The Third 25 Years

S P E C I A L
FROM GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY
TO DIAMOND JUBILEE:
The National Western Stock Show, Rodeo and Horse Show – 1956 to 1981
Keith and Cheryl Chamberlain
NOTE: This is the third in a series of four
articles recounting the colorful history of the
National Western Stock Show, Rodeo and
Horse Show, which celebrates its 100th
anniversary in 2006.
ots of folks have a special
childhood memory from the
National Western. For Renee
Elkins it’s a bunny in a shoebox. “I
was 12 years old and had gone down to
the National Western with my
grandfather,” she says, her eyes lighting
L
up as she remembers. “We visited all the
animal exhibits including the rabbits. I
bought one and the person gave me a
shoe box and we poked holes in it and I
carried the little baby bunny rabbit home
on the city bus.” It was the start of a fouryear rabbit raising venture and a life long
affection for the Stock Show.
Renee, whose business these days
includes running horse shows at the
National Western, isn’t alone in her
fondness for the show. Recalling Denver’s
reaction to the January extravaganza in the
1950s, Sandy Dennehey, a longtime horse
exhibitor here, says, “The city sort of
turned itself over to the Stock Show.
Everybody talked about it at school;
everybody wore western clothes for a
week. It was just really a big deal.”
Summing it up for many, Denver Post
columnist Red Fenwick wrote in 1958,
“Don’t you just love Stock Show time? Old
Denver’s always all a ‘twinkle and Gussied
up like a schoolmarm at the Saturday
night shindig. It’s wonderful. It’s Western.”
One way the city gussied up was by
keeping the Christmas lights burning at
Civic Center, a tradition begun in 1945
that continues today. The Denver
Chamber of Commerce ran special Stock
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S E C T I O N
The stockyards, seen here in 1976, were the destination for adventurous young men who traveled to the National Western in rail
cars with their livestock.
S E C T I O N
S P E C I A L
Show trains from Colorado
Springs and Cheyenne and
businesses welcomed out-oftown guests with special sales.
According to a fanciful news
report of the era, local eateries
welcomed stockmen by putting
more hat racks in the lobby,
more shot glasses on the bar and
more ketchup on the tables.
Chefs cut down on the salads
and whomped up more French
fries. It was said that the highbooted guests didn’t care about
price, they wanted their meat in
chunks right off the critter and
served thick and rare. For the
Stockmen’s Ball, Denverites
donned their fanciest western
get-ups to mingle with their
rural cousins. Inaugurated in
1957 with Montie Montana and
Rex Allen entertaining, the ball
was a highlight of Stock Show
season for 15 years.
Ridin’ the Rails
Sitting on a bale of straw in a
stockyards pen and soaking up
the brilliant January sun, they
smile when they recall riding the rails
with their cattle in days gone by. Kenneth
Eppers, who began traveling with the
Northern Pump Company’s show string
in the late 1950s, recalls, “We would load
on Saturday noon and the railroad would
switch us around until sometime during
Saturday night. We were always in the
Denver stockyards ready to unload on
Monday morning.” Stanley Stout, a top
auctioneer at the National Western these
days, had a two-day trip from Brookville,
Kansas, with C-K Ranch bulls.
Another C-K hand, Rex Seibert,
explains the particulars of traveling with
livestock. “We always tied the cattle to
the right-hand side of the boxcar. That
way we could keep the left-hand doors
wide open [to keep the cattle from
getting too hot]. We just put some boards
across there in case the cattle got loose.
They couldn’t get out and we couldn’t fall
out. We fed in the boxcar, we carried
most all of our own grain and some hay.”
An elevated wooden deck at the front
of the car provided living quarters for the
crews. Stout and his companions, who
traveled an extended show circuit, “had
2 • 2 0 0 5 N a t i o n a l We s t e r n S t o c k S h o w
Yearling Hereford bulls from the powerhouse
C-K Ranch parade before watchful eyes in
the yards in this 1959 scene.
an old time icebox that you’d put a
chunk of ice in and it would be good for
two or three days until we needed
another chunk. We even had a gas
generator and an electric skillet. We were
kind of the envy of the guys on the
railroad,” he says with a smile. Seibert’s
crew used a car battery to power lights
during the long evenings. “We also had
our water barrel up there with a faucet so
we could water the cattle. We always
carried our own sleeping bag and that’s
where we slept. You know, you’d be
surprised, you’d ride on them rails and
bouncing and everything, it just put you
to sleep.”
“Most of the time it was very, very cold
going across Iowa and Kansas,”
remembers Eppers. Merle Mills, recalls,
“Oh, it was just cold in there. You could
ride in the caboose, but in a lot of cases it
was colder there than it was in the car
with the heat of the animals.” Gene
Wiese, who railroaded bulls to Denver
from his family ranch in
Manning, Iowa, recounts the
time his crew got caught in a
snowstorm in McCook,
Nebraska. “It held the train up
for a day and that was a cold
ride. My brother and I learned
an awful lot on that trip. Thanks
to a few other people who were
freighting out by rail we were
able to get some warm coffee
and into a warm place once in a
while.” Stanley Stout’s crew
brought “plenty of blankets, a
very, very heavy coat and a lot of
longhandles.”
Some fortified themselves in
other ways. “We always
brought a half-gallon of wine
‘cause water could freeze if you
got in one of them storms,”
says Seibert. “You didn’t want
to be without something to
drink.” Arrival in the yards was
exciting. Rex laughs and tells
of a friend whooping it up. “He
was up in the engine with the
engineer, driving that thing
and pulling levers and making
it whistle and really making
our arrival noticeable.” Outfits that sold
all their cattle at the Stock Show could
“ride the cushions” going home. Paul
Peterson of La Jara, Colorado, recalls
his first caboose ride. “I was just a little
boy and it was all night. Oh, I was
tired! Those old guys smoking cigars
and drinking a little and it was all the
old ranchers from down there [at the
Stock Show].”
