Laramie Jubilee Days Rodeo

At nine in the morning on July 10, 2026, the PRCA and WPRA slack opened at the Albany County Fairgrounds in Laramie, and several titles of Laramie Jubilee Days were settled before the first evening performance began. Justin Shaffer threw his steer in 4.0 seconds. Haven Meged, the 2019 PRCA tie-down roping world champion, tied his calf in 7.8. Raelin Jurgens ran the barrels in 16.91. None of those times was beaten in the three performances that followed. “The steer wrestling title was decided before the first performance even began,” the organizers wrote afterward.

That same morning the Wyoming Territorial Prison opened its gates free from 9 a.m. to noon, with cupcakes, Wyoming state flags, and activities for children. July 10 is the reason for the whole week. Wyoming became a state on July 10, 1890, and Laramie held its first large Statehood Day celebration on the fiftieth anniversary, in 1940. The organizers call it Wyoming’s Hometown Celebration. Their stated mission is to “preserve, promote, and protect our Western heritage” across Laramie and Albany County.

Nine days at the fairgrounds

The 2026 celebration ran from Saturday, July 4, through Sunday, July 12, and horses were at the fairgrounds every day of it. It opened with the Shirley Lilley Memorial Kids Horse Show. A ranch rodeo followed on Sunday and the Little Pokes Kids Rodeo Series on Monday. On Tuesday night the Joe Dowler Memorial Mr. T Bull Riding Calcutta was held at Bud’s Bar. Wednesday brought junior bull riding, along with the small riders. Teale Hamaker won the mutton bustin’ that night, and Kash Conde took both the PeeWee and Junior Mini’s. Thursday was Mr. T Xtreme Bull Riding. Then came the slack and three PRCA performances: Friday night, Saturday night, and a Sunday afternoon matinee.

Summit Pro Rodeo furnished the bucking stock. Its bull Lucky Strike carried Jackson Ward to 87.5 points on Friday night, and that score won the bull riding. In breakaway roping, the women’s event the rodeo’s own primer calls the most recently added, Kadin Jodie, Erin Johnson and Cheyanne McCartney each roped a calf in 2.3 seconds during slack. Kelsie Domer matched the time in the first performance. No one broke the tie, and the title went four ways. Bodie Mattson won the All-Around Cowboy title on money from tie-down roping and team roping, both earned in slack.

The organizers tell rodeo fans that the Sunday performance is where the biggest names come. The 2026 program for that afternoon listed world champions in bareback riding, breakaway roping and team roping. Kaleb Driggers and Junior Nogueira won the team roping in 4.7 seconds. Waitley Sharon rode the mare Kangaroo Lou for 89.5 points to win the saddle bronc riding. Kangaroo Lou had carried a cowboy to a 91-point round win at the 2021 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. Gauge McBride closed the week on Summit’s Game Trail for 91 points in bareback, the highest-marked ride of the weekend.

All seating is general admission. Ticket money for the PRCA events goes toward the prize money that draws the contestants. Guy Warpness, chairman of Jubilee Days, told the Laramie Boomerang in 2022 that for many people the rodeo is the main attraction: “It’s the highlight of everything, and some people will probably argue with me about that.”

Street dances, the carnival, and a parade on Saturday morning

A free shuttle, run with the University of Wyoming, carries riders between the fairgrounds and downtown Laramie from Thursday through Saturday. Downtown, according to the organizers, has meant street dances to live music and a beer tent for decades. A street fair of vendors fills out the blocks. The carnival runs through the second half of the week. In 2022 it stood in the Depot parking lot on 1st Street between Garfield and Kearney.

The 2022 schedule printed in the Boomerang gives the flavor of a downtown week. It listed the Jeff Thompson Memorial Pancake Breakfast at St. Matthew’s Cathedral and the Flaming Gorge Jalapeño Eating Contest near 2nd and Grand. The Betty Kiser Memorial Chili Cook-off started at 8 a.m., and a Brewfest was held in Depot Park. A throwback baseball game was played in the Frontier Town Square at the Territorial Prison. Bands played downtown from late morning, and the street dances ran from 9 p.m. to midnight.

The parade comes on Saturday morning and makes a circle around downtown. More than a hundred entries and several marching bands take part. The organizers write that children wait along the curb “bag in hand, ready to collect as much candy as they can.” Among the 2026 award winners, Best of Parade went to Regency Retirement Residents and the Laramie Trishaw Project. The Cheyenne Trotters won Best Horse Drill Team and Cheyenne South won Best Marching Band. The Laramie High School Class of 1976 won Best Reunion. Also new in 2026 was a Hometown Hunt, in which visitors checked in at events and businesses on the Visit Laramie app for prizes. The prizes included UW football tickets, Wrangler jeans, and Ariat boots.

