Hells Canyon Mule Days

The main gate at the Wallowa County Fairgrounds in Enterprise opens at 8 a.m. on the Friday after Labor Day. Hells Canyon Mule Days begins its first classes in the arena at the same hour, with halter and showmanship and then driving. By noon the log pull is under way. A Wallowa County Chieftain photograph from September 8, 2023, shows Wayne Beckwith guiding his mule through the poles in that contest. The 2026 show, the 45th annual, ran September 11 through 13. By its own rule the event always falls on the weekend after Labor Day.

Sondra Lozier, the event’s president, describes the weekend as a combination of a horse show and a rodeo, but with mules. “The mule show is like a horse show, but it’s all mules,” she told Go! Magazine in 2022. “Many people like the performance classes and others like the jackpot events like poles and barrels.”

Three days of classes

The 2026 schedule held a timed trail class on Friday afternoon in the warm-up arena. Saturday morning brought cattle sorting and penning. At 1 p.m. came the grand entry in the main arena, followed by driving classes, the Fast Ass Express, Speed Ball, barrel racing, pole bending, the Jump-Off Challenge, and musical tires. The Baker City Herald described that last event in 2025 as “like musical chairs, but with mules and tires.” Sunday’s card ran to trail class, English and Western pleasure, ranch riding, a flapjack race, and a $5 bareback challenge. The 2022 Sunday program also listed red neck fishing and jousting. English Pleasure was one of the largest single classes at the 2019 show. Awards are presented at 3:30 on Sunday afternoon.

On Saturday and Sunday mornings a free “Saddle Fit” clinic in the Livestock Pavilion is open to everyone. At 12:45 on Saturday, before the grand entry, children 4 to 9 years old from the stands run a stick mule race and a boot scramble.

“We have a lot of youth classes, and we’ve seen kids that have grown up with Mule Days, starting when they were young ones and now they are college kids, and they’re still coming back for Mule Days,” Lozier said in 2022. “We also have contestants that have been coming here for over 30 years.”

Admission is a button, called the “Souven-ears” button in 2025, that is good for all three days. “You can come and go,” Lozier said. There is dry camping on the fairgrounds for trailers, tents, and RVs.

The Green, Main Street, and the OK Theatre

Artisans, vendors, and western gear exhibitors set up on the Green and in the Quonset building. JD’s BBQ & Catering runs the food booth from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day.

At noon on Saturday the non-motorized parade leaves the fairgrounds. It lines up on the north side of the track and goes south on First Street, east on Park Street, and south on NE Second Street to Main Street. From there it turns west along Main and north on NW Second Street back to the fairgrounds, where the grand entry follows in the main arena. The barbecue dinner is served on the Green at 5 p.m. Saturday. A 2022 account called it a pit barbecued pork dinner, and the 2025 announcement called it the memorial scholarship barbecue.

The evenings move downtown to the OK Theatre at 208 W. Main St. On Friday it hosts the Max Walker Memorial Scholarship Cowboy Poetry Gathering, an evening of cowboy tales and traditional country music from poets and musicians, with Andy Bales as emcee. Lozier advises arriving early because the gathering often fills the theater. Saturday night brings a concert. In 2026 The Old West Trio sang songs of the American cowboy, with Bales opening. The 2025 performer was Dave Stamey, who once worked in California’s eastern Sierra Nevada moving stock between winter and summer pasture and was inducted into the Western Music Hall of Fame in 2016.

Sunday starts at 7:30 a.m. with cowboy church on the outdoor stage, led in 2026 by Jeff Barnhart and Soul Renovation. The schedule’s line reads, “Come for Church and Stay for Breakfast.” At 9 a.m. the Dutch oven cook-off begins. Two-member teams each cook in one pot, making a main dish, a dessert, or both. Visitors who buy a People’s Choice Packet take part in the tasting and judging.

Ranchers, packers, and a trip to Bishop

The event’s own history says that in the spring of 1981, local ranchers and packers met with representatives of the Wallowa County Chamber of Commerce and the USDA Forest Service to explore a new county event. What came of the meeting put the mule at center stage. The history describes the animal as “tough, intelligent, individualistic, often maligned, but the mainstay of the many packers and outfitters working in Wallowa County.” The first annual celebration was held September 19 and 20, 1981. A 2025 Baker City Herald account tells it differently. In that version the event began after a few people from Enterprise attended Bishop Mule Days in California and then founded Hells Canyon Mule Days with help from the chamber and the Forest Service.

The name was chosen, the history says, because the Hells Canyon country owes most of its early settlement and development to the mule, which served as the main means of getting into that part of the county. A 1987 film made for the county’s centennial calls Hells Canyon the deepest gorge in North America. Go! Magazine wrote in 2022 that mules are credited with bringing the first loads of equipment and supplies to settlers there. “Mules were so instrumental with settling the canyon,” Lozier said in 2025. “It’s a celebration of our past.”

In 1987 the 7th annual Mule Days ran two days. “We’re getting more inquiries than ever before,” said Max Walker, the chairman that year. “We’ve come a long way since our first year (1981) when most of the mules hadn’t ever been in town before. Now they are better bred and better trained.” The 1987 parade grand marshals were A.L. Duckett, 92, of Imnaha and Carmen (Clark) Maxwell, 94, of Enterprise. Walker and his wife, Marcel, were grand marshals in 1992. The poetry gathering now carries his name, and its donations help fund scholarships for Wallowa County high school seniors.

In 1993, the event’s 13th year, the committee honored Jim and Jean Brooks. The couple had driven their black mules and wagon from Idaho for every Mule Days since 1981, and they were grand marshals that year.

Grand marshals, 1981 to 2026

The list of grand marshals begins with Wade Hall and Ethel Thomas in 1981. Joe Onaidia and Gus Malaxa served in 1990, and Juana Malaxa and Marie Onaindia in 2008. The Tippett name appears in 2005 and twice in 2010. The list jumps from Julie Kooch in 2019 to Warren Matthews in 2022.

The show was postponed in both 2020 and 2021. Lozier announced the second postponement in August 2021. “This is incredibly disappointing,” she said, “and I assure everyone that this decision was not made lightly. Our board was unanimous that this was the only option.” Even without the gathering, the board voted to award $1,000 Max Walker Memorial scholarships to three seniors that year. The announcement noted it was the second time the event had been canceled since 1981, and called it the oldest and largest mule show in Oregon. The show returned in 2022 as the 41st annual, a number it had planned to use the year before.

Matthews led the 2022 parade. “He and his wife have probably been coming to Mule Days the longest,” Lozier said. “They had a boys’ ranch, and the boys used to come with them every year dressed in either blue shirts or red shirts.”

The 2025 grand marshals were Shawn and Shelly Steen. In December 2022, Jacob and Ashley Spaur had bought Steen’s Wilderness Adventures from them. Ashley describes the Steens, lifelong family friends, as her second parents growing up. The Spaurs, 35 and 37, were the 2026 grand marshals. They own Sour Apple Outfitters and care for about 35 head of horses and mules. As a student at Wallowa High School, Jacob worked for Ashley’s father, Bill Graning, and wrote his senior project on “How to Pack.”