Augusta American Legion Rodeo

On the last Sunday of June, at 2 p.m., the main performance of the Augusta American Legion Rodeo begins at the Legion Rodeo Grounds in Augusta, a town at the edge of the Rocky Mountain Front. The grounds are, in the words of chamber rodeo chair Tia Troy, “steps from downtown Augusta.” The 2026 rodeo fell on Sunday, June 28. Its reserved-seat tickets carried a note: anyone who wants to bring a cooler should buy the cooler a seat of its own. Some general admission tickets were sold at the gate, cash or check.

Three days on Main Street

The Sunday show closes a weekend. The Augusta Area Chamber of Commerce’s 2026 program began Friday afternoon with a jam at the Taylor Agency, where people were asked to bring a lawn chair, an instrument, or both. A ranch rodeo followed at the grounds at 5 p.m. That night there was a band at the Lazy B, a DJ inside the Buckhorn Bar, and live music at the Outlaw. On Saturday, music played on the Blue Pine Wine patio before and after the 2 p.m. parade. After the parade came kids’ games, face painting, and the Augusta Youth Center dunk tank in the parking lot of Allen’s Manix Store. Rodeo slack went into the arena at 5 p.m., and Erik Fingers Ray played the Western Bar that night and again on Sunday. Vendors set up around town on all three days.

In 2025, vendors along Main Street sold jewelry, quilts, birdhouses, metal art, herbal products, and hats from a hat bar. That Saturday morning the Wapiti Fun Run started its 10K, 5K, and one-mile runners from in front of the school. The Electric, a Great Falls news site, sent visitors to Outlaw Women’s Saloon for breakfast and to Allen’s Manix Store for tacos. In 2011 the parade formed at noon at the corner of Main Street and Manix. Jordan Taillon, who organized the parade that year, joked that it was the only four-way stop in Augusta.

Sunday at the Legion grounds

Spectators sit in main grandstands that volunteers built in 1964, finishing the job while standing in water. Others sit on bleachers that first stood at Carroll College. A Great Falls ice rink had planned to use them, but its organizers upgraded to different stands and put these up for sale. Volunteers assembled them piece by piece and finished just in time for a rodeo a couple of years before 2011. In 2011 the American Legion Auxiliary ran the concessions with about 30 volunteers, serving hot dogs, hamburgers, sweets, and snacks through the afternoon. Food and vendors still run through the Sunday performance.

That year Ben Arps, the Legion member who chaired the rodeo, said the Kesler outfit had supplied the PRCA stock for more than 20 years. The first contract was a handshake, and the contractor now takes a percentage. “This has worked good for both of us, meaning some years when attendance is down, they don’t make as much but other years they walk away okay,” Arps said. He put Sunday attendance in most years at 4,000 to 5,000. “We have never had a sold out crowd,” he said. “There is always room for one more.”

The winner of the All Around Cowboy title takes home a saddle. Starting in 1985, Dr. R.K. West of Great Falls donated it each year in memory of his father, a World War I veteran and a member of the Great Falls Legion post. West attended every year to present it himself. After his death the Kenck Foundation of Augusta gave the saddle for 2011. By Arps’s account, everything left over after expenses goes back to whatever the community needs.

Arps coordinated the rodeo for more than 20 years, and Jerry Mosher held the job for about 20 years before him. In 2011 the post had 70 members. As they aged and did less, the rest of the town took on more of the work. Bill Schrader, the rodeo’s 75-year-old finance officer, told KRTV at the 89th annual rodeo that he had been to “many, many, many” of them. “It stands a hair up on the back of my neck,” he said. “And the whole crowd gets that way.” In 2025 the program listed two local men, Ross Mosher and Denver Krone, in steer wrestling.

A conversation in June 1936

In 1986, Geri Pursley of the Great Falls Tribune interviewed Art Nett, then 89, about how the rodeo started. Nett said that in June 1936 he was walking down the street and stopped, as he did most days, to visit Lou Randall. Randall asked what Nett had planned for the Fourth of July. Nett said he didn’t know where he was going, but he was sure it would be a rodeo. As they talked, the two men thought, “Why go out of town when we have the perfect opportunity to put on our own rodeo?”

Within days, Nett said, he and Randall, Nett’s younger brother Tot, Bingham “Bing” Wellman, and Blonde Slater bought a parcel of land from Rosetta Christian of Augusta and started building. “I can’t remember it ever raining as hard as it did the night of July 3rd,” Nett said. “We were going to have the rodeo the next day and it was raining like cats and dogs, but we kept setting the fence post and working on the arena and wouldn’t you know the next day the Sun shined and we had the rodeo.” The arena had one catch pen and four bucking chutes. Spectators parked around the fence and sat on their car hoods. The announcing system was a foghorn.

