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P.O. Box 7445 Jackson, WY 83002 (307) 733-2047

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Inside the JACKSONHOLE RODEO

Travis J. Garner / news&Guide File

Jackson resident Dustin Lara stretches behind his chute while getting warmed up for the bareback bronc competition during the Jackson Hole Rodeo.

Ready to Rodeo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4A year’s worth of work goes into summer rodeos.

School of Hard Knocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Rodeo success means practice, practice, practice.

Rodeo Royalty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Desiree Bridges sets her sights on the national crown.

History Lives On . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Hal Johnson is a link to Jackson’s Western roots.

Western Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Photographers take you close to the action.

Worth the Risk? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Rodeo racks the body, but you can’t earn if you don’t ride.

No Clowning Around. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22Rodeo clowns, or bull fighters, have a serious job.

If the hat fits, wear it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23But don’t try to look better than you are.

Ageless lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26A new generation helps keep rodeo values alive.

Year-round Arena. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27Teton County keeps things hopping at its rodeo grounds.

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By Richard Anderson

S pringtime in Jackson Hole means kicking back, taking a deep breath and waiting for business to kick back

into hyperdrive once the summer tourist season starts.

Except for Phil Wilson, the man who runs the Jackson Hole Rodeo. For him things are just getting crazy.

There are sponsors to round up, equip-ment to repair and grounds to spruce up. There are employees to hire — 40-plus when the operation is fully staffed, not to mention dozens of volunteers and rodeo athletes — advance ticket sales to manage and a hundred other details that always seem just a little different each year.

Buying new sporting animals begins even earlier.

“We first start in December and go to Las Vegas, where they have a bucking stock sale,” said Wilson, who speaks with the easygoing twang of a man for whom West-ern hospitality comes naturally. “We start out by buying there.”

But as roped to tradition as rodeo is, it also keeps up with the times, so, naturally, these days one can go online to buy bulls and broncs.

PRICE CHAMbERS / NEWS&GUIDE FIlE

Phil Wilson talks on his cellphone as he wanders among the bucking horses he keeps at his ranch south of Jackson. “Most people don’t know it, but bucking horses aren’t really that wild,” Wilson said.

A year’s worth of work goes into the summer’s rodeos.

RodeoReady

TO

>> continued on page 5


“You look at them online and call someone who knows them and you can purchase them on the Internet,” Wilson said.

But it’s undoubtedly more fun to go in person, which is why each April he and a crew travel to Oklahoma and Texas to gather new stock for the season.

Each year there’s just a certain number of new animals the ro-deo needs.

“Some of them end up not bucking, some buck too hard … and every year we’ve got so many that are older and quit bucking,” Wil-son said. “I’d say 10 to 20 percent of our bulls and horses each year end up being changed for one reason or another.”

Some major changes are in the works for the arena off Snow King Avenue. Thanks to voters who approved giving a share of tax money to the rodeo grounds, the site will see a new crow’s nest (from which announcers and judges watch the action), new buck-ing chutes and new animal pens. Seating will be rearranged so all spectators will have the best view, and there will be new restrooms, too, among other improvements.

But this year pretty much everything else about the JH Rodeo will stay the same, Wilson said. Rodeos will start at 8 p.m. nearly every Wednesday and Saturday from May 24 through Aug. 30, with Friday events on July 4, July 11 and all through August. All told, there will be 34 nights of bucking, roping and riding that Wil-son expects will entertain more than 35,000 folks from all around the world.

“We’re getting a tremendous amount of calls every day on our website and people buying tickets,” Wilson said. “It’s taken off. Last year I don’t know how many hits we had on our website, but the year [2012] before we had 2 million hits.”

Granted, he said, some of those are rodeo athletes checking their own points — a lot is at stake, after all; in 2012 the JH Rodeo paid out $216,391 to athletes — but still, that’s a lot of traffic for a nearly new website. As Wilson likes to point out, a successful sum-mer rodeo in Jackson Hole is good for everyone’s business. Folks go out to dinner, then hit the arena and then maybe head to a saloon to dance the night away. It also translates into a lot of horseback rides, he said.

“It’s all interrelated,” Wilson said. “The more visibility we have, especially on the website, the better it is for the whole community.”

