The sporT ThaT preceded sTaTehood sTill rides sTrong in oklahoma.

Th e sp or t t h a t p r ec ed e d
st a t e h ood st i l l rides
st r on g in O k l a h om a .
By Holly CLANAHAN Hendrix | Photography by Rebekah Workman
Illustrations by Steven Walker
CIRCUIT CITIES
Rodeo is as Oklahoma as red-dirt
dust rising from a hot arena floor.
Above, participants warm up their
horses at the 2012 Ram Prairie
Circuit Finals Rodeo in Duncan.
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September/October 2013
OklahomaToday.com
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“ r odeo’ s r oots r u n deep
in the Sooner State.”
I
t was 1935, and eleven-year-old
Bareback Riding
With a rigging that resembles a suitcase handle strapped
around the horse, bareback riders have to stay on their
horses for eight seconds and win style points for spurring
technique. Riders must have both spurs touching the
horse’s shoulders until its initial jump from the chute.
Then, the cowboy moves his feet in concert with the
horse, straightening them on the horse’s descent and rolling them up as the horse bucks. The PRCA’s description?
Like “riding a jackhammer with one hand.”
Louis Brooks, Jimmy Cleveland, Bobby Cooper, Wayne
Hanson, Ben Jordan, Milburn Outhier, Jim Shoulders,
Chuck Smith, and Arthur Stoner are among Oklahoma’s
world champions in this event.
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September/October 2013
Argene Clanton, eager to see one
of Vinita’s first rodeos, got on his
horse and rode the eighteen miles
to town.
“I remember seeing the parade,” Clanton says. “We led the riderless horse down
the street.”
This practice is in tribute to Will
Rogers, killed just days before that first
rodeo in a plane crash in Alaska. In 1934,
he had encouraged the townspeople of
Vinita to hold a rodeo and promised to
return for it. After his death, the event
was named the Will Rogers Memorial
Rodeo, and 2013 marks its seventyseventh occurrence. Clanton, who turned
eighty-nine on July 11, has been there for
just about all of them.
He was absent for three years while
serving in the military during World
War II and in 1957, when the rodeo was
canceled because of a livestock disease
outbreak. Other than that, Clanton has
participated: as a tie-down roping contestant a few times in his younger days,
as the cowboy who carried the American
flag in the grand entry for forty years,
and as rodeo chairman for several years.
Today, Clanton still serves on the
committee for the Professional Rodeo
Cowboys Association (PRCA)-sanctioned event put on by the American
Legion post in Vinita. That’s more than
seven decades of dedication, and his
experiences capture the long-running
legacy of rodeo in Oklahoma. The
sport’s roots run deep in the Sooner
State and pay homage to a heritage
older than the state itself.
Between two of the rodeo organizations that sponsor events in Oklahoma,
the PRCA and the Oklahoma Citybased International Professional Rodeo
Association, or IPRA, the state hosts
approximately fifty rodeos per year. Some
are huge, including the PRCA’s Ram
National Circuit Finals, with prize money
totaling more than $500,000, and the
IPRA’s International Finals Rodeo, which
rewards contestants with about $350,000
in cash and prizes. The Oklahoma City
Convention & Visitors Bureau estimates
that these two events alone are responsible for $6.2 million in direct spending.
The other end of the spectrum is wellpopulated with event competitions, open
rodeos, local play days, and jackpots that
offer practice and prize money for barrel
racers, team ropers, and others. Although
coming up with specific figures is difficult, rodeo events in Oklahoma generate
many millions of dollars every year.
“I think there’s something about
every day if you wanted to go,” says
Billy Etbauer, a South Dakota native
who has lived in Edmond since 1993.
The 2012 ProRodeo Hall of Fame inductee is best known for the records he
set riding saddle broncs, but he’s busy
now breeding and training barrel horses
with his wife, Hollie—and attending as
many rodeos as he can.
“Last night, my wife and kids went to
a jackpot in Tuttle,” he says. “You could
run barrels every day if you wanted to.”
The International Finals Youth
Rodeo hosts ten events and a
thousand contestants at the Heart
of Shawnee Expo Center every
summer, making it one of the
biggest youth rodeos in the nation.
B
ut rodeo events weren’t al-
ways so frequent. The sport began
as the ranching industry took seed
in what would become Oklahoma Territory and the surrounding cattle country
after the Civil War, when cowboys first
shepherded long-distance cattle drives.
The Chisholm Trail Stampede PRCA
Rodeo in Duncan promotes that history, encouraging rodeo fans to visit the
Chisholm Trail Heritage Center while
they’re in town in order to understand
the rodeo’s origins.
