golladay told one writer. “When (folks) recognize us, they start grinning and grinning and grinning (and) pretty soon they’re chuckling. They really enjoyed watching us on that commercial.”

The Grandmas appeared on regional and national radio broadcasts and television programs, including the “CBS News This Morning,” “Entertainment Tonight,” the “Rosie O‘Donnell Show” and NBC’s “Today” show. One of their most widely-read interviews was with journalist Hanoch McCarty, author of Chicken Soup for Grandparent’s Soul. And the Rodeo Grandmas developed a line of merchandise–neckerchiefs, lariats, t-shirts, and tote bags–that they sold at their appearances. They even wrote a cookbook titled Good Lookin’ Cookin With the Rodeo Grandmas.

The Rodeo Grandmas’ performances varied in length and components, depending on the audience and the venue. Indoors, Molly Morrow would begin by showing short film clips of the bank commercials and television interviews, and then introduce the Grandmas. The women talked with the audience about their cowgirl lives and answered questions. Each possessed skills that became part of the performance. Peg was a trick roper, while Janis and Judy expertly lassoed a “roping dummy” astride “Handsome Jack”, a life-sized paint horse with a calf on a track they brought with them. Lorraine turned out to be a real entertainer, regaling the audiences with western tales and teaching them how to yodel.

Appearing in an arena, the women demonstrated their horsemanship, while Peg performed her rope trick repertoire and the Grandmas roped real cattle. In one performance of the Ellensburg Rodeo, Janis’ team-roping “rodeo grandsons”–pre-teens Brady and Riley Minor–became part of the show. Judy’s crowd-pleasers were her cow dogs Tar, Quill, and Jude.  Judy would show the audience how the dogs would work off hand and voice signals to simulate hunting up cattle.

Judy Golladay’s 1998 death (at age 57) from cancer was met with extreme sadness and she was mourned throughout cattle country. At the time, local businessman and rodeo board member Brad Fitterer noted that Galloway and the Grandmas “have come to represent not only Washington Mutual but also the Ellensburg Rodeo and Kittitas County.”  Judy’s empty saddle was eventually filled by Lorraine’s daughter Chloe Weidenbach. A seasoned cowgirl in her own right, Chloe was already a member of the grandma entourage, accompanying her mother and wrangling the Rodeo Grandmas’ horses and stock. Chloe’s role in the performances featured her horsemanship and roping skills. “I’ve learned to put my heart into what I’m doing,” she later reflected.

Molly Morrow has many wonderful memories of the Grandmas’ road trips and television appearances. They were good improvisers, and on the Rosie O’Donnell Show Grandma Judy coaxed the host into trying her hand at lassoing the mechanical calf on a track while seated on their life-size stationary horse “Handsome Jack.” “And when she (O’Donnell) actually roped the thing,” Morrow laughs, “the live television audience went absolutely crazy with cheers and applause!”

Morrow says that, around 2004, the Grandmas began to reduce the number of their appearances and return to their daily lives. Lorraine Plass passed away at 94 on October 20, 2006, and Peggy Minor Hunt passed away at 86 on May 25, 2014, leaving Janis Anderson and Chloe Weidenbach as the remaining Rodeo Grandmas of Ellensburg, Washington. Both will be present at the induction banquet with their families and those of Judy, Peg, and Lorraine.

Looking back on the decade when they were in the public eye, we can ask what it was about the Rodeo Grandmas that so captured the public’s imagination? Peg Minor Hunt probably hit the nail on the head when she said in 1998, “Something about being a grandma and being up on a horse seems to be the attraction.” Hall of Fame board member Joe Powell agrees: “Although in Ellensburg it’s pretty common to see grandmas riding and roping, that image of active grandmas on the ranch struck a chord with viewers, and the grandmas were instantly famous.”

And while fusing mythic “wild west” images with those of venerable elders, the Rodeo Grandmas also became role models and spokespersons for their generation of senior citizens. Janis Anderson and Chloe Weidenbach spoke often of the extra energy and feeling that horses added to their lives, and Lorraine said that the Grandmas’ horseback riding “builds your muscles, expands your chest, makes you breathe more deeply…it’s a good clean life.” Peg Minor Hunt told a reporter, “You have to have something to get up for in the morning. When you sit in the rocking chair, you don’t get anywhere.”

“I think I was born to be a Rodeo Grandma,” Peg continued. “Everything in my life seemed to be aimed in this direction. I knew that something special was going to happen in my life, and look, here it is!”