In spite of the rigors, Gene Wiese
says, “it was still a lot of fun and I’ve
loved the railroads ever since.” Stout
sums it up for many of those young
men when he says, “These guys on the
roads today never got to do that and I’m
very fortunate that I did. It was a free
spirit way to travel.”
Busy Times in the Yards
About the first thing long time
exhibitors will tell you is how big and
busy the stockyards were half a century
ago. “These yards were really loaded,”
recalls Paul Peterson, who’s been
coming to the Stock Show since he was
a boy of 10. Perry Blach, another
veteran, says “When I started bringing
S P E C I A L
bulls to Denver in 1952 there would be
from 2,500 to 3,000 head come in for
private treaty sales.”
Denver was “the place to be,” for the
Wiese family, who have been selling at the
Stock Show for 55 years. “This is where
business took place and that was the
purpose of coming– to conduct business.”
Gene calculates his family has sold over a
million dollars’ worth of cattle, semen and
embryos here. Three generations of Mark
Mills’ St. Francis, Kansas, family have sold
Hereford bulls at the show. “We’ve missed
only two years since 1920, and since 1930
we haven’t missed a year.” he says proudly.
“Nobody down here can touch that.” They
brought big strings, with a single-year high
of 98. Ranch records show they sold over
1,700 bulls at the Stock Show between
1942 and 1983 alone.
Some outfits loom large in stockyards
lore. The ones to beat in those days in the
carlot [judging] was the Wyoming
Hereford Ranch out of Cheyenne,” says
Rex Seibert. “For five or six years they
had grand champion loads.” Rex worked
for the C-K Ranch of Brookfield, Kansas,
another legendary competitor.
Then there was John B. Holly’s
Northern Pump Company. Holly got his
start making bombs and bullets for the
Navy in World War II, but it was stumpy
cattle that got him into the Hereford
business. In the 1940s and ‘50s the goal
was to produce animals with short legs so
less growth was wasted on unmarketable
body parts. Holly was appalled by the
occasional dwarfism that resulted.
Kenneth Eppers, who showed bulls for
Holly at the National Western for 20
years, explains: “He bought some heifers
and took them to a little bitty farm he
had next to the ordnance plant in
Minneapolis and got several dwarf calves.
He decided that he was going devote his
money and lifetime to ridding Hereford
cattle of dwarfs.” Holly bought a larger
spread in Illinois and it was soon clear
that Northern Pump meant business.
Their first two carloads of yearling bulls
came to Denver in 1957 and one placed
seventh among 62 carloads. Northern
Pump showed until 1977, winning two
carload grand champions, one of which
was the first from east of the Mississippi,
and many other honors as well. “The
National Western was our basic,” says
Eppers. “That was the only place that we
showed carloads.”
Bull buyers at the National Western
ran the gamut from modest, familyowned ranches to gigantic corporate
operations. “In those days the ranchers
would come in with their calves or
yearlings for the market and after they
got their money they’d come down and
buy their bulls to take back home,”
explains Seibert. At the other end of the
spectrum were the heavyweights. “The
yards were where you’d see the big
ranchers from Texas, Colorado and New
Mexico,” says Stanley Stout. In yards lore,
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S E C T I O N
Perry Blach, right, had good reason to smile in 1967 after selling 51 Hereford bulls to power shopper E. Paul Waggoner, left. Dale Richardson,
commission agent for John Clay and Company, helped smooth negotiations. Photo courtesy of Perry Blach.
S E C T I O N
S P E C I A L
Continental breeds like this1979 Grand Champion Simmental bull made their first appearance at the National Western in the mid-1960s,
changing the look of the cattle show and the quality of the beef on America’s tables.
a gentleman from the Lone Star State
towers over all other buyers.
The Man From Texas
E. Paul Waggoner was the most
influential bull buyer in the 1950s and
‘60s. When he came to Denver his
entourage occupied an entire floor at the
Brown Palace. “He was very much a
character,” recalls Eppers. Roger Tuell,
longtime exhibitor and chairman of the
Fed Beef Contest, agrees. “He was a classy
dresser. He wore a scarf with a diamond
stickpin right in the middle of it. Silver
hair.” Another bull man smiles, “I
wouldn’t say he dressed clear out of this
world, but he didn’t wear bib overalls,
put it that way.”
The Waggoner Ranch in Texas was the
nation’s biggest spread under one fence
and when the larger-than-life Waggoner
arrived, it sent a wave of excitement
through the yards. The National Western
4 • 2 0 0 5 N a t i o n a l We s t e r n S t o c k S h o w
was the only show where he bought bulls
and at $1,000 each, he typically took
home 100. He set the market and it was
everybody’s dream to sell to E. Paul
Waggoner. He arrived in Denver early,
toured the pens and bought all his bulls
the day before the show opened.
According to Tuell, “His son-in-law John
Biggs looked after him, and them two,
whatever they wanted, you did, ‘cause
you wanted to sell. We’d sell 30, 40, 50
bulls in one whack and everybody
wanted to get Mr. Biggs and ol’ Paul
Waggoner into their pen.”
“He wanted to be the first in the pen,”
says Perry Blach of Yuma, who often sold to
Waggoner. “If you’d sold one bull out of the
batch, he wouldn’t even look at the rest.”
Consequently, most outfits wouldn’t sell
anything until Waggoner had been through;
a lesson Merle Mills learned the hard way.
“One time he came down and he made us
an offer for a dozen or something like that
and we didn’t think it was quite what we
wanted, so he left and in the meantime we
sold 10 or 12 out of what he was looking
at. He came back about an hour later and
says, ‘Well, I guess I’ll just take them.’
When we told him we’d already sold those
he was angry and he wouldn’t buy nothing
then. The next year he forgot about it,” says
Mills, who sold bulls to Waggoner for years
and speaks well of him.