>> continued from page 4


Phil Wilson, second from right, speaks with Dennis George, center, Nick Nichols and Colt George, right.

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By Michael Polhamus

Training for a rodeo is like training for a dog show: A lot of it is in the ani-mals’ hands.

But what’s left up to the athletes is the same as in most other sports.

“You just practice a lot,” said roper Matt Loose.

Much of Loose’s sport relies on founda-tional skills, he said, like handling a rope well. Though it looks simple, much of rope-handling is in the details.

“Golf and roping are a lot alike,” Loose said. “The smallest thing you do can make the biggest difference.”

But getting to the point where small things with a rope can be learned and ad-justed takes a lot of time, he said.

“It’s about constantly swinging a rope and knowing where the tip’s at,” Loose said. He practices “constantly,” to the point that if he has a spare 15 minutes, he’ll spend it messing with a rope.

But roping isn’t just about the rope. Among other things it’s about the horse.

“Your horses are 50 percent or more of roping,” Loose said. “They’re athletes just like anybody else is. You’re always trying to improve your horsemanship.”

Much of that involves keeping the horse trained — both mentally and physically. Loose spends a lot of time with his horses, “keeping them sharp and soft and supple and listening to what you’re doing,” he said.

They also need exercise, he said. Even if they’re well-trained, “horses get hurt if

Training for rodeo takes practice, strength, practice, horsemanship, practice ...

HarDSchool OF


knocks

bRADly J. bONER / NEWS&GUIDE FIlE

Chris Hoggan hangs on while trying to ride a steer at Buck Wilson’s ranch south of Jackson. Hoggan was part of a bull riding clinic with other area youths who learned the basics of rodeo events.


you don’t have them in shape,” Loose said.

Loose, too, needs to keep himself in shape. He does so by lifting weights and running.

“I’m not a big fan of running,” he said, “but I’ll do it, because, you know, a guy needs to.”

Perhaps even more than a strong body, Loose attributes much of his success to a strong mentality.

“If you want to be good at it, you have to give it your all,” he said.

Older rodeo athletes agree. At 37 years old, Buck Wilson is an anomaly among bull riders. Most don’t last past their early 30s, he said. A lot of the reason he’s still able to ride as well as he does comes down to his men-tal attitude, he said.

“It’s not about being in the best shape of your life,” he said. “It’s about desire and having that fire. The one that wants it most, he gets it. You can lose that fire easily.”

Physical conditioning does play a role.

“Sure, strength is impor-tant,” Wilson said. “You put me up against a 10-year-old boy on a 1,000-pound bull and sure, I’ll probably last longer.”

Wilson lifts weights, keep his cardiovascular system tuned up and takes CrossFit classes. Stretching is important as well.

“Because you’re going to get thrown,” he said, “and your body’s going to get folded in half. ... You never practice any of that, but you try to stay limber.”

But still, “a lot of it’s desire and want.”

Another mental element — fear — is just as critical, Wilson said.

“You don’t want to get in the chute and say, ‘I could get stepped on, I could break a leg,’” he said. “When you start worrying about ‘I’m going to get hurt,’ this and that, you’re al-ready defeated.”

And, again, some of it’s just practice, Wilson said.

“You have to make every-thing you do habit, because when you’re in an arena you don’t have time to think.”

Wilson puts in a lot of time on a bucking machine, and he gets on a bull whenever he can. Five bulls a day is pretty good, he said, but an aspiring bull rider should do “whatever your body can hold.”

Large angry animals to practice on are hard to come by, however, as saddle bronc rider Mark Nelson said.

“When you’re getting on a

bucking horse, if one bucks you off ... you got about a second and a half of practice,” he said. “You got to get on a lot of horses to get an hour’s worth of practice.”

He said a rider needs to get on a hundred horses to begin to get the feel of it.

“At first you’re getting bucked off everything,” he said.

But gradually a rider >> continued on page 8

TRAVIS J. GARNER / NEWS&GUIDE FIlE

Hoback resident Dylan Grant, 9, practices his form on the mechanical bull under the guidance of his father, Wade, at the Teton County Fair.

TRAVIS J. GARNER / NEWS&GUIDE FIlE

McKenna Schroeder, 6, practices roping with her brother Zane, 5, after finishing barrel racing practice.