The youth rodeo teaches aspiring
pros focus and team-building skills.
Many participants go on to become
professional rodeo cowboys and
cowgirls, and some earn scholarships for
their participation.
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45
“ rodeo d e ve loped in many, many
dif f e re nt place s, and Oklahoma
was definitely one of them.”
A contestant catches air during the bareback
riding competition at the 2012 Ram Prairie
Circuit Finals Rodeo in Duncan. The rodeo
serves as a year-end championship for the
Prairie Circuit, which includes participants
from Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. Fans
of all ages come out to support their favorite
riders and ropers.
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September/October 2013
By the late 1800s, most cowboys
had come off the trails and settled on
ranches, getting down to the business
of breaking horses and working cattle.
From those pursuits sprang several
impromptu competitions.
“Somebody would say, ‘Old Charlie
over at the XYZ Ranch is the best roper
I know of.’ And somebody else would
challenge him with another cowboy
that he thought would do better,” says
rodeo historian Gail Woerner, chairwoman of the oral history project for
the Rodeo Historical Society, based at
the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
Over time, enterprising cowboys saw
the crowd appeal of such contests and
began organizing events sometimes
called “roundups” in the early days.
“I don’t think we’ll ever know where
the first rodeo took place,” Woerner
says. “Rodeo developed in many, many
different places, and Oklahoma was
definitely one of them.”
Other entrepreneurs recognized the
value in packaging the show and taking it on the road. In 1905, the Miller
brothers of Ponca City christened their
101 Ranch’s Wild West Show, which
featured roping, bronc riding, and
bulldogging by Bill Pickett, the African
American cowboy who invented a novel
way of wrestling a steer to the ground.
Mimicking cow dogs he had seen
work in the Texas brush, Pickett rode up
beside a running steer, slid down to grab
it around its neck and nose, and then bit
its lip, bringing it to the ground. He’s
considered the father of modern-day
steer wrestling, which exists today in a
slightly different, bite-free form.
Wild West shows eventually went out
of business one by one, Woerner says,
leaving rodeos as the sole source of cow-
boy entertainment. But as the 101 Ranch
died out, another Oklahoma rodeo
institution was taking hold.
Legendary stock contractor Bennie
Beutler remembers stories told by his
great-uncle Lynn, one of the founders of
Beutler Brothers Rodeo Company near
Elk City.
“When they sold the Miller brothers out [in the early 1930s], he went
up there and bought some horses and
tack,” he says.
The Beutler family’s connections with
rodeo are so deep, it takes a good portion
of the Old Town Museum in Elk City to
document the parallel developments of
the sport and the family who helped it
gain a foothold in Oklahoma.
Growing up north of Elk City, Lynn
Beutler and his brothers Jake and Elra
(Bennie’s grandfather) were sons of a
cattle and horse trader, John Beutler. He
traveled around the country in western
Oklahoma making livestock purchases,
and his sons trailed them to a railroad
depot near their home.
In 1922, when he was seventeen, Lynn
attended his first rodeo in Canadian,
Texas, and saw a financial opportunity
that didn’t exist back home.
“They’d starve to death farming,” Bennie says. “It was tough.”
By 1929, the livestock-trading brothers
had put together a handful of horses that
would buck, and organizers of a rodeo in
Clinton asked them to bring the horses
and six bulls there. They trailed the stock
to Clinton and back and earned the thenhandsome sum of a hundred dollars.
“There has been a Beutler in the rodeo
business ever since,” says Bennie, who
was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of
Fame in 2010. The company has taken
different forms over the years, sometimes
including outside partners, but its current
Barrel Racing
This event in professional rodeo is governed by the
Women’s Professional Rodeo Association rather than the
PRCA, but it has a place at the Wrangler National Finals
Rodeo in Las Vegas. It’s a timed event, requiring riders
to guide their horses to make tight turns around three
barrels in a cloverleaf pattern. Often, these animals carry
the blood of racing American quarter horses to give them
an extra dose of speed.
Among Oklahoma’s most successful barrel racers are
Mary Burger, Mary Cravens, Sherry Combs Johnson,
Jane Mayo, Charla Parkness, Gail Petska, Jyme Beth
Powell-Hammonds, Betty Roper, Janae Ward-Massey,
and Florence Price Youree.
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“ Som e of th e best cowboys
wh o h a ve ever been
came out of Oklahoma.”
incarnation is Beutler and Son Rodeo
Company, made up of Bennie and his
son, Rhett. Rhett’s six- and nine-year-old
children wait in the wings, the fifth generation of Beutlers who will provide stock
to rodeos around the country.
W
ith his lifelong history in
the sport, Bennie has either
known or known of a long
list of Oklahomans who’ve made history
in the rodeo arena.