Former Waggoner Ranch manager
G.L. Proctor of Vernon, Texas, says, “He
didn’t just buy from one feller. He’d kind
of split it up and get different breeding in
his bulls. We got our pick of whatever we
wanted. He always wanted to be first at
anything he done, but he was a pretty
nice old feller.” Proctor adds, “The old
man that run the ranch ahead of me,
Tony Hazlewood, was quite an old cow
man and he knew his cattle pretty good.
So he would go with Mr. Waggoner
before me so he had pretty good trainin’.”
years,” says Kenneth Eppers. “That
carload Hereford bull show was just
where everybody went. Then on
Sunday, the calves and the champion
bulls were shown.”
Another highlight came about half
way through the show’s nine-day run
when ranchers brought in their steer and
heifer calves for the commercial cattle
show and sale. Feedlots bought the larger
ones, about half the total, while the
lighter animals went to outfits that took
them home to grass pastures for more
growth. The carload feeder calf sale was
known as the Bellringer for the practice
of ringing a bell when the auctioneer
brought the hammer down. Lee Sheard,
who was a livestock agent for the halfdozen railroads shipping from Denver,
remembers an especially big one. “Forty
double-deck carloads of feeder cattle, 90
head to a car, went out of here in one
night after a Bellringer,” he recalls.
Most bulls changed hands in private
arrangements between seller and buyer
after some gentlemanly negotiation.
Francis Rogers, who along with his wife
Mary has been selling Angus bulls at the
show for over half a century, says, “You
just try your best to be a salesman and
brag up everything you’ve got and hope
you can make a sale. But,” he adds with
a wry smile, “you don’t get ‘em down
and ‘rassle ‘em.” Merle Mills describes
the haggling this way: “You’d say what
you wanted, and they’d say, ‘Well, I just
can’t do that,’ and next they’d say, ‘Well,
maybe if I buy another 10 head what
would you do?’ or they’d say ‘I have a
neighbor that’s going to be in here in a
day or two and I want him to look at
these, too.’ Then the two of them would
get together and try to buy 20 or 30
from you. You pay attention pretty
quick, because there’s a lot of difference
in selling 10 and selling 30.”
The hectic pace sometimes led to
embarrassing goofs. “The worst thing I
ever did,” Francis Rogers admits with a
sheepish smile, “was one time a buyer
came in and I sold him three or four bulls
and I didn’t write it down. I thought I
could remember.” Another rancher came
along and Rogers sold him one of those
same bulls. To patch things up with the
first fellow, Rogers says, “I gave him
another bull and he’s been buying from
me ever since.”
Most of the larger outfits had
herdsmen to care for their show string.
They called themselves hay shakers, turd
pitchers and brush hands, but herdsmen
were crucial. They rode the rails with
their cattle and lived with them at the
show, putting in days that began well
before sunup and sometimes ended in
the wee hours of morning.
Early mornings, before the yards got
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Arm Twisters and Hay Shakers
In the 1950s and early ‘60s, the yards
show had to be squeezed into the Denver
Livestock Market’s already-bustling
operation, which stayed in full swing
until just two days before the show
opened. Then, pens were emptied and
cleaned and aisles were washed down. By
Thursday, show cattle, which had been
temporarily stalled in outlying pens, were
brought up to display enclosures nearer
the Livestock Exchange Building.
Buyers were so eager for a look at the
year’s offerings that many showed up on
Wednesday or Thursday. The yearling
bull show on Saturday opened the Stock
Show. “That was the main event in those
National Western General Manager Willard Simms, left, and stockyards manager Charlie
Kirk examine carcass entries in the Fed Beef Contest, which began in 1964.
S P E C I A L
Kenneth Eppers recalls, “He had four
or five commission men that went with
him and they would recommend what
bulls for him to look at and they’d drive
them out in the aisle and he’d take a
quick look and just say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Make
an offer and that was it. It was no big
dickering deal with him. He knew what
he wanted and what he was going to pay.”
Tuell adds, “If you could get E. Paul in to
look at your bulls, you never wanted to
tell him what you wanted for them or
anything. You didn’t want to ask him any
questions– just open up and run them out
and let him look at them. You didn’t try to
convince him. Nope. If anything I believe
it would probably tick him off a little if
you tried to persuade him on things.”
One day in the early 1960s Waggoner
came into Perry Blach’s enclosure after a
visit to the C-K Ranch pens and sat down
on a bale of straw. “He sat there just
stewin,’” recalls Blach. The C-K, another
of his regular suppliers, had raised their
prices. With the miffed Texan fuming,
Blach gently suggested, “’I’ve got 52 bulls
here and there’s not a bad bull among
‘em. He wanted to see ‘em out in the
alley,” says Perry, whose heart must have
skipped a beat along about then. Blach
had a couple of herd prospects he hadn’t
intended to sell but Waggoner wanted
one in order to clinch the deal. “Of
course, he picked the best one,” chuckles
Blach. Waggoner bought 51 bulls. “As far
as I know, I still hold the record for
selling the most bulls to one buyer at the
National Western,” says Blach. An era
ended when Waggoner departed Denver’s
yards for the last time in 1965.
S E C T I O N
S P E C I A L
busy, saw a parade of bulls driven up and
down the long alleys for exercise. The
animals constantly needed fresh water
and feed and the pens had to be bedded
with straw and kept clean. Not many
outfits did much grooming in those days,
but for those that did there was extra
work. “It didn’t make any difference how
cold it was, you still had to wash the
bulls and get them cleaned up,” says Rex
Seibert. Cattle from the Western Slope
arrived with soot on their backs from the
ride through the Moffat Tunnel and
needed a wash job. The days were full
and evening brought another round of
chores: feed and fresh water, a final
cleaning of display pens after the animals
had been led to nighttime tie outs.
When the herdsmen could finally kick
up their heels a bit, the Exchange Bar in
the Livestock Exchange Building was a
popular spot. A place for a hot cup of
coffee and a warm-up during the day, it
got livelier when darkness fell. Frank
Padilla, a livestock judge at the National
Western now, started out showing
carloads of Hereford bulls here in 1972
and recalls a special customer in the bar.