Laramie Jubilee Days, Inc. is a nonprofit run entirely by volunteers under a board of directors. Hundreds of people work on it each year. Shawn Faxon was listed as chairman in 2026, with Warpness as past chairman. City crews from Parks and Recreation and Solid Waste help with the logistics. The City of Laramie says the week draws people from around the state, the country, and other countries. The organizers count more than twenty events, grown from a couple in the first year.

Equality Days, 1940

The accounts of that first year differ. The American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming describes a single-day event on July 10, 1940, called “Equality Days.” It had a fiddlers’ contest, chariot races, and a parade. The Albany County Historical Society describes a two-day celebration called “Equality Jubilee Days.” WyoHistory.org records other events that year: a re-enactment of a jury, the crowning of a “Miss Equality,” and horse races on the west side of town. The jury re-enacted was the one convened in Laramie in March 1870, when six women served on a formal jury for the first time in the world.

The next year the celebration ran three days. The Heritage Center and the city give the new name as Laramie Jubilee Days, and the historical society gives it as plain “Jubilee Days.” The historical society’s writer, Judy Knight, points to the Book of Leviticus, where a jubilee is held every fiftieth year. “So the Laramie organizers got it right that first year,” she wrote. The word stayed after the anniversary had passed, and “Let’s Jubilee,” she wrote, is heard in Laramie every summer. The length of the celebration has varied over the years, but July 10 has always been its center.

Queens, horses, and a rope over the Plaza Bar door

There has been a Jubilee Queen from the start. In 1940 she was chosen by ballots that sold for 25 cents. That year’s queen, Jean Howe Krafczik Britton, wrote a history of the celebration in 1987 for the book Laramie, Gem City of the Plains. She recalled that the horse races of her year were run at the site of “the old refinery,” the Midwest Refinery on Cedar Street, which by then had been mostly torn down. Royalty today are chosen by a panel of judges. The judges weigh horsemanship, personality, and speaking ability, among other things. The winners travel the region through the year inviting people to Laramie.

According to the organizers, horse racing was the main event in the early years. The historical society says there was little talk of rodeo then. Horses appeared in races, pulling vehicles, under riders in the parade, and at horse shows in the UW War Memorial Fieldhouse. In an oral history recorded in the 1980s, Bob Engen of Centennial remembered practicing horseback routines with his teenage friends to show off in the Jubilee Parade. Some riders took their horses into the downtown bars. Amy Lawrence was queen of the third Jubilee, in 1942. “They had to put a rope up over the entrance to the Plaza Bar (at 306 Grand Avenue) to keep out the horses and riders,” she recalled.

The celebration gradually took in rodeo events that had been held under other sponsors. Steer roping began in 1947, with stock furnished by the rancher and horse breeder King Merritt. In 1949 the carnival set up on the block of 2nd Street between Garfield and Kearney. That block stood empty because every building on it had burned to the ground in 1948. The Top Hand award began in 1955, and Andy Pirtle of the Miller Ranch was its first winner. The historical society says the competition continues and is counted a high honor in Albany County’s ranching community.

Other customs came and went. Boardwalks were laid over the downtown cement sidewalks in the 1960s, and there was a whisker-growing contest. Betting on the races ended in 1971 under changing state regulations. In the 1970s the Jubilee Committee would “arrest” a family of tourists who arrived without western dress. After a mock jailing, the family was given free rodeo tickets, lodging, and coupons for western clothing at local shops. The organizers say the races themselves have since been dropped. Jubilee Days has hosted PRCA-sanctioned rodeos for decades.

Shirley Lilley’s horse show

Shirley Lilley began with Jubilee Days in 1949, when she was named Lady-In-Waiting. She was Miss Jubilee Days Queen in 1951 and helped with the children’s rodeo events through the 1960s. Her daughter, Carol Pancost, remembered how little there was for children in those years. “When I was a kid, they had an evening where they had some events for kids. And then it kind of faded out. And then she decided that we needed something,” Pancost said. “Then it just got bigger and bigger and bigger.”

Lilley started the Kids Horse Show in 1976. She died in the spring of 2023. Three months later, on the opening Saturday of that year’s Jubilee Days, the show ran for the first time as the Shirley Lilley Memorial Kids Horse Show. Its classes range from a lead line for riders as young as one to senior barrel races. Kim Puls, the volunteer chair, called it “a good, big family reunion.” Lilley’s great-grandchildren now ride in it.

Ten-year-old Mallory Singleton had been entering for about ten years. Her mother coaches her, and her father, Jemal, watches from the rail. Sixteen-year-old Wyatt Starks was in his last year of eligibility, so he signed up for every event he could; dummy roping was his favorite. Pancost said her goal for the day was simple: “I want people to have a good time whether they win or lose.”