Charles Sampson

Charles Sampson’s bullriding career earned him one million dollars, a world championship, and a score of circuit and local championship buckles; it also brought him two broken legs wired together by screws, pins, and metal plates, a lacerated ear and cracked skull, and a broken wrist, ankle, and sternum. Reflecting on those injuries, Sampson stated, “People ask me how I survived those wrecks, and I tell them I don’t have a clue. They ask me why I keep riding after I get hurt. I was on my deathbed, and I walked away. I guess God didn’t want me to quit.”

Charles Sampson ranks among the top bull riders in the long history of the Ellensburg Rodeo. Sampson won Ellensburg bullriding championship buckles in 1981 and 1984, and he appears on the cover of John Ludtka’s The Tradition Lives On: A Seventy-five Year History of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

Schnebly Family

The descendants of pioneer Ellensburg newspaperman David J. Schnebly constitute a literal “Who’s Who” of the Ellensburg Rodeo and Kittitas County Fair history. This respected Kittitas Valley family boasts among its ranks five rodeo and fair board members and ten rodeo queens and princesses. Since the Ellensburg Rodeo’s 1923 beginning, the Schneblys have served the Ellensburg Rodeo in jobs ranging from chute boss to pickup man, Arena Director, Rodeo Board members, PRCA competitors, and rodeo court royalty. David J. Schnebly (b. 1818) was a Marylander whose ancestors had migrated to America from Zurich, Switzerland in 1750.

Jim Shoulders

Five-time All-Around Champion cowboy Jim Shoulders was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he graduated from East Central High School in 1946. Shoulders remembers childhood visits to his grandparents’ farm, where he gained the expertise working cattle and riding horses that would soon take him down the rodeo road. He began rodeoing in 1943 in Oiltown, OK, and, during a career that spanned three decades won seven world titles in bullriding and four in bareback. These, combined with his five All-Arounds, earned Jim Shoulders an amazing record of sixteen all-around titles.

Shoulders’ Ellensburg career began when he won the bull riding in 1950. He won the bulls again in 1957 and in the same rodeo secured the Ellensburg All-Around title.

At the national level, Shoulders brought a new degree of notoriety to rodeo when Sports Illustrated featured him in late 50s photographic essay (this was the first-ever feature on a rodeo rider in that magazine). He also set a trend for the rodeo man-turned businessman pattern that was to follow him. From his ranch in Henryetta, Oklahoma, he diversified by giving up roughstock riding for rodeo production and stock contracting (the infamous Tornado was Shoulders’ bull). In addition, he worked at advertising and promotion, documentary film-making, and opened one of the world’s first “rodeo schools” to train a new generation of cowboys.

The Ellensburg Rodeo is fortunate to have hosted a cowboy who, in the words of late National Cowboy Hall of Fame historian Willard Porter, was a “top rough-string rider” as well as a “thoughtful professional and serious businessman who took the rodeo game a step further than the majority of contestants.”

Jan Smith

The rodeo timer’s job is to accurately provide times for events, even those timed electronically, in case of a breakdown. As John Guddat wrote in a 2002 Daily Record article about Jan Smith and Nell Henderson, “In this day and age of electronics, glitches and malfunctions happen, but at the Ellensburg Rodeo, if a backup is needed, they have two.”

A fraction of a second can mean thousands of dollars and a national ranking to a professional rodeo cowboy or cowgirl. “While thousands of [Ellensburg Rodeo] fans in the stands look to the scoreboard at the east end of the arena for the official time,” Guddat writes, “Henderson and Smith are in the announcer’s booth with stopwatches” in hand.

Jan Smith first came to the Ellensburg Rodeo in 1986 and served until 2012. An Okanogan and Brewster, Washington, native now residing in Omak, Jan recalls her husband Dave Smith as her “cowboy sweetheart.”

During the 1920s and ‘30s, during the early years of Ellensburg Rodeo, Laurel Burchard Smith served as an usher and ticket taker, attired in the western-style silk shirts and neckties he always wore at rodeo time. Laurel also played clarinet in the Ellensburg “Cowboy Band,” a group of marching musicians who entertained rodeo fans back in the days before public address systems and the use of records

Laurel Burchard Smith thus began a volunteer tradition carried on by his son James Robert “Jimmie” Smith. A graduate of EHS, Central, and the University of Idaho in music education, Jimmie led a college jazz combo called the Blues Chasers and taught music in the Ellensburg public schools (1939-43). Earlier, at age 17, he had become conductor of the Cowboy Band, leading the popular local musicians in the parade and at each rodeo performance from 1934-43.