“There was a group talking and pretty
soon this fella’ from Nebraska disappears
and next thing you know he’s got a
Hereford bull coming up the stairs. He
brings the bull in, everybody tries to buy
the bull a drink and we kind of hooted
and hollered for a little bit and then he
leaves with the bull.”
Sleeping arrangements were often a bit
casual. “We had our bedroll and we slept
in the pens,” recalls Stanley Stout. “After
you tied your cattle out at night, you’d
redo their stall and bed down yourself
right there in the straw.” Others found
lodging on the Hill. “We slept in the barn
where the show animals were tied,”
recalls Kenneth Eppers. “It wasn’t so
cold.” The show barns on the Hill were
gathering places at all hours, he says. “In
those days, it seemed like you could go
through those barns until ten o’clock at
night and sit down and talk to cattle
breeders and people that worked with
cattle. Everybody just spent their time
there. You sat in the barns and that’s all
you talked about, fitting cattle and the
cattle business.”
Although frigid Stock Show weather is
more myth than reality, the wintry clime
sometimes made for tough sledding. “I can
6 • 2 0 0 5 N a t i o n a l We s t e r n S t o c k S h o w
Crossbreeding transformed winning steers at the National Western between the Golden
Anniversary and the Diamond Jubilee. It’s a long way from Dorothy Fae Siehl’s thousandpound Grand Champion, a Hereford, in 1956…
remember one year out here, the warmest
it got in the daytime was 10 below zero,”
says Rex Seibert. Bob Milligan may be
recalling that same year when he says, “I
sold to Waggoners one year and it was 10
below zero. They took those bulls out of
the pen and put them through the dipping
vat ‘cause all the bulls going to Texas had
to be dipped. I saw them coming down
the alley, ice hanging off of them and one
bull had broke a horn off. You wouldn’t
even recognize them.”
Until 1967, sales and judging were
conducted in the long alley running the
length of the yards. “We saw bull sales
out there and it would be snowing so
hard you couldn’t see from one end of the
yards to the other,” recalls Milligan.
Stanley Stout remembers cattle shows in
the yards when “they paraded them down
before the judges with snow on their
backs and on the fur coats of the ladies
that owned them.” Cattle sales finally
came indoors when the Livestock Center,
with its 500-seat auction arena, opened
for the 1967 show.
In the 1960s the livestock industry
was undergoing a drastic transformation
that brought changes to the Stock Show.
Denver’s packinghouses moved away and
business in the once-bustling yards
slowed. Commission firms and the
venerable Denver Union Stockyards
Company went bust. The historic pens
fell silent for good in 1978. Without
facilities to handle the cattle carload show
the National Western would be “just
another stock show,” so the association
started buying the vacated yards. It began
in 1969 with a three-acre purchase on the
Hill and within a decade the National
Western owned much of the former
livestock market. In the mid-’70s the old
yards got a $100,000 facelift that
included 1,750 gallons of red, white and
blue paint. Packing House Road became
National Western Drive.
Affairs in the stockyards continue to
be a big part of the Stock Show and each
January they once again fill with cattle.
The buzz of activity offers visitors a
window on a historic era and rekindles
memories for folks who knew the yards
in their prime.
The Continentals Arrive
Nearly half the cattle shown when the
National Western celebrated its Golden
Anniversary in 1956 were Herefords and
the breed enjoyed a big lead over Angus
and Shorthorns in Stock Show
championships. Angus accounted for
nearly four of ten cattle exhibited and
Shorthorns were a distant third. Had those
plump Herefords, Angus and Shorthorns
peered a few years into the future, they
the end product.” The cow-calf man
finds out how his cattle stack up
against other ranchers while feeders
assess their performance at finishing
cattle for the consumer.
The National Western puts up
$10,000 in prize money and entry fees
sweeten the pot even more. “It’s a fierce
competition,” says Tuell. “There is
probably more prize money in the Fed
Beef Contest than any other contest, so
it’s worth going after. They’ve got a
trophy that I think weighs at least 200
pounds. It takes a dolly to move it!”
The introduction of new breeds and
fierce competition also produced one of
the Stock Show’s less glorious moments.
the 1970s, crossbreeding with
Continentals revolutionized the industry.
Dan Green, publisher of the Record
Stockman, explains: “When you cross two
breeds you get what’s called heterosis. You
get the energy from both animals that
results in one that grows better than either
breed would have individually.”
The average consumer probably doesn’t
know a Pinzgauer from a Polled Hereford,
but folks with a taste for beef benefited
when cattlemen began crossing
Continentals with Herefords, Angus and
Shorthorns. “The Continental breeds are
much bigger, framier cattle,” says Green.
“Herefords and Angus are not as big but
they make much juicier, more tender
meat.” The genetic mixing resulted in a
bigger carcass with better meat. “To get the
maximum heterosis in a cross,” Green
adds, “you need two purebred animals.
That’s why there’s Angus breeders who still
breed 100% Angus and there’s Limousin
breeders that breed 100% Limousin.”
In 1964 the National Western
launched its Fed Beef Contest to
emphasize better beef. Exhibitors enter
pens of six animals that are evaluated
before and after slaughter. “They count
the best five carcasses and they’ve got
to be uniform,” explains Roger Tuell,
chairman of the contest. “They are
USDA quality graded, yield graded and
then a panel of three judges places
them. We’re food producers and this is
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S E C T I O N
might have snorted in alarm. By 1981,
cattle exhibitors would increase five-fold
and they would be showing a dozen
breeds. (Nineteen breeds are appearing at
the National Western this year.) The
change brought a new look to the cattle
show and, through crossbreeding, new
vigor to the livestock industry.