Tipton Wilson, 5, keeps his grip on a sheep during a wild ride at Buck Wilson’s ranch.

develops some muscle memory.In high school, Nelson tried to learn by hopping on horses and

getting thrown — over and over. It wasn’t until he went to Riverton and worked on a ranch with 800 horses, 50 of which could buck, that he really learned to ride. Nelson recommended something similar for aspiring saddle bronc riders.

“If you want to learn how to ride bucking horses, go to work for the Wilsons,” he said, referring to the family that runs the Jackson Hole Rodeo. “Or you can do what I did. Just go to rodeos and throw your money away and get your head dug into the dirt.”


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RodeoLoreRODEO EVENTS originated as early as the 18th cen-tury in Mexico and what today is the American Southwest, where vaqueros — the Spanish version of cowboys — would try to outdo one another in the skills needed to perform their jobs: riding, roping, handling stock and the like.

The word “rodeo” comes straight from Spanish: “Ro-deo” comes from the verb “rodear,” meaning “to surround” or “to go around.”

Casual contests were popular in the early 1800s. The first organized competition, however, was held in Cheyenne in 1872. The first professional rodeo, at which prizes were awarded, occurred in 1888 in Prescott, Arizona.

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RodeoROYALTYJackson

woman has sights set on national crown.

By Brielle Schaeffer

T he third time was the charm for Desiree Bridges, who was crowned queen in August at the

five-day Miss Rodeo Wyoming pageant at the Wyoming State Fair in Douglas.

The 23-year-old Jackson resident and Jackson Hole High School graduate bested her peers in personality, speech, sales achievement and horsemanship competitions to win the title.

“It’s a long grueling week at the Wyo-ming State Fair,” Bridges said. “It’s hot, and we have to be all dressed up every day, but it’s so much fun.

“Something that I’m passionate about is promoting the sport that I love,” she said, “and what better way to do that than to be Miss Rodeo Wyoming and represent my state as well?”

How about Miss Rodeo America? That’s the former Miss Teton County Fair and Rodeo queen’s new dream.

Having taken the state reins in Jan-uary, Bridges sees this year as Wyoming queen as preparation for the 10-day na-tional pageant set for December in Las Vegas. The pageant coincides with the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.

“What Miss Rodeo America is look-ing for is an overall good girl to repre-sent the sport and someone who you can come up and talk to and not be afraid and who loves what she’s doing,” Bridg-es said.

By any indication, Bridges meets that description to a T. Friendly, well-spoken and as comfortable in rhinestones as she is in dirt, she will be giving the oth-er contestants stiff competition.

And she’s not just a pretty face. Bridges, who also holds a 2009 high school alpine skiing state champion bRADly J. bONER / NEWS&GUIDE FIlE

Sisters Sarah and Claire Andrews wish each other luck before the horsemanship competition during the 2013 royalty pageant at Heritage Arena.


Still just a princess contestant, Desiree Bridges gets help preparing for the modeling and questions portion of the 2013 Teton County Fair & Rodeo Royalty Pageant.



title, graduated from University of Wyoming last May with a Bachelor of Science degree in agricultural business management. Interested in water rights, she is thinking about going back to Laramie for law school.

But right now she’s a bit too busy to think about that. So far in her time as Miss Rodeo Wyoming, Bridges has visited 10 states, working rodeos and other events.

“I’ve gone down in the chutes and pushed calves at some rodeos, and I’ve gone in the stands and talked to fans,” she said. “It’s a blast. I love doing it. … This is my job for the year.”

When she’s not working rodeos, she helps younger girls out at pageant clinics.

“I remember when I was queen and I’d always look up to Miss Rodeo Wyoming and Miss Rodeo America,” Bridges said. “Now that I’m in that position I love to be able to give back and really help these girls achieve their dream.”

Born in California, Bridges didn’t start riding horses until she was 9 years old, when she moved to Wyoming and started helping on her stepfather’s family ranch in Thermopolis.

“I don’t know any other way I’d rather be raised then growing up on a ranch, riding horses and working hard for everything that we have,” Bridges said.

She competed in barrel racing in the Teton County Rodeo, and now, as the queen, she rides with flags and helps at events.