Nobody trucked livestock then. The men drove stock in on horseback from as far as 25 miles away, from Nett’s ranch, the LF Ranch, Bud Swanson’s place, Dick Shortridge’s ranch, and Dr. Howard Bateman’s ranch. Cowboys from the surrounding country paid their fees to enter steer wrestling, saddle bronc riding, calf roping, wild cow milking, and bull riding.

The chamber and the Legion tell the founding differently. In their version, Randall, who owned the Buckhorn Bar, hosted the 1936 and 1937 rodeos with help from the Nett brothers, the Legion, and Walt McManus, who was Augusta’s postmaster at the time. They say the first arena stood where the Little League field is now and was built of Great Northern Railway gates and snow fence. The dates vary as well. The chamber’s community page says the rodeo has been “rockin’ since 1939,” and KRTV dates it to 1938.

$3.75 and a motion for beer

The Legion was already in town. In January 1920, The Augusta News reported that about twenty ex-servicemen had organized the Horace Warden Post. They elected Ernest Arnold commander in his absence, because he was in St. Paul being fitted for an artificial arm to replace the one shot off in France.

In 1938 the Legion bought the land for the arena still in use and put the question of producing a rodeo to its members. Adjutant Guy Crowe objected strenuously, pointing out that the post had a cash balance of $3.75. Legionnaire Tot Nett moved to spend the $3.75 on beer and put on the rodeo anyway, and the motion carried. Pat Swan was hired to get out the timber. The Legionnaires built the arena themselves, with a crew that the Choteau Acantha names as led by George Pertilar and Blonide Slater. There were still no seats.

Tot and Art Nett, Bing Wellman, and Bud Swanson gathered the stock locally. Some of the horses’ owners did not know their animals were being used as bucking stock. Contestants were also short, so Legionnaires would comb the bushes for cowboys who had celebrated a little too much and put them aboard.

The Augusta News first mentioned the event on April 27, 1939, and spelled it “rodio.” The paper reported that “seventy-four men from this community, with twice that many ideas,” met at the Legion Hall, with R.B. Wellman as chairman, to plan a rodeo for July 3 and 4. Dr. Dahl of Great Falls showed his moving pictures of the previous rodeo for three quarters of an hour, and the Legion Auxiliary served lunch. Neither the Augusta nor the Great Falls papers have been found to mention the 1940 rodeo.

On July 11, 1941, The Augusta News ran a long account of that year’s two-day Fourth. Steers from the Heicks ranch, used for bulldogging, “looked like pictures of Mexican dogies,” long-horned and hard to catch. A rope artist from Fairfield performed with a trained horse, his wife, and his son. The Fairfield Sun Times later identified him as Truman Stanton “Jack” Golberg, a former Wild West show performer who could spin eight ropes at once and who had moved his family to the Greenfield Bench in 1937. Bud Swanson “made some beautiful rides.” The pop men and beer men worked the bleachers in the sun.

The paper also reported that “many fights, bloody fights, added to the thrills of the day.” A Mr. Mitchell drew a pistol and then a shotgun. Jack Nevens broke his arm, and Buck Miller went to the Choteau hospital with a badly injured back. “Deputy Bossler happened to be home to lunch upon every occasion, so he says.” The paper closed: “The Fourth is over, the streets are quiet.” The next July, an Associated Press story reported that Augusta had sent 85 men into the armed forces, more than a fifth of its 1940 population.

From car hoods to 4,600 seats

For a few years the rodeo ran two days over the Fourth. Later it settled on the last Sunday in June. By 1986, Nett said, the seating had grown from car hoods to grandstands holding 4,600 people, and he had attended every rodeo. His favorite story was about a horse named Teton from the Choteau country. A young rider drew Teton, a hard horse to ride, and when the event came he could not be found. “Wouldn’t you know this kid locked himself in the bathroom and we couldn’t get him out,” Nett said, laughing. He and Tot were the last living founders and were honored at the 50th rodeo, though Tot was too ill to attend.

In 2005, Governor Brian Schweitzer and the Montana Tourism Advisory Council named the rodeo Montana’s Tourism Event of the Year. In 2011 the town marked 75 consecutive years with collector’s belt buckles made by Montana Silver Smiths, sold for $30. That June, floodwater stood deep in the park for a couple of days. Arps said no rodeo had ever been called off for weather, not even in 1964.

In 2020 the coronavirus cancelled the rodeo. “Last year was the first time in history that the rodeo didn’t happen,” Arps said. The 84th annual rodeo was held on Sunday, June 27, 2021, at 2 p.m. “And since we missed the rodeo and all the folks who come to Augusta for it last year,” said Troy, then president of the chamber, “we’re extending this year’s event to last for an entire weekend.”