Philomath Frolic & Rodeo

On the Thursday of Frolic weekend, children wade into a pool on the rodeo grounds at 502 South 13th Street in Philomath and try to catch rainbow trout with their bare hands. Volunteers hand nets to those who need a little help. Each fish caught is cleaned and cooked on the spot. The Frolic Fish Rodeo sells 200 tickets, online only, and starts at 5:30 p.m. It opens a weekend that the Philomath Frolic & Rodeo Association holds every year on the second full weekend of July, in a Benton County town that OPB put at about 5,000 people in 2020.

At the center of the weekend are three rodeo performances, Thursday through Saturday, sanctioned by the Northwest Professional Rodeo Association. Gates open at 5 p.m. and the rodeo starts at 7. Spectators come in on 11th Street and pay $5 to park, cash only. The parking money goes to the local Boy Scouts.

In 2026, B Bar D returned as stock contractor, and the longtime announcer Scott Allen called the arena. The new rodeo clown was Kyle Bounds, a former competitor. “He used to compete and this is his retirement from competing,” said Alyssa Collins, president of the Frolic and Rodeo board. Donkey races run in the arena all three nights. Mutton Bustin’ came back the same year, after being dropped for several years following an accident involving a volunteer. Twenty children ride in each of two shows a night, at 5:30 and 6:30, and the winners ride again at halftime in the big arena.

The association says the rodeo draws more than 5,000 spectators each year. The Friday and Saturday performances sold out in 2025. On the Friday of the 2026 Frolic, the association posted that the remaining places were “STANDING room only.” That year was the second for the new grandstand on the west side of the arena, and organizers were still weighing how to pay for seating on the east and north sides. “There’s a pretty significant need for more seating, and we’re very well aware of that,” Collins said.

Thursday had long been the slowest night. After the fish rodeo moved to Thursday in 2025, organizers named the night Family Day. There are free line-dancing lessons at 5:30 in the Yew Wood Corral. After the rodeo, the corral holds an all-ages afterparty with a DJ, a photo booth, and a dirty soda bar run by the high school cheerleading squad. The bar raises money for the squad and for Project H.E.R., a cancer-support organization. No rodeo ticket is needed for the afterparty. Collins recalled that when she was young, the dance had a separate fenced area where anyone under 21 could still join in. That area was done away with several years ago, she said, and townspeople had asked about it ever since.

Friday and Saturday nights end with a dance. In 2026 the Oregon band Countryfied played, a group Collins and friends had heard at Pendleton. Fireworks follow the Friday rodeo, advertised for 10 p.m. and launched from Marys River Park and Natural Area behind the arena. On Friday at 11 a.m., the NPRA slack rodeo, roping and barrel racing only, is free to watch.

The grounds stay in use after July. In 2026 they hosted a bull-riding stop of the Challenge of Champions Tour on August 22, and the Northwest Youth Rodeo Association finals earlier that month.

Pancakes, half chickens, and sidewalk chalk

The Lions Club serves breakfast at the rodeo grounds on Saturday from 7 to 10 a.m.: pancakes, ham and eggs, with bottomless coffee or a cup of milk.

On Friday at 4:30 p.m., and again Saturday from noon until it sells out, the chicken barbecue sells a plate of half a chicken, pickles, potato salad, and a drink. A hot dog plate is sold too. The event page says the money goes to Mary’s Peak Search and Rescue. The association’s home page credits the lunch to Benton County Search and Rescue. During the 2026 Frolic, the association advertised it as “the best barbecue chicken this side of the Mississippi.”

On Friday morning the Philomath library hosts the Chalk Roundup on the sidewalk in front of its building. Artists of any age get a five-foot square of pavement, and chalk is provided. The Rodeo Queen and Princess judge at 11. The youngest winners get Dairy Queen gift cards, and the drawings stay on the sidewalk for the rest of the weekend.

Around the grounds are craft, retail, and food booths, and a children’s area called Heather’s Kids Korner. The queen contest holds its horsemanship round on Friday morning and its stage round that afternoon in the Yew Wood Corral. The new queen is announced at intermission of the Saturday rodeo. Only two contestants entered in 2026. One was a Philomath native whose two aunts had both been Frolic queens.

The weekend actually begins a day early. On Wednesday evening a home run derby is held at the Philomath High softball field, with the proceeds going to the girls’ softball team.

Log trucks down Applegate Street

The Grand Parade steps off from Philomath High School on Saturday morning. The association’s site gives the start as 9:45 a.m., and the Philomath News gave it as 10 a.m. in 2026. The route runs west down Applegate Street, south on South 15th, west on Cedar, and ends across South 13th at the rodeo grounds. The Frolic 5K starts at the head of the parade. Runners finish at Mary’s River Park beside the grounds, and parade watchers on both sides of the street cheer them in.