She’ll be at the Teton County Fair this year for the rodeo in her jade-bedazzled crown to be an ambassador for the sport.

“If you don’t know rodeo come find me or any of your local queens and we’ll teach you,” Bridges said. “I love answering ques-tions. I love talking to people about this.”

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By Emma Breysse

Ask 77-year-old Hal John-son to dredge up souvenirs of his nearly 60 years involve-ment with the Jackson Hole Rodeo, and it’s a little like watching a dog search for a long-buried bone.

An entire room in the man’s home outside of Victor, Idaho, is devoted to the things he and his wife, Elsie, have collected over the years.

From its various nooks and crannies come mostly yellowing newspaper articles and rodeo programs chroni-

cling nothing so much as mo-ments when something he had around made its way into the room.

The decades of photographs from Johnson’s days owning and running the rodeo are in Colorado with his daughter, where they are being sorted

and compiled for the creation of a family history book.

“It’s really just a few things I’ve kept over the years,” John-son said. “It surprises you what you’ve held on to and what’s kind of gotten lost through all the moves and such.”

Hal Johnson is a living link to Jackson Hole’s rodeo heritage

Historylives on>> continued on page 13


Talking to Johnson it’s clear that he doesn’t need a shelf of belt buckles (though he does have one of those from other rodeo towns he has worked) to remember his heyday with the Jackson Hole Rodeo. Arguably his heyday hasn’t even passed, as John-son returns each year to serve as a rodeo judge for the current owners, his friends the Phil Wilson family.

Johnson’s real souvenirs are his memories. His long ride started in 1957, and yet Johnson can give you

the names and events of notable athletes off the top of his head. He vividly remembers taking a stand in 1971 against a piece of federal legislation that would have outlawed bull riding.

“I just like being around it,” Johnson said of his collection of mementos — programs, newspaper clippings, photographs and more. “It’s what I’ve done, and it’s what I do.”

Johnson was working as a pick-up man for prior JH Rodeo owner Walt Callahan when he heard his employer was looking to get out of the game.

Along with his wife and a business partner, Johnson took over and introduced bull riding. This was back in the days when the rodeo took place in Wilson on land behind the Stagecoach Bar and Grill.

Johnson also brought in the Wednesday night rodeos that have become a fixture of Jackson summers.

As he gets into the details, he gestures toward the very same words saved in black-and-white in decades of newsprint. A bit of the living history as well as a living symbol of Jackson Hole’s authentic Western roots, Johnson has told his story many times to the press.

But he’s in no danger of forgetting — even with all his best photos away in Colorado.

What’s more, he’s not going to be done gathering rodeo stories until he physically can’t get there anymore, he said.

“It gets in your blood and then you just want to help out and be part of it,” he said. “I love the bulls. That’s why I brought them in and fought to keep them there. I just love the sport. The stuff, so to speak, is sort of not something you think about much.”

NEWS&GUIDE FIlE

A green meadow just below the fairgrounds on Flat Creek was pasture for Jackson Rodeo livestock in the early 1970s, when lawmakers proposed curtailing rodeo action because of mistreatment of animals. Johnson called the idea “foolish.”



RodeoLoreRodeo is the official sport of Wyoming, where the silhouette of a bucking horse (a notoriously unrideable steed named “Steamboat,” according to some sources) and rider is the state trademark. The logo probably goes back to World War I, when it was worn as the insignia of the Wyoming National Guard.

Rodeo is also the official sport of South Dakota and Texas. Mexico’s version, charreada, is that country’s national sport, and rodeo is also quite popular in Canada. Alberta even con-sidered making rodeo its official sport, but it hasn’t yet passed the resolution.

In addition to the U.S., Mexico and Canada, rodeo at-tracts big crowds in Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Australia.

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WESTERN

JONATHAN CROSby / NEWS&GUIDE FIlE

Payton Guion, of Rigby, Idaho, is helped over the corral railing by a fellow competitor after his ride at the first rodeo of the summer


Bareback rider Cache Hill racks up a score of 72 points on Nash at the Jackson Hole Rodeo.


A Jackson Hole High School rodeo athlete takes down a bull.

Views



Saddle bronc rider Tyler Scott falls off Angel Fire just short of the 8-second mark.


