Cowley Pioneer Days

On the Friday evening of Cowley Pioneer Days, the town gathers in Cowley Park. In 2026 that evening was July 17. Food trucks served from 6:00 to 10:00 PM, teams threw bags in a cornhole tournament, and from 8:00 The Cowley Boys played for families, with a line on the schedule asking for no alcohol. The committee’s post that afternoon called it “a great time to gather with old friends and visit.” Cowley covers about half a square mile in Big Horn County, near the Shoshone River. The Heritage Center calls Pioneer Days, with its two days of parades, rodeo, music, races and fireworks, the town’s biggest weekend of the year. The Lovell Chamber of Commerce says it is held on the weekend closest to July 24. The 2026 celebration fell on July 17 and 18, and the next is set for July 16 and 17, 2027.

Friday night in Cowley Park

The park is only part of the opening night. In 2026 pick-up pickleball ran from 6:00 to 8:00 at The Log Gym, and the schedule told players to bring a paddle. The rodeo calcutta met at The Bull Pub at 8:00. Teenagers from 14 to 18 had a Decades Dance at the Cowley Community Center until 11:30. At 7:00, singers gathered in the church to practice the songs for the next morning’s heritage program. The committee’s post on the practice called it “a great way to kick off the celebration and hang with old friends.”

Saturday, from pancakes to fireworks

Saturday starts early. In 2026 runners registered at 6:30 on the church lawn for a 7:00 fun run of one mile or 5K, and the pancake breakfast at the Cowley Park Pavilion served from 7:30 to 9:30 at $5 a plate. At 9:00 the Cowley Heritage Center at 20 S Division St opened its doors for the day, with no tickets needed. Families picked up a scavenger-hunt sheet at the door, looked over the new acquisitions, and took photographs inside the Cowley Lock-Up Cell.

The parades started from beside the Heritage Center. Children lined up there at 9:15 for the 9:30 kiddie parade, in which no motorized vehicles are allowed. The main parade followed at 10:00, forming up by the City & County Shops on the west edge of town, and anyone may enter it. At 11:00 the Pioneer Heritage Program of words and music filled The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 2011 the committee chairman, Roland Simmons, said each year’s program is dedicated to the pioneers.

The afternoon belongs to the park again. Food trucks and craft vendors stay until 5:00, and children three and older run races for prizes. Inflatables open at noon, with a $5 wristband and $1 a turn on the Super Jumper, and a volleyball tournament starts at about the same hour. The Cowley Pool holds a free swim from 1:00 to 4:00. At 2:00 the rodeo begins at the Cowley Rodeo Grounds, at $10 for those 13 and up, $5 for ages 7 to 12, and free for children six and younger. The evening moves to the Rocky Mountain Middle School/High School, where a variety show and karaoke contest begin at 7:00, an ice cream social follows at 8:30 on the back patio, and fireworks go up at dusk west of the football field.

All weekend a small printed book circulates. The 2026 Cowley Pioneer Day Historical Publication sold for $5 cash at the Cowley Mercantile and the Heritage Center, and the committee warned that it had “only a limited inventory.” The book was also $5 in 2011, when that year’s edition, dedicated to the history of the Big Horn Academy building, was sold up and down the parade route. Its profiles of each year’s honorees are sometimes reprinted in the Lovell paper.

A sheriff, a historian and a water tower

The Heritage Center says the celebration each year honors people “whose lives reflect the values Cowley was built on.” The 2026 grand marshal was Ken Blackburn, the retiring Big Horn County sheriff. His profile says that as a fifth or sixth grader, given the assignment “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, he wrote that he wanted to raise horses and live in Cowley. The profile says he grew up in Billings, Montana, and in its closing lines calls him “a boy born in Powell.” He became an EMT at Ricks College in the early 1980s, served six years as bishop of the Cowley First Ward, taught hunter safety for 25 years, and in March 2026 was named Sheriff of the Year by the Western States Sheriffs’ Association. “I achieved my childhood dream,” he said. “I just had to wear a badge for 40 years to get there.” He insisted that any article about him include his wife of 41 years, Janeen. A Janeen Blackburn is listed as the contact for parade entries in both 2011 and 2022. Of his new title, Blackburn said: “I retired as Sheriff, but I’ve been promoted to Marshal.”

The 2026 Citizen Emeritus was Kurt Graham. He grew up in a Cowley house his parents built around the log house that had been his father’s boyhood home. At BYU he wrote a thesis on the Mormon migration to the Big Horn Basin in 1900. His career led to the Truman Presidential Library and Museum and then to the founding presidency of the Adams Presidential Center in Quincy, Massachusetts. His profile describes his present home in Kingston, on the Massachusetts South Shore, as Cowley “with an ocean.”

In 2022 the grand marshals were Joe and Pat Davis, who came to Cowley in 1992. Joe became principal at Rocky Mountain High School, then in Byron, and Pat taught English there. Their profile lists what they love about the town, from the swimming pool and splash park to Main Street, and singles out Pat’s favorite: “a cool water tower.” That year’s Citizen Emeritus was a Cowley native, James McMillin.

A cannon, then dynamite

The town itself dates to 1900. In February of that year the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent explorers to find a site for a colony in northern Wyoming. The settlement was named for Matthias F. Cowley, an apostle of the church. The first company of pioneers arrived on May 2, 1900, and began digging the Sidon Canal to bring water from the Shoshone River. The canal ran more than 30 miles and was not finished until 1904. By that first winter about 18 log houses stood, built by men including Hyrum Cook, William Graham, William Simmons and George Taggart. A committee post in April 2026 carried the phrase “From Liberty Bell to Sidon Canal.”

According to Roland Simmons, the pioneers first held Pioneer Day in 1900, and the celebration once rotated among Lovell, Cowley and Byron. Cowley kept both Pioneer Day and the Fourth of July. In 2011 Simmons said the Cowley and Burlington Pioneer Day celebrations were the longest-running town celebrations in the area. The committee states its purpose in a mission statement: “to promote faith in God, pioneer and family heritage, and patriotism.” Its themes have ranged from “Keeping in Touch” in 2011 to “Faith, Freedom, Family – Our Legacy” in 2022.

The events have come and gone around that core. In 2011 the weekend opened with a golf tournament at Foster Gulch, and children in the kiddie parade each received a Sacajawea dollar. That year also brought a barbecue run by the Senior League baseball teams, a classic car show, a trap shoot near Lovell, horseshoes in the park, and an adult dance with music by the Rewinders. The free ice cream social was held on Friday then, and Simmons gave his advice: “If you want to know who’s in town, go to the park, have some ice cream and mingle.” By 2022 the car show, trap shoot and golf tournament were gone. Division Street was closed from Main to North Second for a Friday street dance, and Caleb and Joshua Sanders choreographed the fireworks at the baseball field.

The oldest custom is the one that wakes the town. Simmons told the Greybull Standard that the early pioneers marked Independence Day by firing a cannon and later by setting off dynamite. “Hoosty Cook did it with dynamite in the ‘50s and ‘60s,” he said. “He had to move it back when he rattled Fern Taggart’s china out of her china cabinet. I’ve always woken up with dynamite on Pioneer Day as long as I can remember, though it’s not dynamite anymore.”