The Big Three moved over in 1966 to
make room for the first of the
Continental breeds, so called because
they hail from places like France, Austria,
Switzerland and Italy. Charolais, a creamcolored French breed, was the first
newcomer, joined the next year by Santa
Gertrudis. According to then-General
Manager Willard Simms, by the early
1970s new breed organizations “were
pounding on our doors for a place to
exhibit ... and above all to sell.” Between
1970 and 1981, Galloway, Gelbveih,
Limousin, Simmental, South Devon,
Pinzgauer, Polled Hereford and Red
Angus also joined the ranks.
Crossbred cattle were so rare in the
1950s that when one turned up at the
National Western, show organizers were
stumped. Roger Tuell, who showed his
first steers here in 1952 and later
ramrodded the Stock Show’s Fed Beef
Contest, recalls a crossbred his brother
brought to the show. “He was a blue roan.
He wasn’t an Angus and he wasn’t a
Shorthorn and they didn’t know what the
devil to do with him,” chuckles Tuell. In
S P E C I A L
…to Julie Lebsack’s 1,268-pound Grand Champion, a crossbred, in 1981.
Bum Steer or Real Champ?
One evening during the 1972 Stock
Show, Jack Orr was finishing up chores
down in the yards when his son and a
friend came rushing into the pen. “Jeep’s
up there on the Hill!” they blurted
breathlessly. The steer with the funny
nickname had started life on the Skylark
Ranch at Kremmling, Colorado, where
one of the boys had prepared him for a
show and sale in Kansas. He had been a
creamy white Charolais back then, but
now he was jet black and entered as an
Angus in the Junior Show. So began a
melodrama that still evokes smirks and
discomfort. “No story created more
publicity in National Western history,”
wrote former General Manager Willard
Simms, but it’s a story the Stock Show
would sooner forget.
“They took me up there and except for
being black, it sure as heck looked like
Jeep,” Orr recalls. If it was Jeep, this was a
bombshell. Only steers sired by an Angus
bull were eligible to enter the Angus
division and Jeep, if that’s who he was, had
a Charolais poppa and momma. A dye job
could be the only explanation for his
present hue. Soon, the barn talk was all
about the steer and a protest challenging his
right to compete was filed with Stock Show
brass. When the owner tendered
documents showing an Angus sire, the steer
was allowed to stay in the competition. He
conceded to using black dye to touch up a
few light spots but this was a common
practice and not against the rules.
John Grisham might have scripted
what happened next. The Angus judge,
unaware of the hubbub behind the
S P E C I A L
S E C T I O N
had heard about Big Mac,” laughs Jack
Orr. That fall he checked into
Washington, D.C.’s, Mayflower Hotel to
help stockmen dramatize low cattle
prices. In a Cadillac and horse trailer
Collins and Big Mac toured the country,
appearing at fairs and 4-H clubs to
illustrate what happens when
competition goes too far. The storied
steer, a champion at heart, lived to a
ripe old age and might have said that
things turned out just fine.
Like all National Western Junior Show exhibitors, Durene Howard faced big-time
competition to earn her right to pose proudly with her Grand Champion and Reserve Grand
Champion wethers in 1963.
scenes, picked the animal over 86 other
entries as the division champion. Two
days later, a second judge chose him over
Hereford and Shorthorn winners to
become the Junior Show’s grand
champion steer, one of the highest
honors at the Stock Show. “He was a
good animal, no doubt about it,” says
Orr. The award put the critter in the
headlines and when McDonald’s laid
down a record $14,250 at the Junior
Livestock Auction and dubbed him “Big
Mac,” he was a celebrity.
Ordinarily, their appearance at the
auction is the last curtain call for Junior
Show champions, but Big Mac got a
reprieve. Documents had turned up
purporting to prove his Charolais ancestry
and he was sequestered before he could
be slaughtered. Blood samples were
drawn to probe his links to the claimed
Charolais and Angus sires. Branding irons
from the Skylark Ranch were brought in.
A vet had a gander up the champion’s
nostrils for signs that pink membranes
had been dyed black. “As far up as we
could see, he was black,” the vet said.
Investigators flew to Kansas to interview
the owners and 4-H officials. A brand
inspector clipped hair and photographed
brands from other Skylark cattle to
compare with the marks on Big Mac.
Separate labs turned up nary a trace of
8 • 2 0 0 5 N a t i o n a l We s t e r n S t o c k S h o w
Angus blood in Big Mac’s veins. He was,
they said, descended from a proud
Charolais lineage. The brand inspector
concluded “beyond a doubt” that Skylark
irons had branded him. The owner’s
account of the animal’s provenance began
to unravel and the steer started showing
white around his eyes as the hair grew out.
The vet peered up his nostrils again, stood
back with a surprised look and proclaimed,
“He’s just as pink as he can be.”
Then the lid blew off the unfolding
drama. “It hit page one of the Post noon
edition,” Simms would later write, “and
then about every newspaper, TV and
radio station in the country, and the AP
and UPI wire services.” To the
accompaniment of media guffaws, Simms
called in Big Mac’s ribbons and awarded
them to the reserve grand champion.
McDonald’s asked for a refund.
Months passed and the storm
subsided while Big Mac grew out a
creamy white coat in pens of the
Colorado Brand Board, which held him
as an unclaimed stray. He had
contentedly munched his way through
600 pounds of hay and 300 pounds of
cracked corn by August when Iowa
newspaperman Eddie Collins bought
him at auction– but not to turn him
into patties. “Practically everybody in
the United States and a lot of Europe
Youngsters in the Big Time
With chortles all around, the 1973
Junior Show’s grand champion steer was
nicknamed Honest Mac. And though the
National Western was still smarting, the
embarrassing fraud brought some needed
reforms. First, the Junior Show, which
had lagged in adding new breeds, opened
up to the increasingly popular Charolais
and added a class for “Other Breeds and
Crosses.” Now any steer sired by a
registered bull could be an Honest Mac.