Jimmie Smith’s 1939 marriage to Jean Johnson brought a strong cowboy component to the Smith family tree. Jean’s mother was descended from the Burroughs, late nineteenth century cattle ranchers who settled and worked the northeast corner of the Kittitas Valley. After service as an Army Captain in the Pacific Theater of World War II, Jimmie Smith returned home to found “NorKem” (renamed “SmithKem”) and entered the growing fertilizer and pesticide application business. He continued his involvement in the Ellensburg Rodeo, volunteering as an official event timer. He treated the stock barns’ hornet and fly infestations, cleaned the grandstands, and worked the rodeo track and arena using SmithKem trucks, tractors, sprayers, and pressure hose equipment. Jimmie also served as an Ellensburg Rodeo Board member (1957).

 Jimmie and Jean’s son Joel and his wife Marie continued the Smith family’s involvement in the rodeo; so too did Jimmie and Jean’s daughter Laurel Jean (Laurie). Jimmie’s advice to Joel to find a cause he had a passion to serve came to fruition as teen-aged Joel accompanied his dad when he timed events alongside the legendary announcer George Prescott (1998 ERHOF Inductee). “It was pretty special for a kid to be that close to Prescott and all those rodeo cowboys and volunteers,” Joel recalls. He was the announcer booth “go-fer,” running for pop and helping with grounds-keeping duties.

After military service in Vietnam, Joel returned home to join the family business and was elected to the Rodeo Board of Directors in 1981, serving until 2007. Joel coordinated contestant services and relations, grounds maintenance, the parade, sound systems, and more. Like his grandfather and dad, Joel was a musician. He took his experience fronting an early 1960s EHS rock and roll band (“The Invaders”) and working as a concert technician in Europe and Africa into the Ellensburg Rodeo Arena when he produced a series of country music concerts between 1987 and 2001.  The concert series brought world-famous artists–Tanya Tucker, Tim McGraw, Glen Campbell, Oak Ridge Boys, Rodney Crowell, Tim McGraw, Martina McBride, and many others–to the Ellensburg Rodeo Arena. In 2002, Joel produced the first Saturday night “Xtreme Bulls” event, and Ellensburg joined the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association) bullriding tour in 2003. Saturday night bullriding has been a sellout ever since, becoming a popular Ellensburg Rodeo spectacle and a major source of revenue.

Scott Repp, a 2007 ERHOF inductee, served on the Rodeo Board of Directors with Joel for 20 years and is a close friend. He recalls Joel was an extremely “hard-working, detailed, organized, and prepared” Director who “showed a real passion” for the Ellensburg Rodeo. “His commitment was year-round, and he never missed a work party.” Repp stresses Smith’s pioneering role in making “Xtreme bullriding” a major component of the Ellensburg Rodeo and a national brand of the PRCA. “Joel brought PRCA bullriding to a new level.”

Joel received the Driver Family Award for Ellensburg Rodeo service in 2002, and in 2007 the PRCA honored him with their most prestigious award for local rodeo board volunteers, naming him “Committeeman of the Year.” One of the founders of the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame Association, Joel now serves as ERHOF President.

Marie Rogers Smith has worked alongside Joel since he joined the rodeo board, and has not missed a rodeo in 30 years. She was his partner in managing the concert series, and her other jobs have included pressure washing the grandstands, cooking for and co-hosting the post-rodeo “Appreciation Dinners,” handling the rodeo President’ s wife’s many duties, building and maintaining the Western Village barn-wood flower boxes, and chairing the Maynard Linder Award committee. Marie is also a member of the ERHOF board and spearheads the annual arts fundraiser; she coordinates dozens of local artists in creating rodeo-themed boot, hat, skull, guitar, and, this year, “Hides of Fame” art objects earning over $150,000.00 for the ERHOF permanent museum fund.

Joel and Marie’s and Laurie and Andy’s children Austin (Aubrey), Damian (Jamie), Ryan, Brady (Leah), Kari and grandchildren Kaelynn, Halle, Judah, Micha, Ashley, Ellie, Tate, Crue, and Mallory constitute the seventh and eighth generations of this Kittitas Valley Pioneer Rodeo Family.

“When you’re a volunteer,” Joel reflects, “your kids become volunteers too.” Austin and Damian Smith started their rodeo chores as youngsters helping Joel and Marie painting, picking up trash, and pressure washing the grandstands every rodeo weekend. Austin was a founding consultant to the ERHOF art fund auction, while Damian was official photographer; both created and won awards for art objects they created for the annual fundraiser, from “Boots of Fame” to the present.

