Helmville Labor Day Rodeo

The one turn in Helmville is at the post office. A quarter mile down it, on pasture the Geary family ranch loans to the Helmville Rodeo Club, stands a wooden grandstand built in 1927. On the Sunday and Monday of Labor Day weekend it fills for what the town calls the biggest little rodeo in Montana. Announcer Joe Warner stretches the claim to “the biggest little rodeo in America.”

Helmville lies in the Garnet Range where Nevada Creek empties into the Blackfoot River. The town is a gathering place for the farmers and ranchers of the valley. A Southwest Montana travel guide gives its 2020 population as 38 and says that on Labor Day the town “swells to the bursting point.”

Sunday bareback, Monday broncs

The rodeo starts at 1 p.m. both days. The club notes “there is always a little pre rodeo starting at 12:30” and advises coming early for a good seat. The rodeo is sanctioned by the Northern Rodeo Association, and its card runs through bareback and saddle bronc riding, steer wrestling, bull riding, barrel racing, tie-down calf roping, breakaway and team roping. On Sunday the top six bareback riders in the association compete, and on Monday the top six saddle bronc riders. Many cowboys come to qualify. On the association’s 2026 schedule, Helmville was the last rodeo before the finals at Kalispell in October.

The local events come between the professional ones: steer riding, wild cow milking, and sheep riding for children five to eight. A 2017 Missoulian photograph shows Natalie Graveley riding a sheep in front of the grandstand. The caption says that riders age 7 or younger earn the title “Mutton Buster.”

The food is hamburgers, pop and beer. Under the grandstand, a faded sign marks the spot where the beer concession stood until it was moved to a safer location. The rodeo runs rain or shine. After Sunday’s performance there is dancing at the Helmville Community Hall from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. The Copper Queen Saloon, which a regional profile calls “headquarters for every event the town hosts,” is also open that weekend.

Mud in 2026

The 62nd annual rodeo was held September 6 and 7, 2026. On Monday morning the club posted, “Little wet but the show goes on,” and later that day it posted a clip titled “Sheep riding in the mud.” The Seeley Swan Pathfinder headlined its coverage “A mudfest.”

Jean Pocha’s photographs for the Pathfinder record the results. Tatum Hansen of Glasgow took third in steer wrestling at 6.6 seconds, and Jesse Kruse of Bridger placed fourth tying his calf. Parker Mothershead scored 78 on a 17-year-old bucking horse to finish fifth in the saddle bronc. Laura Kleinjan, whom the paper lists as first in the association, went into the deep mud for a 16.6-second time and third place. Red Eye Rodeo of Deer Lodge supplied all the stock. No one was injured. For the second year in a row the bulls beat the bull riders, and no ride was completed.

“The weather was not the best but as they say ‘THAT’S RODEO,’” the club wrote when it was over. In the same post it gave September 3 and 4, 2027, as the dates of the 63rd annual rodeo.

The grandstand David Raymond built

The grandstand is older than the numbered rodeo. David Raymond built it in 1927. He was the great-grandfather of David and Randy Mannix, who now ranch near Helmville. Its roof protects spectators from sun, wind and rain. According to the Montana History Foundation, Fanny Sperry Steele, the Brander Sisters and Trixie McCormick appeared there. A photograph of the rodeo grounds from the late 1930s was used as the cover of a community cookbook published in 1997 for the town’s 125th anniversary. Someone, a love-struck cowboy in the Missoulian’s telling, carved a note into one of the wooden seats, and no one knows when.

That anniversary dates to 1872. Henry Helm, an early rancher, had written to the federal government asking for a post office. When the notice establishing the town and postal service came back that year, the name had been filed as Helmville. The rodeo land belongs to an older claim. John Geary came from Ireland in 1863 for the gold rush, stayed, and in 1867 homesteaded what is now the oldest ranch in the valley. Bob Geary oversees it today.

By the club’s count, the 39th annual rodeo was held in 2003. The Montana Standard reported that it drew the biggest crowd up to that time, almost 2,000 people.

Saving the old lady

By 2017 the grandstand was 90 years old, and the Montana History Foundation described it as “in desperate need of restoration.” That spring Bob Geary told the Missoulian, “The old lady, she’s looking pretty rough. But maybe by Labor Day, she’ll be looking better.” David Mannix spoke for the community: “These little communities are hard to hang on to, you know. A lot of them are drying up and blowing away. The rodeo is one of the main things that keep us together. They’re a lot of work to put on, but we’d be in trouble without them, I think.”

The Montana History Foundation gave the Helmville Community Club a grant for the restoration, and the fundraising succeeded. In 2019 the rodeo club also installed new roping boxes and calf chutes at the north end of the arena with separate funds. That year the Northern Rodeo Association named Helmville its Most Improved Facility and gave the rodeo its Gold Rodeo of the Year award.

Some grandstand money was left over. “There are so many people who gave to the (grandstand) project, we said if we had money left, our goal was to do ADA seats at the rodeo grounds,” said club president Bill Baker. In 2020 a set of metal bleachers went in on the south side of the arena. It seats 252 people and has five wheelchair spaces, a ramp and a wide deck. The remaining money paid for a wheelchair lift to the Community Center stage, and volunteers donated all the labor. Because of the new bleachers, the ambulance now enters through the north gate beside the roping chutes. Asked whether the metal seats would heat up in the sun, Baker said, “They might get hot, but if you fill it up with people they won’t.”

Parachutes and a scholarship

The 61st rodeo, in 2025, opened with the Patriot Parachute Team jumping from 6,000 feet. The team came down into the arena trailing colored smoke and carrying American and First Responders flags. A ceremony followed for Ben Harbour and Gordy Burr, who served together as crew chiefs in 1970 and 1971 in the Vietnam War medevac unit known as the 498th dust off unit.

A permanent fence was new that year between the arena and the parking area, paid for with a $19,000 donation from Town Pump. Cody Baker of the club said it would save members three days of putting up and taking down the old temporary fence. The club also introduced the first winners of its new scholarship. Kadin Graveley, bound for the University of Montana Western in an agriculture-related field, and Joe Butte, headed to nursing school in Butte, each received $2,500. Applicants must have a record of volunteering with the club.

“We want to promote the rodeo and ranching heritage of the area,” Baker said. “The scholarship is for supporting the youth in blue collar [agriculture] jobs that provide work that we need to live here.”