Steps were also taken to thwart so-called
“steer jockeys,” exhibitors who would
bend or break rules in pursuit of the big
money paid for top animals at the Junior
Auction. Jack Orr, a key figure in
exposing Big Mac and later a Chairman of
the Junior Show, says, “We simply tried
to make rule changes to where it’s a good,
honest show and the kids are really
deserving and you’re teaching honesty,
respect and responsibility.”
There were other changes in the
Junior Show as well. Beginning in 1974,
girls could share in the bruises and
excitement of scrambling after a calf in
the popular Catch-A-Calf contest. Kids
lucky enough to collar one of the frisky
rodeo calves exchange it for a prospect
feeder calf and spend months halter
breaking, grooming and fattening it. They
return at the next Stock Show to be
judged on the animal’s weight gain and
improvement and on their own record
keeping and monthly letters to the
sponsor who provided the calf.
The Junior Show also grew
tremendously. In 1956, youngsters
showed 628 lambs, calves, and hogs. By
1981, cattle entries were up 64 percent
and both steers and heifers were being
shown in seven cattle breeds plus an
“other breeds and crosses” category. In
small livestock there was an even bigger
Flanked by swine show judge Tom Conover
and superintendent Forest McWilliams,
Rodney Russell shows off his Grand
Champion barrow in 1976. Small livestock
entry numbers exploded during the National
Western’s third quarter-century.
Each man pulls a squirming lamb
from the small pen beside the shearers’
platform, turns it expertly onto its
backside, cradles its head between his
thighs and goes to work. The wooly
critter goes limp and tolerates its haircut
with hardly a wiggle. With razor-sharp
shears whirring, both barber and
customer are at risk if this turns into a
wrestling match. They start with a deft
pass down the belly from chin to groin,
then trim out the legs. Each successive
stroke lays back more of the pelt. It’s as if
the lamb is being peeled. Near the finish
the lambs are reclining on thick cushions
of their own wool. A little cleanup
around the ears and in less time than it
takes to boil a three-minute egg the job’s
done. Released, the sheep scrambles to its
feet and scampers off the platform,
leaving behind an intact pelt that’s
gathered and judged. The shearer grabs
another critter and starts again. Before
he’s done, five pink lambs will be jostling
in the exhaust pen along with shorn
companions from other shearers.
Sam Haslem is a big guy with
a ready smile and an
encyclopedic memory. He loves
to talk about the Sheep Shearing
Contest, an event he helped start
at the National Western. After
stints helping with the Seed,
Wool and Junior Livestock
Shows he was tabbed in 1968 to
start the shearing contest.
“Down in the stockyards at that
time in the sheep market was a
wild Irishman by the name of
Mike Hayes,” Haslem recalls
with a broad grin. “Mike was an
institution here in the Denver
market when it was probably the
biggest sheep market in the
United States. He said, ‘Hey, I
want to help on this thing,’ and
he bought a whole bunch of real
nice Columbia replacement ewe
lambs. They were beauties. Mike
wanted them to look good for
the first shearing contest so he hired my
oldest son, Richard, to shear the faces
and across the back ends. We were all a
bunch of greenhorns but it went
extremely well. We had young
contestants from here in the Rocky
Mountain Region and they were awfully
good sheep to shear– turned out just real
good looking animals.”
With help from the Sunbeam
Corporation, maker of shearing
equipment, and the Indiana State Fair,
which hosted the International
Professional Sheep Shearing Contest, the
junior event was so successful that a
senior division was soon added. In 1976
the Stock Show lured the international
event away from Indiana and it’s been
held in Denver every January since.
Shearing is a contest of speed but
there’s more to it than the stopwatch.
Penalties are added for cuts in the pelt and
or nicks on the sheep. “If it’s got a bunch
of nicks on it, you’re not going to win,”
2 0 0 5 N AT I O N A L W E S T E R N S T O C K S H O W • 9
S E C T I O N
“We don’t eat tofu, of course.”
The first thing you notice is their
forearms. Popeye had forearms like that.
Broad shouldered and muscular, they’re
loosening up with 360-degree neck rolls
and bending double at the waist to place
their flat palms on the floor. These guys
are stout as oaks and limber as willows.
They’re wearing tee shirts, suspenders,
well-worn britches and hand-made
sheepskin slippers. The buzzer sounds
and the Stock Show’s International
Professional Sheep Shearing Contest is
underway.
S P E C I A L
boom. Barrows totaled 655 in six breed
and crossbred classes in 1981, while 486
lambs competed in seven categories.
If their animals’ names are any
indication, the kids had a lot of fun in
1956. Among the lambs were Ike, Spike
and Mike, Huey, Dewey and Louie and
Donald Duck. Hogs seemed to inspire
less imagination, with the most popular
name being simply “Entry.”
Among Hereford steers there
were several Reds and a trio of
Pee Wees, as well as Mickey,
Pluto, Stinky, Smarty Pants, and
Sir Loin– this last perhaps
belonging to a youngster with an
eye on the bottom line.
Predictably, Blackie was the
favorite Angus moniker, but
there were also two Snowballs,
showing the kids’ ironic sense
humor. Snap didn’t make it to
the show but Crackle and Pop
were there.
The names may have been
whimsical, but showing at the
National Western was serious
business. Morgan County
Commissioner Mark Arndt, who
brags that he’s never missed a
Stock Show in his life, says, “A
lot of us grew up with our Stock
Show experience. I showed a pig
in 1977 when I was just 16.
Four of us kids went and I was the oldest,
the one in charge. We stayed in a hotel
and we were on our own. It was quite an
experience to take that responsibility.” The
National Western was also a lot more
competitive than county fairs. “We were
in the big time. You had better know what
you were doing.” Show pressures didn’t
keep them from a bit of youthful
experimentation, he admits. “They used
to sell these cigars around the Coliseum
that were probably two inches in diameter
and a foot long and all of us had to try
one. Boy, they would sure make you sick,”
he says with a laugh. These days Mark
brings 4-H kids to the show and says, “It
makes responsible young adults out of
them.”