“Some of the best cowboys who have
ever been came out of the state of Oklahoma,” he says, “like Jim Shoulders [a
sixteen-time world champion who lived
in Henryetta] and Clem McSpadden.”
McSpadden, who lived in Chelsea,
was a famed announcer and for eighteen
years the general manager of the PRCA’s
National Finals Rodeo before it moved
from Oklahoma City to Las Vegas in the
A contestant takes a turn at the 2012
Better Barrel Races World Finals at
State Fair Park in Oklahoma City.
mid-1980s. He also was a state senator, a
U.S. congressman, and an inductee into
the ProRodeo Hall of Fame. McSpadden
died in 2008.
“There wasn’t ever any better announcer than Clem was, and he was a
diplomat for the state of Oklahoma and
for the rodeo business,” says Bennie,
who’s not alone in singing his praises.
“We had Clem McSpadden here in
Vinita for years,” says Connie Butler, a
rodeo volunteer and Argene Clanton’s
daughter. “This was kind of his home
rodeo. He was our announcer for about
forty years. Even though Clem has gone
on, we have him on tape, and he recites
the cowboy prayer during our grand
entry. So even though he’s not with us,
we still have him every year.”
But McSpadden was only one of many
Oklahoma rodeo greats. The steerwrestling Duvall family of Checotah has
created a dynasty, with two generations
of National Finals Rodeo qualifiers and
a third in the making. Riley Duvall, the
current competitor, was a standout in
The Better Barrel Races organization, or
BBR, has more than 7,000 members in
33 states and several countries.
Steer Roping
With the steer given a head start, a roper must throw
his loop around the steer’s horns, then toss the slack of
the rope around the steer’s hip. Next, the roper turns his
horse away from the steer and brings it to the ground.
The roper then dismounts and ties three of the steer’s
feet. Not all rodeos offer this event, but it is prevalent in
Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico. Its premier
event is the Clem McSpadden National Finals Steer Roping championship held at the Lazy E Arena in Guthrie on
November 8-9.
Some of the biggest Oklahoma names in steer roping are
Shaun Burchett, Clark McEntire, John Wesley McEntire,
Ike Rude, Everett Shaw, Dick Truitt, and Howard Choteau
“Shoat” Webster.
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September/October 2013
A contestant rinses off her horse at the
2012 BBR World Finals. The Oklahoma
City-based organization celebrated its
ten-year anniversary in 2013. Last
year, there were 1,523 BBR-sanctioned
events across the United States.
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Saddle Bronc
Riding
As with bareback riding, riders must “mark out” their
horses with their spurs on the first jump from the
chute. The rider holds onto a thick rein attached to the
horse’s halter and must not touch the horse or his own
body with his free hand. The cowboy spurs the horse
from the point of the shoulder toward the back of the
saddle, trying for a smooth, rhythmic ride.
Louis Brooks, Dan Dailey, Billy Etbauer, Butch LeMay,
Gene Maynard, Cord and Jet McCoy, Mike Outhier,
and Justin Rowe are among the event’s most successful Oklahomans.
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September/October 2013
Rodeo clown and 2012 PRCA Barrel
Man of the Year Justin Rumford of
Ponca City at the Ram Prairie Circuit
Finals Rodeo in Duncan. Barrel men
and clowns protect riders from ornery
animals in the arena.
high school and at Connors State College
in Warner.
“He hasn’t made the National Finals
yet, but he will,” Bennie says.
And then there’s Billy Etbauer, who
took several spins in the late 1990s on a
saddle bronc named Blood Brother. One
National Finals Rodeo ride in particular
stands out in his mind.
“It was one of the best bronc rides I
ever saw, maybe the best,” says Bennie.
“That horse did everything but pull a
knife on Billy, and he rode him.”
Etbauer, of course, remembers as well.
“It’s one I reckon I’ll never forget,” he
says with a chuckle. “It was wild and fast
and a lot of action. I wouldn’t care to ever
try to make another ride like that, but
it’s kind of what everybody goes to see
to get pumped.”
Etbauer ended his career with five
world championships in saddle bronc
riding and the distinction of becoming
the first cowboy to earn more than $3
million in a single event over the course
of his career.
Woerner has a few Oklahoma standouts of her own to mention, including
Clark and John McEntire (father and
grandfather of country music star Reba
McEntire), both world-champion steer
ropers between 1934 and 1961.
“You’ve got a lot of world champions
from Oklahoma in all events,” Woerner
says. “It’s a cowboy state.”
Even smaller PRCA rodeos like the one
in Duncan have a stake in that tradition.