As they approach the 100-year anniversary of their involvement in the Ellensburg Rodeo, Smith family members continue their volunteerism and hard work. Jimmie Smith’s advice to his children to “give back to the community” has proven as fruitful as he envisioned.

Inducted in 2006

Spirit of the Trail Night Pageant

Kenny Stanton

Kenny Stanton was one of the world’s finest rough stock (bareback and saddle bronc and bullriding) riders. Fifty-nine year old Stanton, of Battle Mountain, Nevada, was honored by the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame at its 2000 induction banquet. “He was selected by our committee not only for his outstanding success at Ellensburg’s Rodeo, but because of his tremendous riding record while facing major physical challenges,” Mike Allen, Hall of Fame board president and founder, said. Stanton won the all-around buckle in Ellensburg in both 1963 and l965, and went away with a bareback title in ’63 and bull riding championship in 1976. He recently recalled his winning bull ride in the Ellensburg area in 1976. “It was a two head contest and in the second (go-round) I drew a (Harry) Vold bull. It was small, yellow but I don’t remember its number. It (the win) was especially important for me because I had had injuries a while back.” Actually, his career had ended at age 28 due to injury. He only ventured back in ’76 to some area rodeos. He also won Pendleton’s bull riding that year. Ken Stanton’s career was cut short due to the problems with his feet which resulted in amputation procedures.

Mabel Strickland

Reminiscing about the early days of the Ellensburg Rodeo, the late rancher and bronc rider Ben Ferguson vividly remembered a trick riding performance by cowgirl Mabel Strickland. In a 1970s tape-recorded interview for the Ellensburg Public Library oral history project, Ferguson recalled that during the 1926 Ellensburg Rodeo Strickland actually jumped her horse over an automobile that had been driven with passengers into the arena for that purpose. There were “three or four men in the back seat” of the car, the old cowboy recalled. “Mabel backed off and went and jumped that car on that horse.” Fifty years later, Ferguson was still awed by Mabel Strickland’s equestrian skills.

Using skills they honed on the Western cattle ranches during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an elite group of cowgirls played an important role in the early history of North American rodeo.

Bob Swaim

A good “Secretary” is essential to a first-class rodeo, and Bob Swaim cemented the Ellensburg Rodeo’s reputation on a basis of efficiency, honesty, and hospitality.

Born in southwestern Minnesota in 1930, Bob Swaim moved West during the Depression, first to Los Angeles, and then to Oregon in 1938. Swaim matured in the rodeo country of northeastern Oregon and the Palouse—Madras, John Day, Pendleton, and Lewiston, Idaho. He went to work as a cowboy at age 13 and joined the RCA (Rodeo Cowboys Association, predecessor to today’s PRCA) in 1949. His first professional rodeo competition was in Warm Springs, Oregon.

Thomas Family

The children of William “Sagebrush Bill” and Lusetta (Cleveland) “Bessie” Thomas were working cowboys and cowgirls who bridged the gap between the “Sunday Rodeos” of the early twentieth century Kittitas Valley and the world of the modern professional rodeo cowboy. The “Thomas Boys” and their descendants loom large in the history of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

William Thomas was born in 1860 in North Carolina and raised and educated (at Roan College) in Tennessee. He followed the carpenter’s trade through Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio to Washington State, where he went to work for the Northern Pacific Railroad. He arrived in the Kittitas Valley in 1886 and, by 1893, had purchased the Naneum district ranch which he would turn into a substantial holding (3100 acres and 500 head) called Sunnybrook Farm. In 1895 “Sagebrush Bill” Thomas married Lesetta “Bessie” Cleveland. They produced eight children: Lillian, Wilburn (Bud), Emma (Babe), Harry (Hap), James (Jim), Veta, William (Howard), and Margie Mae.

The “Thomas Boys”—Bud, Hap, Jim, and Howard—grew up in the saddle, busting broncs and running steers in northeast Kittitas County. Family member Sandy Thomas writes, “the boys got busy learning to ride the ‘rough’ off their horse herd; often they rode with only a ‘mane and tail hold,’ a precarious riding experience.”

