For seven harried weeks in the late summer of 1920 a group of ranchers and business owners rushed to bring a wild west rodeo on a grand scale never before accomplished in their area to the folks of Lake County and the surrounding countryside. They were successful beyond their wildest collective dreams. Labor Day weekend, in September 2019, will be the 100th consecutive rodeo held in Lakeview, Lake County, Oregon.

“Where there are steeds, there must be cowboys … Bill Raymond and Pat McCartie put in an appearance the other day and these veterans say there won’t be enough horses to go around with the boys coming from all over the country. A dozen or more drifted in last week. Jesse Stahl … pulled in the other day and is wrangling horses for some outfit while he waits for the show. Everything at the arena is in top shape for the show.” 

— Lake County Examiner, August 25, 1927.

“The cowboys get a square deal at Lakeview.”  

— Lake County Examiner, August 20, 1930.

The show at Lakeview has continued through years of depression, drought, weariness, discouragement and wars. And with jubilant success, year after year. The tenacious, stubborn, patriotic will of likeminded ranchers and business owners continues today — as boldly determined and successful as they were 100 years ago.

Three weeks after the first show, in September 1920, Thelma Tucker married her cowboy sweetheart — Boss Richardson — King of the Lakeview Round-Up. He was top cowboy for four out of the first five rodeos.

Boss Richardson, flying high on the likes of Billy Sunday, waves his hat and grins at the wild crowd as they erupt in adoration. His satisfaction with the notion of his having drawn a great, heaving, twisting machine of angry horseflesh rises higher and higher to the heavens above while he ignores the sheer hell of the pounding, cutting hooves below. Such is the will and bravado of the countless cowboys and cowgirls who have rode a bronc, or a bull, wrestled a steer to the ground, raced through the barrels, or swung a long singing rope in the arena of one of the finest little rodeos in the West — Lakeview, Lake County, Oregon.

“Ride ’em Cowboy”