Jackson Hole High School athlete Justin Rowe eyes his target.

NEWS&GUIDE FIlE

Rodeo Queen Desiree Bridges proudly presents the American flag at the start of a 2013 rodeo.


RodeoLoreRodeo traditionally runs from spring through fall, although the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association’s Nation-al Finals Rodeo are held in December in Las Vegas.

The Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association is the oldest and largest rodeo association, overseeing about one-third of all rodeos in the U.S. each year. But it’s not the only sanctioning organization. There’s also a Professional Bull Riders group, the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association, the National High School Rodeo Association, the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association (finals for which are held in June in Casper), the Senior Pro Rodeo (for athletes 40 and older) and the International Gay Rodeo As-sociation.

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Posey Patch glances back after leaving cowboy Tyler Eitel into the dirt.

WORTH THERISk?Rodeo racks a body, but you can’t earn if you don’t ride.

By Clark Forster

W hether it’s team roping, barrel racing or bull riding, competing in the rodeo comes with a certain

amount of risk.Most every cowboy and cowgirl has a scar

or a medical bill that tells a painful story.“It’s not if you get hurt, it’s when and

how bad,” said Jim McNamee, Wyoming Rodeo Association president, a team rop-er and former bull rider. “If you twist a lion’s tail long enough, it’ll get ya.”

McNamee, 56, has been around the sport for quite some time. He hopped on

his first bull at the age of 14 and was a bull rider for 10 years. In almost 45 years competing in the rodeo he has witnessed his fair share of abuse.

“I’ve seen every kind of traumatic in-jury you could think of,” he said, “from pulled groins to death. There’s a lot of guys who have died and a lot more in wheelchairs for life.”

Injuries can happen at any time. When a 1,000-pound animal is trying to shed its rider, things can go wrong and accidents do happen.

“Any time you have animals and you’re going fast, you got a chance,” said McNa-

mee. “That’s what makes it exciting.”Risks are taken every time a rider hops

on an animal. A plethora of things can go wrong. From hard falls to pulled muscles to getting a limb or digit caught in equip-ment to getting stomped on, dragged or gored — major risks are taken to earn money and please the crowd.

And these things don’t just happen to bull riders. One of the biggest risks in team roping is getting a thumb caught in the rope.

“That rope will suck your thumb right in,” said McNamee. “It will rip your



thumb clean off your hand. I know numerous guys missing digits because of team roping.”

Bareback riding comes at a price as well. The major injuries don’t occur as frequently, but the beating is consistent and constant. Today it is one of the least-entered events because of the toll it takes on the body.

“It’s like being in a 15-round heavyweight cham-pionship fight,” McNamee said. “Even if you win you’re gonna get hurt.”

All riders suffer injuries. But it’s the riders who get back on the horse who succeed in the sport.

“My biggest concern is getting the paycheck,” said Cody Nusbaum, WRA director and former bareback rider. “It’s not like other sports where you’re guaranteed money. I have to get back on that horse the next weekend so I don’t have to go back to a Monday-through-Friday nine-to-fiver.”

Nusbaum said he has often had to compete in seven or eight events in the span of four or five days. He would compete in anywhere from 100 to 150 rodeos a year. The pain and torque on his body was excruciating. But if he didn’t ride, he didn’t get paid.

Riders not only have to compete, they have to do well. If not, they won’t qualify for the next event.

“You always gotta have the mind-set that today’s going to be my day,” he said. “Go get a chunk of change so I can get an extra weekend. You can’t worry about falling or injuries or anything else.”


Jackson bull rider Chad Raver winds up on the wrong side of the bull at the Jackson Hole Rodeo. The crushing weight of the animal breaks his jaw in four places despite his wearing a lacrosse helmet. “I’ve had accidents before, but this was the scariest,” Raver said.



By Mike Koshmrl

I t’s the moment at the ro-deo that makes every last audience member hold his

or her breath: A rider has been thrown and is on the ground defenseless as a 1,500-pound bull stomps toward him.

Then the angry beast gets distracted and turns the oth-er way. Most of the time, it’s because a rodeo clown has stepped in.

Being a rodeo clown is plenty dangerous, but it’s a job that Jackson Hole Rodeo’s Jory Covington clearly loves.