Casey Tibbs

Casey Tibbs is a 2001 Inductee to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame. A giant name in the history of 1940s and 1950s North American rodeo, Tibbs was a featured competitor in Ellensburg during that “golden age.” Casey Tibbs was born March 5, 1929, in a log cabin on his parents’ homestead, near the confluence of the Cheyenne and Missouri Rivers at Pierre, South Dakota. The day he was born his parents told his brothers and sisters the “coyotes” had brought him! The youngest boy in a family of ten children, Casey rode horseback daily, twenty miles to school and back. In 1943, the curly-headed 14 year-old Tibbs entered his first bronc riding competition. He was so poor that he hitchhiked from show to show: “He would lie across the highway to attract the attention of motorists passing by in order to get a ride,” it is told.

Red and Rose Wall | Tornado

When famed rodeo trick rider and stock contractor “Strawberry Red” Wall unexpectedly died in 1932, the news spread quickly throughout the world of North American rodeo organizers, competitors, and fans. One cowboy bard even composed a poem in his honor, “Adios to Strawberry Red Wall”:

A cowboy of the Western ranges,
A cowboy of picturesque design
That the West had used for a pattern
To set forth the man true and fine.
He came up the ranks to leader—
As a showman he topped them all;
Much was the applause that was rendered
At the shows of “Strawberry Red” Wall.

Einar L. Wall was born to immigrant parents in Seattle, Washington, and soon dubbed “Strawberry Red” because of his flaming hair color. Of Norwegian ancestry, the “Wohl” family had changed the spelling of their name to “Wall.” As a child, Red carried on his parents’ old-country traditions by wearing wooden shoes.

Red Wall learned cowboying skills by breaking horses at Seattle’s Star Stables, owned by Ray Pratt, father of Red’s wife-to-be, Rose. Red soon became an accomplished horseman and trick rider, known for “Roman Riding”—riding two horses at a full gallop, standing with one foot on each mount.

Frederic Gregg “Fritz” Truran

In 1941, a young California bronc rider named Fritz Truran swept the Ellensburg Rodeo, winning both the Saddle Bronc and All-Around championship buckles. Writing about Truran’s triumph nearly fifty years later, the late Ellensburg Rodeo historian John Ludtka noted that in 1941, “war clouds darkened America’s skies” and the 26 year-old Truran “was soon to volunteer for the U.S. Marines Corps as World War II loomed.” In 1945, Truran died in the battle of Iwo Jima, adding a heroic war record to his achievements as a world champion rodeo cowboy.

Frederic Gregg “Fritz” Truran (1916-45) was born and grew up in Seeley, California. Although he was not a ranch-raised cowboy, young Truran found work breaking and training horses across southern California. To supplement his income, he competed in local rodeos as a saddle bronc rider and bulldogger and enjoyed immediate success.

Frank Wallace Family

Sitting at a big dinner table in a home near the 800-acre cattle ranch where they spent their formative years, Jack and Steve Wallace recently pored over hundreds of rodeo photographs taken over the past six decades. The Wallace brothers have many memories of their mom and dad volunteering for the Ellensburg Rodeo. Looking through the old photos, the brothers recall past rodeos, their own days as roping competitors, and the rodeo connections of their children and grandchildren those of their late sister Betty. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the Wallace family history has been tightly woven into the history of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

The Frank Wallace family members are four-generation Kittitas Valley ranchers, horsemen, rodeo royalty, volunteers, and timed-event contestants who have contributed countless hours to furthering the traditions of the Ellensburg Rodeo.

The Wallaces are descended from Scottish, English, and Swedish immigrants. When he was a small child, Frank Wallace (1914-1995) moved with his family from Roseburg, Oregon to the Yakima Valley to farm. Kathryn Glenn Wallace’s (1919-2009) parents had come to Washington state from Iowa and were bakers in Selah. Kathryn and Frank married in 1938 and moved to the northeastern corner of the Kittitas Valley from the Ahtaneum area of Yakima County in 1949. They farmed and ranched and raised their three children—Jack, Betty, and Steve—on a large cow-calf and hay ranch on the Vantage Highway. The Wallaces eventually bought a ranch on Lyons Road.

Frank Wood

Frank Wood was the first All-Around Champion of the Ellensburg Rodeo. A native of Idaho, Wood moved to the Kittitas Valley in 1922 and worked as a ranch hand. He worked on the Phil Adams ranch (Adams later briefly served as arena director for the Ellensburg Rodeo) and worked for the Coffin brothers running sheep and cattle in the Wenas. Wood immediately gained a reputation around Ellensburg and the Pacific Northwest as a top hand and genuine buckaroo.

When he wasn’t running cattle and sheep, Frank Wood was rodeoing. Wood worked “both sides of the arena,” competing roping calves as well as riding saddle broncs. He was one of the finest bronc riders on the 1920s circuit, winning buckles in Pendleton, Calgary, Vancouver, BC, and other smaller rodeos.