“We’re rodeo country here,” says
rodeo committee chairwoman Barbara
Davis. “We have a lot of men and
women who have gone on to win the
National Finals from Stephens County.
We’ve got a lot of people who grew up
in rodeo, and their kids are in it now.
We are a rodeo town.”
B
ecause rodeo is such an en-
during Oklahoma institution, it
makes sense that the state could
leverage its cowboy heritage into increased media attention on the national
and international stages.
ProRodeo Team Oklahoma formed
about three years ago and is based on a
model in Wyoming with state funding for rodeo cowboys and cowgirls
to promote their state through media
interviews and appearances.
Bill Pearson rodeoed for years in
Oklahoma. He and his wife Jan, of
Gainesville, Missouri, are the team’s
cofounders, along with bullfighter
Andy Burelle of Ardmore. Though
Bull Riding
Riders are required to stay aboard the twisting, bucking
mass of muscle while holding on with one hand for eight
seconds. A flat, braided rope is wrapped around the
one-ton bull just behind his front legs, and the rider then
wraps the tail of the rope around his hand, sometimes
weaving it through his fingers to secure his grip.
Warren G. “Freckles” Brown, Mika John Calico, Red
Doffin, Lane Frost, Ben Jordan, Jim Shoulders, Doyle
Stanford, Terry Don West, Todd Whatley, and Jack Wiseman are among the state’s most successful bull riders.
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“ You’ve got a lot of
world champions from
Oklahoma in all events.
It’s a cowboy state.”
Oklahoma doesn’t pay its cowboy
ambassadors, the team has received
citations and proclamations from the
governor’s office, the state legislature,
the Cherokee Nation, the Oklahoma
Tourism & Recreation Department,
and the National Cowboy & Western
Heritage Museum.
The fifteen team members are current
or former National Finals Rodeo or
National Finals Steer Roping qualifiers,
plus rodeo announcer Justin McKee of
Lenapah, and all are hard at work on
educational and promotional efforts.
“Ag tourism is a big part of the
economy here,” Burelle says. “We’re doing grassroots advertising. It fills up the
hotels, and everyone’s buying diesel and
going to the restaurants. It’s a big boom.”
Steer roper Rod Hartness and barrel
racer Tana Poppino are on the board of
directors for ProRodeo Team Oklahoma, and both say the team has an
important mission.
“We’re proud of our state, and we’re
proud of our roots,” says Poppino,
a three-time National Finals Rodeo
qualifier who lives in Big Cabin.
“The cowboy is looked at as a strong,
independent character that people look
up to and admire, meeting challenges
head on and conquering them. As we
travel the United States, we hope to
represent that.”
Hartness, of Pawhuska, has qualified
fifteen
times for the steer roping finals,
Every July, rodeo organizers, cowboys, and
cattle travel twelve miles from the Chain
now held at the Lazy E Arena in Guthrie.
Ranch to the Crystal Beach Arena for the
Woodward Elks Rodeo. The cattle drive is Clem McSpadden announced those
finals twenty-seven times.
the rodeo’s kickoff event.
Steer Wrestling
The steer gets a head start, as the cowboy, mounted on a
fast horse, catches up and slides off the right side of his
horse, assisted by a “hazer” who rides on the opposite
side of the steer to keep him from veering away. As the
cowboy hooks his right arm around the steer’s right horn,
he grasps the left horn with his left hand, using strength
and leverage to wrestle the steer to the ground until all
four feet are pointing the same direction.
Benny Combs, Everett Crandell, Dan Dailey, Red Doffin,
Roy Duvall, Tom Ferguson, Ronnie Fields, Tom Nesmith,
Gene Ross, Britches Sims, Todd Whatley, Stan Williamson,
Jack Wiseman, and Dale Yerigan are champion steer
wrestlers from Oklahoma.
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September/October 2013
A young man sits behind the bucking
chutes at Crystal Beach Arena during
the Woodward Elks Rodeo. The event
brings in audiences of 25,000 to
30,000 spectators every year.
“He used to say, ‘When you see Rod
come in the arena, he’s one of those guys
you want to go get a big old handful of
mud and wipe on him because he’s so
clean cut,’” Hartness says, laughing.
That image has served him well as he
represents the state’s rodeo world, doing
interviews with RFD-TV, a rural cable
channel, and a film crew from Ireland
whose documentary, Gentlemen: The
Movie is planned for a 2015 release.
Even the youngest fans get a dose of
Hartness’ hospitality.
“Every time I see a little one, I make
sure I go out of my way to talk to him,”
he says.
Many in the rodeo industry say an
emphasis on youth is crucial. After all,
they’re the next generation of spectators
and contestants.