“We’re pretty much like the Secret Service of rodeo,” Cov-ington said.

The Rigby, Idaho, resident, a Jackson rodeo clown for five years running, said he works four or five rodeos a week and probably “steps in front of 100 bulls in any given week.”

At times that’ll surely hurt.“Over the past two years I

got tossed into the air a few times, and I’ve been hit,” Cov-ington said. “In the finals last year I got knocked out.”

Historically rodeo clowns’ duties were twofold: They would entertain the crowd during intermissions and would fight off the bulls after a dismount.

Wade Miller, another Jack-son Hole Rodeo bull fighter, said he’s tried to shed the “ro-deo clown” moniker.

“I call myself a bull fighter or a cowboy lifesaver,” Miller said. “I don’t paint my face. I get dressed down, but I don’t ever paint my face.”

Covington said that, in the spirit of tradition, he still wears face paint for the crowd. He dons “old-school” rodeo clown attire, including West-ern shirts and baggy pants.

Both Covington and Miller — who are usually joined by a third rodeo clown — say they plan to stay with the gig for years to come. It’s no doubt an adrenaline rush and appar-ently addictive.

“I’ll stick with it until I’m too old and beat up to go any-more,” Miller said.

Covington said he’s got a

decade left of clowning around at the rodeo.

“My ultimate goal is to keep going until I’m around 36, 37,” he said.

“A lot of people think we’re crazy,” Covington said. “There’s a little bit of crazi-ness to it, but it’s mostly easy once you’re able to conquer the fear.”

AROUNDNOclowning

Rodeo clowns, or bull fighters, have a serious job.


Wade Miller, Tanner Melsaether and Mick Rammell mess around with fellow bullfighter Scott Holiday during a fun break between rough-stock events at the Jackson Hole Rodeo. The rodeo starts at 8 p.m. each Wednesday and Saturday night throughout the summer.


By Johanna Love

T he tiniest mutton buster and the tall-est team roper share something in common: a cowboy hat.

Hats may be straw or felt, tall or small, but they’re pretty much mandatory attire at the rodeo, arguably as important as the boots or the belt buckle.

Crafted in 1865 by John B. Stetson, the first Western cowboy hat design was the “Boss of the Plains.” Made of water-resis-

tant fur felt, it had a round, high crown and a wide brim to shield the wearer from rain and sun. Back then, the size of the hat was for utility, not fashion.

Today, big-brimmed hats often go with a similarly sized ego, says Marilyn Hartman, former owner of Jackson Hole Hat Compa-ny who now owns the resale boutique Got-tahavit.

“You’ve heard the saying, ‘The bigger the hat the smaller the ranch’?” Hartman asked.

Another way to put it is, “All hat and no cattle.”

Stetson was the gold standard in cowboy hats, pioneering many different styles for as many different purposes and personalities.

“There was a style called the Roper,” Hartman said, a classic look with an oval shape, good-size crease and wide brim. “That was what the roper wore.”

Many well-known valley personalities could be identified by their hat. Former Wy-

hat fits,If the

wear itBut don’t try to look better than you are.

MICHAEl G. SEAMANS / NEWS&GUIDE FIlE

Big or small, felt or straw, the cowboy hat is both essential gear and a statement about the wearer.



oming governor and U.S. Sen. Cliff Hansen, for example, always wore the smaller-brimmed Open Road by Stetson, Hartman said.

These days, said longtime area rodeo announcer Fred Crane, horsemen and horsewomen might wear a baseball cap or visor when out working their horses, donning a fancy full-brimmed hat only on rodeo nights. To the trained eye, Crane said, an authentic Westerner looks a bit different than a poser.

“You can tell by looking at a hat on somebody whether they’re wearing it or using it,” Crane said.

Current fashions include bullriders bending their brims into a sort of a shovel shape, Crane said. Rodeo queens tend to decorate their hats’ crowns with tons of bling or flair.

Crane offered a final bit of cowboy vocab — the particular way cowboys speak — for those contemplating a hat purchase: Whether you choose felt or straw, big brim or small, tall or low, consider how authentic or outrageous you want to appear.

“You don’t wanna look better than you are,” Crane said.


