Ennis Rodeo

On the evenings of July 3 and 4, the gates at the Ennis Rodeo Grounds on Rodeo Drive open at five o’clock, and the performance starts at seven. All seating is general admission. The program is rough stock and timed events: bull riding, steer roping, and barrel racing, in the Chamber of Commerce’s listing. In 2020 the hour before the performance went to the mini buckers. A 2018 notice from the organizers gave the night’s start times and added that “the cotton candy is ready!!” Tickets are sold online and over the counter at the Ennis Pharmacy and at Yesterday’s Soda Fountain, which also carries the rodeo’s shirts and gear.

The show is put on by Ennis Rodeo Inc., a nonprofit run by volunteers that brings rodeo and other agricultural events to town. In recent years these have included a high school rodeo in May and a ranch rodeo limited to ten teams. The July rodeo appears on the Northern Rodeo Association’s 2026 schedule between Harlowton, on July 2 and 3, and Choteau, on July 4.

Ten o’clock on Main Street

On the morning of the Fourth, at ten, the parade the Chamber calls the “Main Street Stampede” moves through downtown Ennis. It brings horses, wagons, and floats, “topped off with the Stars and Stripes.” Red, white, and blue decorations and flowers line the downtown shops. Main Street is also the highway, and it can be closed for only one hour, so the parade is held to sixty floats. In 2010, reporter Bill Brewster counted a crowd of nearly 7,000 along the street before that year’s rodeo.

The Chamber counted the 2026 parade as the ninetieth and gave it the theme “Our Town, Our Story,” marking the country’s 250th as well. Its grand marshals were Dr. Maura Davenport and Pokey Armitage. Davenport is chief medical officer of Madison Valley Medical Center, and she came to Ennis because the hospital advertised for a doctor in a fly fishing magazine. Armitage’s father helped build the arena where the rodeo is held.

Bleachers from West Yellowstone

Ennis began as the homestead of William Ennis in 1863. Ennis Rodeo Inc. says it has been supporting, fundraising for, and putting on a rodeo “since the 40’s.” Brewster’s 2010 account places the first rodeos on Main Street in the mid-1900s, when it was still a dirt road, and has the rodeo on its present grounds since the early 1950s.

Jim Armitage, a contractor in the Madison Valley and one of the original stockholders of the Ennis Rodeo Association, helped develop those grounds. According to the Chamber, he helped take apart bleachers in West Yellowstone and haul them to Ennis to create the arena that still stands there. He was killed in a car accident during his son’s junior year at Ennis High School.

That son, Richard Thomas Armitage, was born in Dillon on September 13, 1958. He was a fourth-generation Armitage of the valley, and his great-grandparents homesteaded the Armitage Flats south of Cameron. In junior high, teachers Mr. McGowen and Mr. Cleverly noticed he was always the last one out of the locker room after practice, and the name “Pokey” stayed with him. He roped and rode calves as a boy and moved on to rough stock in high school. He graduated in 1977 and coached Ennis football and basketball for 28 years.

The Chamber says Pokey Armitage served as a director and then as president of the Ennis Rodeo Association. Brewster’s 2010 article names him president of Ennis Rodeo. That same article lists Mike McKitrick as president of a separate Ennis Rodeo Association “that works on the rodeo each year,” with Pat Hamilton secretary of both. Armitage spent many days helping valley ranchers trail livestock to summer pasture, and the Chamber says one memory stands above the rest: trailing bucking stock from Boulder to Ennis for the Fourth of July rodeo. In 2013 he and his wife, Melissa, moved to Hamilton to manage the Skalkaho Creek Ranch. At the 2026 parade he was joined by Melissa, his daughters Timbre Pederson and Kimberly Waggener, and five of his twelve grandchildren.

Champions in the grand entry

On July 4, 2010, the rodeo held a matinee performance, and several past champions were recognized before a jam-packed crowd. Max Robison of McAllister, the Montana Rodeo Association’s all-around champion of 1953, rode in the grand entry. With him was that year’s parade grand marshal, Johnny France of Ennis. France was Madison County sheriff from 1980 to 1986. He won the association’s all-around title in 1965 and 1966 and the bareback title in 1967. In 1957, at 17, he won the bull riding title. The association later took the name Northern Rodeo Association; for a few years at the start it had gone by Montana Amateur Rodeo Association.

“It’s wild and western and a true Montana rodeo,” France said in 2010. “Others liked it as well and that’s backed by the size of the crowds on Main Street for the parade. Many of them stayed for the actual rodeo.” He died on April 20, 2024. The Madison Valley History Association’s newsletter remembered him as a rodeo champion, a sheriff, and the author of Incident at Big Sky: The True Story of Sheriff Johnny France and the Capture of the Mountain Men.

Arlene Haugland of Belgrade first came to the Ennis rodeo in 1953 with her husband, Bob, and ran her first barrel race there in 1954. She won the association’s barrel championship every year from 1955 through 1958, and again in 1960, 1961, 1963, and 1964. She has worked as a timer at the Fourth of July rodeo since 1978.

“Ennis is always fun because I know most of the older people who are involved and their kids, grand kids and even their great-grand kids are coming up to rodeo,” she said in 2010. “When the rodeo first started, contestants competed in two go-rounds and an average, so we always stayed overnight and we danced and had fun. Now contestants compete and then they are off to another one so they are missing the good old times.”