OPB reported in 2020 that about half the town marches in the parade while the other half watches. About a third of the parade is log trucks. The finale is a long line of them, polished, each carrying the best timber its owner has. In 2019, Russell Watkins of Watkins Trucking replaced his old mudflaps with American flags while his drivers scrubbed the fleet. “Philomath’s been a timber town forever,” he said. “So, it’s good to get a little bit of timber back in the parade.” His wife and co-owner, Lisa Watkins, said: “I think that sometimes people forget what industries are supporting your town.” Mary Johnson, secretary of the Frolic & Rodeo, said: “No matter what you think about logging, on whatever level, you can’t live in Philomath and not acknowledge that that’s what built this town.” The 2026 grand marshal was Starker Forests, which was marking its 90th year in business.

On Saturday afternoon the lumberjack competition runs at the north end of the rodeo arena, under the sanction of the American Lumberjack Association. Competitors chop cottonwood and hand-saw white pine. The events are springboard, single buck, underhand, standing chop, stock saw, and hot saw, in open, novice, and women’s classes, with first place paying $150. Cody Labahn, a local competitor, has organized it in recent years. OPB described competitors throwing axes at targets and climbing springboards to cut the top off a 30-foot pillar. “We’ve turned it into a competition but it’s all stuff they had to do back in the day,” Labahn said. Rick Wells, who has driven a log chip truck since 1983, came to watch in 2019. “A lot of mills have gone away that used to be here,” he said.

A Round-Up on 12th Street

According to the association’s history, Philomath was the rodeo capital of Oregon for two years, 1915 and 1916. Those who remember the wooden arena at the north end of 12th Street, the history says, will tell you it was bigger than Pendleton ever dreamed of being, “in those days.” In 1915, R.P. McClelland, pining for the Montana plains where he had settled, organized the first Round-Up. In the history’s words, it had a large contingent of imported “wild” Indians and world-famous cowboys.

Each rodeo opened with a parade down Main Street and up 12th to the grounds. Then came “the break,” in which the country’s best horsemen and the contestants rode pell-mell across the stadium. After that came wild races, bucking horses, calf roping, Indian dancing, and three days of parties around town. In June 1916, when the Round-Up peaked, more than 10,000 people crowded the splintery bleachers to watch “Buffalo” Vernon and “Yakima” Canutt ride for top prize money. The history says World War I started later that year, and the Round-Up was never held again.

Three couples, then a runway

In 1953, three couples organized the first Frolic: Clarence and Inez Marstall, Walter and Ida Pflughaupt, and Melvin and Esther Castle. They called it the Philomath Buckaroo and Loggers’ Frolic. Jani Ryker was chosen queen, and the parade was small that first year. The event was later named the Philomath Western Frolic, the Frolic Timber Festival, and the Frolic Lumberjack Carnival. Over the years it included a trail ride, a carnival, a truck rodeo, softball tournaments, an old-time picnic, and a Sunday Union Church service. Events were added and dropped as the town’s interests changed. The cornhole tournament ended in 2026. “We just didn’t have the attendance numbers,” Collins said.

In 1983 the Frolic Committee decided to bring back a rodeo. The association’s history says the committee leased 21 acres off South 13th Street from Skirvin Farms, owned by the brothers Carl, Walt, and Paul Skirvin. The land included an old airport runway. OPB reported that the Skirvins donated the land. In six weeks, with volunteer labor and donations, the committee turned bare ground into a rodeo arena. Ken Stueve helped build it and became the organization’s first president, serving 32 years. “We’re a small town,” he said. “We work together and give back to each other — a family, you might say.” The NPRA voted the rodeo “Best Rodeo in the Northwest” in 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2023.

The grounds are named Skirvin Park. In a corner the volunteers call the Horse Plaza stands a horse made of horseshoes, put up as a tribute to the people who built the place. Lola Skirvin died in 2018 and Paul Skirvin in 2019. That year the rodeo held a riderless-horse ceremony for them in the arena. Darrell Hinchberger, then president, called Paul the “founding father”: “He developed this land. He donated it to the city.”

In 2020, Governor Kate Brown’s order against large gatherings forced the first cancellation in almost 40 years. Only the fireworks went ahead. A high school student ran the camera for a Facebook livestream. The rodeo queen came, and board members in boots and hats took donations. City Manager Chris Workman called it “a fun summer night in a not so fun summer.”

In 2017, Paul Skirvin had told the Philomath Express why he gave the ground. “It’s the only thing Philomath’s got during the summer,” he said. “It keeps them going.”