In Elk City, rodeo clowns and committee members visit elementary schools
to spread the word about the Elk City
Rodeo of Champions, going strong in its
seventy-fifth year.
“There’s so much competition out
there for the recreation dollar,” says
committee president Larry McConnell. “With the other major sports and
everything that is available to young
kids, we have to get them involved in
rodeo early on.”
IPRA general manager Dale Yerigan,
who was an eleven-time IPRA worldchampion steer wrestler before taking
his administrative position in 2007, sees
the fruits of such efforts. His association
sponsors the International Finals Youth
Rodeo held every summer in Shawnee.
“Those kids will renew your faith in
the next generation,” he says. “I think
maybe our country will be in a little better hands than some people think.”
Still, the sport faces challenges.
“It’s more and more expensive to travel
and compete,” Yerigan says. “Fuel prices
are nearly four times higher than when I
was traveling.”
Many top-tier rodeo competitors have
sponsors who chip in cash or clothing in
exchange for a logo on the contestant’s
shirt or vehicle. Sponsors are vital to
rodeo committees, too.
Neal Day is chairman of the Woodward Elks Rodeo, held in July 2013 for
Team Roping
This is the only team event in professional rodeo,
requiring a header to snare a steer around its horns
or neck. The header turns the steer to the left so the
steer’s hind legs are exposed. The heeler must rope
both hind legs or suffer a five-second penalty for
getting only one. With two ropes on the steer, the team
ropers must take the slack out of their ropes and turn
their horses to face one another.
Team roping champions from Oklahoma include Terry
Crow, Ben Johnson, Joel Maker, John Miller, D.J.
O’Connor, Jim Rutherford, Rick Rutherford, Nicky Simmons, and Tee Woolman.
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Tie-Down Roping
The calf gets a head start in this event, while the horse
and roper wait momentarily in a three-sided holding
box next to the chute from which the calf is released.
As soon as the cowboy throws his loop and catches
the calf, his horse is trained to stop while he dismounts
from the right side and sprints to the calf. The cowboy
“flanks” the calf to the ground and ties any three feet
together with a short rope carried in his mouth during
the run. The calf must stay tied for six seconds after the
cowboy has remounted.
Ken Bailey, Roger Branch, Clyde Burk, Steve Crow,
Tom Ferguson, Junior Garrison, Terry Postrach Jr.,
Don W. Smith, Tom Walker, and Walt White are world
champions in this event.
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September/October 2013
the eighty-third time and thus the oldest
continuous PRCA rodeo in the state.
When it started on the Fourth of July
1929 in a pasture north of town, organizers hoped to stay within a fifty-dollar
budget. As projects such as an arena fence
and chutes were deemed necessary, the
cost grew to five hundred dollars. Today,
Day says, it takes a half a million dollars a
year to put on the rodeo.
Sponsors make that possible, and the
rodeo itself—like many in the state—even
serves as a fundraiser, allowing the Elks
Lodge to give back to the community.
The Elk City rodeo also has loyal
sponsors, McConnell says, but there
are a lot of demands for the money.
Ticket prices can only go so high and
still be affordable for families, which
is important to organizers. And there’s
plenty of competition to draw good
cowboys and cowgirls.
“We’ve had to put in more money [in
the purses] to make it worth their time
to come to our rodeo,” McConnell says.
The quality stock that Beutler
and Son provide to the Elk City and
Woodward rodeos, and many others in
Oklahoma, also is an enticement.
“The cost has escalated, the quality of
contestants has escalated, and the quality
With every passing year, more rodeo
competitors, including this one at the
International Finals Youth Rodeo, are
trading their cowboy hats for helmets,
which provide protection against head
injury in a rough-and-tumble sport.
of the stock has escalated, but the heritage involved in rodeo is still there,” McConnell says. “It’s still the cowboy way.”
And it remains a deep-seated Oklahoma tradition and a popular home-grown
sporting event.
“The talent base here in Oklahoma is
really good,” Yerigan says. “Hopefully,
people realize they’ve got a great opportunity living here to get out and see some
of the best rodeo action and competitors
right in their backyards.”
Oklahoma hosts a number of upcoming rodeos, including the Elk City Rodeo
of Champions (August 30-September 1),
the Jim Shoulders Living Legends Rodeo
in Henryetta (August 31-September 1),
Xtreme Bulls at the Oklahoma State Fair
in Oklahoma City (September 20-21), the
Tulsa State Fair PRCA Rodeo (October
4-5), and the Chisholm Trail Ram Prairie
Circuit Finals Rodeo in Duncan (October 17-19). For more rodeo events, visit
TravelOK.com/rodeos.