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RodeoLoreThe term “cowboy” leaves out a whole segment of ro-deo athletes. Women, too, have participated since the early 1900s, including stars such as “Prairie Rose” Henderson. While in most ro-deos today women compete in barrel racing and, often, team roping, they also ride rough-stock — the broncs and bulls — in all-female contests.

American Indian, Hispanic cowboys and African-Americans are rare in rodeo, but all have distinguished themselves in the sport over the decades. Nat Love, Bill Pickett and Bill Stahl were all early African-American athletes. Pickett and Stahl were inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame, as was Myrtis Dightman, who qualified for the National Finals Rodeo in the 1960s.

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A new generation keeps rodeo traditions, values alive.

By Ben Graham

F or younger athletes participating in rodeo, motivation runs much deeper than simply competing and winning.

It’s about camaraderie and keeping the character of an age-old Western tradition alive.

Much of the valley’s younger rodeo gen-eration consists of members of the Jackson Hole High School Rodeo Club, which meets every Tuesday at the fairgrounds to prac-tice.

Competing is a commitment. Team members often travel hours across the state or to Idaho for events. The lessons and traditions learned along the way vary from the reverent to the mundane.

“Don’t wear yellow in the arena,” 16-year-old Claire Andrews said. “I have no clue what the reasoning is, but it’s bad luck.”

Andrews, who specializes in running barrels, has followed the rule ever since she began riding at the age of 2.

But rodeo tradition also provides deeper lessons.

“First of all it teaches you responsibility and it teaches you trust, in a way,” Andrews said. “You’re trying to control a 1,200-pound animal that has a mind of its own.

“It also teaches you that there’s more to life than partying and stuff,” she said.

Taking the risk of climbing onto the back of a bronc is also a quick way to build strong relationships with your peers, An-drews said.

“I probably have more close friends that I rodeo with than I do in the town,” she said. “You can make all sorts of new friendships.”

Like Andrews, 17-year-old Justin Rowe says he stays involved because of the cama-raderie.

Rowe, who is part of the high school team, has competed in team roping and calf roping since he got involved with rodeo at the age of 12, after some encouragement from his father.

“The morals that rodeo supports,” he said, “the ideals of hard work, dedication

and perseverance,” that’s what keeps him coming back.

“The Wilson family, they have so many generations in the rodeo,” Rowe said. “They’re trying to support the future gen-erations so that rodeo can be preserved for a long time to come.”

Indeed, Phil Wilson, the man who runs the Jackson Hole Rodeo, says it’s as much about the traditions and life lessons as it is about riding.

“Along with the courage to rodeo, you need to have good moral values,” Wilson said. “It goes hand in hand.”

In a lot of competitive team sports for youths the focus is on winning, he said. There sometimes isn’t fellowship between competitors.

“In rodeo it’s a little different,” Wilson said. “You have the ability to help somebody to compete to beat you.”

Cowboys and cowgirls often talk with each other about how a certain bronc or bull may handle.

“When you’re telling them that, you’re actually giving them an advantage,” Wil-son said. “It’s not about winning, it’s how you compete, and that’s what a lot of life is about.

“Where it came from, remember, is ranchers,” Wilson said. “When you lived on a ranch, your best friend was always your neighbor.”

Neighbors always relied on one another for help.

“That aspect of life slipped right over to rodeo,” Wilson said. “The one thing about cowboys you’ll learn really quickly is the first thing they do is shake hands.”

Some children start to learn rodeo and all of its lessons at an especially early age. Kids sometimes begin barrel racing at as young as 4 or 5 years old, albeit with the help of an adult. By age 6, some are able to ride on their own.

The injection of youth helps instill the rodeo code early on and assists in keeping its traditions alive for future generations.

YOUNG ATHLETESAgeless lessons,


Madison Wilkerson, right, turns a steer after roping its head as her teammate, Kody Chapman, of Rock Springs, goes for the heels during the team roping event in the high school rodeo at the Teton County grounds.


By Josh Copperand Richard Anderson

T eton County’s rodeo grounds are used for much more than rodeo.

The grounds are a complex of arenas, open spaces and structures that are used year-round for community events and even family gatherings.

In the winter an ice rink is laid down in the arena. Valley dwellers use it for skating and to play broomball, a variation of hockey. The stadium lighting allows for after-dark skating.

