FEATURE STORY
FrontierDays T
Cheyenne’s by Jack Kintner and Jackie Braverman
Professional Rodeo at its Best in Historic Wyoming Setting PHOTOS: JACK KINTNER
here are rodeos and then there’s Cheyenne’s Frontier Days. The historic Wyoming capital city celebrates its continuing western heritage
by putting on the best rodeo you’re ever likely to see in as picturesque a slice of high country as can be found.
Nearly half the town of 60,000 volunteers, in one way or another,
to put on the rodeo which runs this summer from July 20 through the 29th. And they stick with it – Arlene Kensinger founded the 16-member women’s mounted drill team in 1970 and led it for almost 30 years through each summer’s nine rodeo days, nine evening shows, and four day time parades before retiring. Cheyenne’s dry climate and elevation (6,062 feet, or about 1,000 feet higher than the top of the Mt. Baker ski area), its rich history and convenient location, an easy 90-mile drive north of Denver (or about 1,300 miles from western Washington), make it a great summer destination. We’ll get to the rodeo, but fi rst, a little about the setting, an area
so saturated with western history that it’s like a living museum, complete with Virginia City-style staged gunfi ghts twice daily in the main square downtown. This is not a Winthrop-style recreation of a generic western theme; it’s the real McCoy and hasn’t changed all that much. Cheyenne began as a camp for men building the Union Pacifi c Railroad just after the Civil War. Today the restored main depot features a large museum, tourist info and a restaurant. And talk about cowboy roots - around the time the depot was built, and not too far away, a 15-year-old mail carrier once galloped a record 322 miles in under 22 hours (using 21 horses to do it) when his relief rider for the next stage of the ride had been killed by Indians. The rider was William Cody, riding for the Pony Express shortly before the new railroad would put them out of business. Thirty years later, in 1897, “Buffalo Bill” Cody was being featured
in a movie produced by the man who’d just invented the process, Thomas Edison, while Cheyenne had matured into a sophisticated base for cattle barons. That was the fi rst year for this annual
34 April 2012 The Northwest Horse Source
www.nwhorsesource.com
summer town party and cowboy competition, Frontier Days, making it the oldest rodeo, the “Daddy of ‘em All” as they like to call it. These days nearly 2,000 competitors pursue a $1 million purse that brings together top fl ight pro cowboys and some of the fi nest rodeo stock around, resulting in an unsurpassed spectacle of human and animal athletic performance. “It’s just the best there is,” said rodeo fan and cowboy poet Baxter Black, in town last summer for a reunion of his Colorado State Veterinary School class. Behind the humor and showmanship, Black is an astute observer of both the human and animal sides of rodeo. That this is among his favorites is as good an endorsement as an event like this can get. One example of a local wrinkle that enhances things for the
competitors and fans is how some of the events are tweaked toward duplicating real ranch conditions. Steers and calves in the roping and wrestling events, for example, are given a 30-yard head start instead of the standard fi ve. “Just like an open range, we really do have to catch them, even
though we’re in an arena,” said steer wrestler Cody Moore. It’s not unusual to see a steer evade capture altogether and trot casually out the other end, to the consternation of the cowboy and the delight of the crowd.
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