Larry Wyatt

Larry Wyatt was born a cowboy. Born and raised in the Kittitas Valley, he never much cared for school, instead preferring the pace and quiet of the semiarid hills surrounding Ellensburg or the tranquility of the Whiskey Dick.  That’s where you would find hm, alone or in the cow camps, when he wanted time to think or whenever, as a youth there was trouble, at school or at home.

Larry started traveling the rodeo circuit a the age of thirteen with Ott McEwen and a few other local cowboys in th e1940s.  That was back when there were still many competing Cowboy Turtles, the storied founders of today’s PRCA.

In the 1950s and 1960s (after a stint in the Army cavalry as a mule trainer) Larry’s passion took him all over the country, from rodeo to rodeo, traveling with famed cowboys like Gene Pruett, Bill Linderman, and other national champions. Larry was “goin’ down that road hard,” as he liked to say, working both ends of the arena. He successfully rode bulls, bareback broncs, and saddle broncs in addition to his renowned time-events, calf roping and steer wrestling. Larry’s real passion was steer wrestling atop his great horse Banjo; he also loved bareback riding. In all of the pictures you see of Larry he always had a big grin on his face–he loved his rodeos.

Larry Wyatt won many go-rounds, event titles, and All-Around Championships across the U.S and Canada, including Walla Walla and Stetler. He tied for the ‘66 Ellensburg bulldogging championship and, at the Omak Stampede, he won the steer wrestling buckle an amazing nine years in a row. Larry’s last rodeo was at Omak in 1983 where, on a bet from an old hand, he rode and was thrown from a bucking bronc. He got up with that characteristic grin on his face but his wife Donna remembers that night he could climb out of their car only with great difficulty.

In the meantime Larry and Donna became stock contractors, traveling the rodeo road and ultimately becoming pivotal players in the Canadian Pro Rodeo Circuit. They supplied horses for one Oklahoma City National Finals Rodeo and several of its Canadian equivalents in Calgary. They bought a ranch on Saddle Mountain, in the semiarid foothills Larry loved so well, and raised cattle, quarter horses, and rodeo stock (most notably the champion bronc Lady Lucky.) Larry also ran a taxi business, and he drove stagecoach in the Ellensburg Rodeo during his final years.

Larry’s beloved horse Banjo was buried near Old Highway 10 on the Wyatt ranch, where Larry was himself laid to rest in April of 1997.

War Paint

War Paint, the famed Christensen Brothers pinto bucking bronc, is a 2001 Inductee to the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame. War Paint was born in the late 1940s (no one is sure of the exact date) on Oregon’s Klammath Indian Reservation. Orie Summers sold him to Hank and Bob Christensen, Sr. (ERHOF ’99) at approximately three years of age.

They started the 1400 lb. gelding out as a bareback horse but moved him to saddles where, in the 1950s, he achieved world renown for his bucking prowess. In the year 1958, for example, War Paint appeared twenty-eight times, bucking off twenty-five of the riders. One rodeo historian wrote that many a bronc rider’s comment after “seeing the paint go was–‘That spotted horse is the one I want’–but generally, after a seat on him, they’d be out there checking their eyesight the next time they got a chance to see him go”!

Marty Wood

Although he gained fame as a saddle bronc rider, Marty Wood’s original burning ambition was to play professional baseball. When a shoulder injury diverted his attention from the baseball diamond, the youngster turned next on bareback bronc and bull riding. Indeed, it was not until he had rodeoed a year or two that Marty Wood focused exclusively on becoming one of professional rodeo’s all-time great saddle bronc riders.

Martin “Marty” Roy Wood was born May 4, 1933, in tiny Bowness, Alberta, Canada. His family ranched, and raised and trained jumping horses. Thus Marty developed much of his horse savvy, balance, and technique riding his dad’s jumping horses. His first professional rodeo competition came when he crossed the international border and entered the 1953 Malta (MT) Rodeo. Later that same year, he won the Saddle Bronc Championship in Omaha. Marty Wood was on his way to a twenty-one year career in professional rodeo.

Rodeo historian Fred Schnell stated in his book, The Suicide Circuit (1971) that Marty Wood’s “friends are many, but they admit he is a tough man to know.” Marty’s friend Arland Calvert, a ProRodeo Sports News writer, concurred, describing Wood the “dark, handsome Canadian” as a “dedicated loner” who “picks his own company.”