S P E C I A L
S E C T I O N
time some lambs bolted into the middle
of a Hereford judging in the Stadium
Arena. “They were a bit nervous ‘cause
they were freshly shorn and somehow
they knocked the gate down and here we
had this whole bunch of lambs all of a
sudden out underneath these Hereford
cattle. We had quite a free-for-all getting
those lambs corralled ‘cause they were
wild. They weren’t 4-H lambs, they were
range lambs and they’d just lost about
four or five pounds of wool and they
could really move. The cattle were tied to
the fence and the lambs were running up
and down and underneath them and
those cattle were jumping as high as they
could on the end of the their lead straps.
We had irritated Hereford breeders saying
four-letter words about our sheep.”
The highlight of each year’s event is the
shearers’ feast. “It’s always an excellent
banquet, good food and, of course, we
don’t eat tofu,” Haslem chuckles. “It’s
good legs of lamb and you have a chance
to visit with the judges and enjoy a little
fellowship.” The International Sheep
Shearing contest has drawn big crowds
from 1968 to the present day, and it’s in
good company with other crowd pleasers.
A deft hand with the clippers and a strong back are crucial to success in the Sheep Shearing
Contest, which first came to the National Western in 1968.
says Haslem. “We had one shearer from
the Pacific Northwest. He was rated
extremely high there. A big guy and he was
fast, there was no getting around it, but he
was a bit rough and there was enough
nicks on his sheep that it was pink in lots
of places. Of course, with the lanolin in the
wool that would heal up right away, but,
needless to say, he never came back.”
Haslem remembers special events down
through the years. There were Otis
Sneethen, the poet-shearer, and Gandy
Hidalgo who offered a prayer before each
competition. “He’d pray for the sheep, he’d
1 0 • 2 0 0 5 N a t i o n a l We s t e r n S t o c k S h o w
pray that the judges would be fair and
honest, he’d pray that the contestants would
be good sports and that the contest would
go well and the best person would win,”
recalls Haslem. He smiles remembering the
time they entered shearers in the rodeo.
“One year we tried a showmanship
gimmick. We had a generator on a trailer
and we went all the way around the rodeo
arena in the Coliseum while the four top
shearers had to shear one sheep. A lot of
that crowd had never seen a sheep shorn
before in their lives.”
A rodeo of another sort occurred the
“Greased Grasshoppers”
and Versatile Purebreds
With the Stock Show Band belting out
tunes, stock contractor Verne Elliott’s
gnarly critters kicking up their heels and
daring rodeo clowns dancing before
snorting bulls, the Coliseum rocked for
each rodeo. Three hundred cowboys
competed in the Golden Anniversary
performances and by 1981 over 900
cowboys and cowgirls were annually
making the trip to the January show to
compete for a quarter-million dollars in
prize money.
Bronc riding champion Casey Tibbs,
a top cowboy and rodeo’s most eligible
bachelor in 1956 wrote Denver Post
columns detailing behind-the-chutes
action. In one article, he described how
he felt before getting on a really rank
nag. “It’s a funny kind of feeling. No
matter where you are or what you’re
doing, everything seems kind of quiet
and nothing seems important but that
horse. You make the ride in your mind
a hundred times, getting him out of the
chute, getting him ridden, letting him
have more rein if he needs it without
S E C T I O N
2 0 0 5 N AT I O N A L W E S T E R N S T O C K S H O W • 1 1
S P E C I A L
losing it all.” Writing about
War Paint, a top bucker at the
1958 rodeo, he said, “I’ll have
to admit that sometimes I go a
little weak before I get on a
rough one like this pinto. He’s
well rested and grained up
snuffy as a prize fighter at his
peak. The pinto comes out like
a greased grasshopper and if
you get with him for a good
ride, it’s the greatest feeling in
the world.”
Rodeo clowns in outrageous
get-ups performed sometimespolitically-incorrect comic
routines to the delight of Denver
audiences. In 1956, Wilbur
Plaugher poked fun at the city’s
proposed leash law. When he
ceremoniously placed a tiny
Chihuahua in the arena,
announcer Cy Taillon reminded
the clown of the ordinance.
An ornery Brahma bull weighs his options during a staredown with barrel man Jimmy Schumacher and
Plaugher stomped purposefully bullfighter Wick Peth.
off, returned with a heavy bronc
rider’s rope, hooked up his pet and led him
The Westernaires, a mainstay in the
Palominos, Quarter Horses, Arabians,
away to a chorus of cheers from the crowd. arena today, first appeared at the National Appaloosas and Paints enlivened the
Behind the comedy it’s always been
Western in 1956. The equestrian group
National Western’s horse shows.
serious business for the clowns who can was formed in 1949 by Elmer Wyland to
Beginning in the 1940s, trends in the
make the difference between a cowboy
provide training and equine recreation for horse world were reflected at those
finishing in the money and going home
youngsters aged nine to 18. Even kids
events. It began with breed registries for
empty-handed. Jim Shoulders, rodeo
who didn’t own a horse could join the
Palominos and Quarter Horses but soon
super-star who made his reputation on
riding program designed to teach
spread to other breeds. “As these
the hurricane decks of bareback broncs
character, discipline and physical and
registries and associations got going the
and bucking bulls in the late 1950s,
mental stamina. The group has brought
horse shows started growing,” says
says, “If they get in front of him or turn
thousands of kids into the Coliseum over Randy Witte, publisher of Western
him back, that can help you a lot.” One
the decades and no rodeo at the Stock
Horseman Magazine. “It just kept getting
of Jim’s favorites was George Mills.