In March, during the long weekend of the World Champi-onship Snowmobile Hill Climb, the arena has in recent years been transformed into a snow-mobile jumping course.

And in the fall, the arena is used for an endurocross dirt bike competition.

“It’s an important space to the community,” said Jason Wheeldon, the maintenance co-ordinator for the Teton County Fairgrounds.

The Heritage Arena to the west of the rodeo arena is an indoor facility that has seen cutting competitions and 4-H livestock auctions as well as weddings and other gather-ings by families of a “West-ern mind,” Teton County Fair Board President Steve Har-rington said.

The Grassy Arena, the green acre on the northern side of the complex, is the site of the Me-morial Day weekend Mountain Man Rendezvous (when re-en-actors of the mid-1800s set up tents and barter hand-crafted wares of the era). Throughout the summer it is used by every-

one from dog trainers to high school rodeo athletes.

Across Snow King Avenue, the exhibit hall is perhaps the most-used structure on the ro-deo grounds.

“Weddings, Hispanic events, bar mitzvahs, funerals,” Har-rington said. “You’ve got to book that weeks or months in advance. It’s the best deal in town.”

The Teton County Fair makes great use of every cor-ner of the grounds for about 10

days in late July — from Figure 8 races in the arena and a car-nival on the wide-open grounds to the north to the Big Top tent and 4-H exhibits to the south.

The town of Jackson stores snow plowed from its streets there. It’s a great, central lo-cation for large steel recycling bins. Right after Halloween the county’s integrated waste management division holds one of its most popular events: a jack o’-lantern chucking, in which a gigantic slingshot is

used to launch pumpkins a hundred yards. Hundreds of people show up to clap and scream with glee.

And that is hardly a com-plete list of the uses of the Teton County rodeo grounds.

“Over the years there were attempts to move the [rodeo grounds] out of town to a big-ger space,” Harrington said. “If we had more space we could do more, but the community didn’t want to move it. It’s so close, so handy.”


Alex Packard waves to the judges and fans as he competes in the Octane Addictions Freestyle Show in 2012 at the rodeo grounds. Packard and five other snowmobile daredevils spent the evening impressing fans with backflips and other gnarly tricks.

RODEO GROUNDSYear-round

Rodeo just one of many uses of the community resource.


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INDEX OF ADVERTISERS

Gill Ave.

Deloney Ave.

Pearl Ave.

Kelly Ave.

Snow King Ave.

Flat Creek Dr.

Jackson St.

Millward St.

Glenwood St.

Cache Dr.

King St.

Willow St.

Virginian Ln.

Snow King Ave.

Meadowlark Ln.

WayBuffalo

Scott Ln.

Powederhorn Ln.

Maple Way

Center St.

E. B

roadway

W. Broadw

ay

WY

O 3

90

• M

oose

-Wils

on R

d.

Flat Creek

Pub Place

Han

sen

Ave.

9

37

JH R

OD

EO

High School Rd

Eagle Village

Shopping Plaza

South Park LoopTo

Dri

ggs I

daho

To Teton Village

Vine St.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE JACKSON HOLE RODEO, VISIT JHRODEO.COM.

1. Shades of Jackson Hole pg 2

2. Broken Spur pg 3

3. St. John’s Family Health pg 5 and Urgent Care

4. Big R Ranch & Home pg 8

5. Wyoming Outfitters pg 8

6. McDonalds pg 8

7. Lift pg 9

8. Jackson Hole Hat Co. pg 9

9. Jackson Hole Trail Rides pg 11

10. McPhail’s Burgers pg 13

11. Snow King Mountain pg 14

12. Jackson Hole Feed & Pet Supply pg 14

13. Jackson Bootlegger pg 15 & 16

14. Quiznos pg 19

15. Jackson Hole Mountain Resort pg 21

16. Black & White, INK pg 24

17. Virginian Saloon & Lodge pg 25

18. The Gun Barrel Steak House pg 25

19. Boot Barn pg 30

20. JH Whitewater pg 31

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rodeo special section 2014

Documents

rodeo grounds

rodeo success

rodeo royalty

rodeo athletes

rodeo clowns

jacksonhole rodeo travis

rodeo values alive

western views