Show is complete without the
stronger and stronger as the horse
From the 1950s through the ‘70s
Westernaires blazing around the arena in
population increased. The horse shows
bullfighter Wilbur Plaugher and barrel
colorful drills that demand split-second
were one outlet for people to do
man Jimmy Schumacher teamed up to
timing and no small amount of courage.
something with their horses.” Horse
help Brahma riders get their money’s
Rodeo and horse show events were
owners competed in halter classes to
worth and save the necks of those who
blended and that posed interesting
showcase the physical quality of their
got more than they bargained for.
challenges for horse show exhibitors.
animals and performance classes to
Famed African-American rodeo clown
Jumping, the horse show high point, and
demonstrate their working abilities. In
Leon Coffee delighted Stock Show
bull riding, rodeo’s big crowd-pleaser,
showmanship classes it was the human
audiences in the 1970s.
were placed at the end of each
on the end of the halter rope who was
A good rodeo announcer, with a western performance. “The bulls were all in the
scrutinized by picky judges. Many of the
drawl broad as a Brahma’s shoulders and a
chutes and the horses go in the arena and breed shows culminated with a lively
voice that rumbles like gravel in a gold pan, these bulls are banging around and the
auction where breeders and exhibitors
can add a lot to any performance, and the
horses were not fond of that,” says Sandy
paid top dollar for top equine prospects.
National Western has always attracted top
Dennehey. “They ended up putting us
Back in 1938, Palominos held a breed
microphone men. The tradition began with after the bulls and that was better. We
show at the National Western and they
Abe Lefton at the Stock Show’s first rodeo in didn’t get the crowd that we got when we continued until 1963 when they were
1931. Perhaps the greatest of all was Cy
came before, but we had a little better
dropped due to declining entry
Taillon who called arena play-by-play from
behavior out of the horses.”
numbers. Parade classes, with their
1946 to 1978.
In addition to hunters and jumpers,
emphasis on physical beauty and fancy
S E C T I O N
S P E C I A L
Snappy Appaloosas stand for judging in the Stadium Arena in 1959. Originated by the Nez
Perce Indians, the breed was a hit at the National Western.
tack, were a highlight of Palomino
shows. Arabians trace their ancestry to
the deserts of North Africa and were
shown in Denver from the mid-1940s
until 1968. The Appaloosa Horse Club
held its first show at the National
Western in 1959. The dramatically
spotted Appies, developed in the vast
herds of the Nez Perce Indians, were so
popular that they outnumbered
Palominos and Arabians combined. The
American Paint Horse Association held
its Denver debut in 1967 and entries
quadrupled by 1981. The Paints still put
on a big show each January.
The American Quarter Horse
Association began regular shows at
Denver in 1944 and for sheer numbers
no breed at the National Western can
match them. Quarter Horse entries
quadrupled between 1956 and 1981.
Changes in the Quarter Horse reflect
the importance of shows like those at
the National Western. Renee and
Dauane Elkins have seen an evolution
during their 30 years as horse show
managers. “They’ve gotten larger, taller,
heavier and more defined,” Elkins says.
“They aren’t as much of the short stocky
quarter-mile runner that they were
known for before. They’ve had to
expand in their conformation to
perform all the diverse things they do.”
1 2 • 2 0 0 5 N a t i o n a l We s t e r n S t o c k S h o w
Participants and spectators at today’s
horse shows might be surprised at the
differences of half a century ago.
Recalling her first years at the National
Western, Elkins says, “It was definitely a
much looser environment for showing
horses.” Sandy Dennehey, who has shown
hunters and jumpers at the Stock Show
since 1952, agrees. “I showed in the big
jumper class. I can’t imagine a 12-yearold doing that today. We jumped
however high our horses would jump.
We’d have one horse and show him in
every class– be a hunter one night and a
jumper the next. You would no more do
that today than fly to the moon.”
The National Western’s Events Center
has made it a top horse venue in the
country, but things were a bit rougher
back in the 1950s when exhibitors stalled
their horses in metal Quonsets and a twostory barn. Ken Ochs, whose family
showed horses at the National Western
until 1963, recalls the unique climate in
the metal buildings. “I always stayed out
of there because when it got cold the
moisture would go up to the top and
freeze and during the day time when the
sun hit it, it would rain.” It sometimes
got so cold in the unheated buildings that
water buckets froze solid.
Although the Coliseum was a great
place to compete, it had no staging
paddock so exhibitors warmed up their
mounts as best they could. “They let us
go over that old bridge thing to the old
arena if they weren’t showing cattle or
something. You’d go over there, jump a
few jumps and then come back across the
ramp and wait outdoors. You combine
that with the fact that you’re going from
outdoors to in, light change and the
whole thing. I think about it now and I
don’t know why any of them did it.”
The Diamond Jubilee saw the return
of the gentle giants to the National
Western. Draft horses had been big at
the show in its formative decades, but
were dropped in the 1930s. By the
1970s, interest in the powerful equines
was on the increase. According to Randy
Witte, “People realized that those really
are beautiful animals. They’re different
than other horses and there’s just a
fascination being around something that
large and that gentle.” Whether it was
purebred Percherons, Belgians or
Clydesdales in dazzling harness pulling
fancy rigs, or all-business grade horses
dragging heavy sleds across the arena,
the huge horses were a hit with Denver
audiences. “It was great,” says Witte.
“They would just pack that stadium. It
was instantly popular.”
When the National Western marked its
Diamond Jubilee in 1981, it had many
reasons to celebrate. The show’s run had
expanded from nine to 11 days and
attendance and entries were climbing. The
show featured 99 judged events for
everything from rabbits to draft horses and
36 sales for cattle, horses, lambs and hogs.
New cattle breeds were adding interest
and the show in the yards remained strong
in spite of industry changes. Young
exhibitors were flocking to the Junior
Show and the Fed Beef and Sheep
Shearing Contests were going strong. The
recently returned draft horses were clearly
going to be a big favorite and the horse
show and rodeo were still real crowd
pleasers. Best of all, the show was still
making special memories, whether it was a
Hereford breeder selling a big batch of his
best bulls to a top buyer, a family enjoying
the action and antics of a Saturday rodeo
or a proud 12-year-old cradling a bunny in
a shoebox on the bus ride home. ■
NOTE: Next year’s program will chronicle the
National Western’s fourth quarter-century.