Snake River Stampede

At each performance of the Snake River Stampede, the arena lights at the Ford Idaho Center go down and 18 horses come in. Their riders are the Snake River Stampeders, women from Nampa, Caldwell and other Canyon County towns who audition every year for a place on the team. They ride their drill with no light except what is wired into their uniforms. Coach Paula Vanhoozer and assistant coach Brandi Krajnik choose the riders, and a light crew of parents and spouses works the show. The riders are volunteers. They practice, ride in local parades, and perform every night of the rodeo. The team has ridden at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas six times, in 1997, 2000, 2001, 2010, 2014 and 2018, and at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The Stampede says no other drill team has been invited to either.

The building stands just off exit 38 on I-84. It is indoors and air-conditioned, and it seats up to 10,000 in an oval rodeo configuration. Visitors may carry only clear bags into the stadium. Around the drill team runs a professional rodeo: bareback bronc riding, saddle bronc riding, bull riding, steer wrestling, tie-down roping, team roping and ladies’ barrel racing. By the Stampede’s account the contestants compete for a share of nearly half a million dollars, and over 60,000 people attend the five days and six performances. Since 1979 the rodeo has played Baxter Black’s song “Snake River Stampede” every day. In 2015 the Idaho Press printed its chorus: “Snake River Stampede, Snake River Stampede. Ride’m high, let’er fly at the Snake River Stampede.”

Five nights in June

The 2025 rodeo ran June 17 to 21 for the 110th anniversary. That year the Stampede moved from July into June for the first time. Jeff Agenbroad of the board of directors said the July dates had overlapped other events, and the change lets more in-demand rodeo stars compete in Nampa. “2025 is also a big deal for us because we are excited to offer our largest purse prize money in rodeo history,” he said. PRCA Hall of Famer Dean Oliver was featured at that year’s Western Heritage Night, and Billy Dean sang the Stampede for the Cure benefit concert.

Each night has a name. The 2026 rodeo opened with Hometown Heroes Night on Tuesday, June 16, followed by Stampede for the Cure Night, Patriot Night and Western Heritage Night. Saturday held a Family Fun Day and Championship Finals Night, and Wine Down Sunday closed the week on June 21. The 112th annual rodeo is set for June 15 to 19, 2027.

Children ride before the bucking stock. In mutton busting, riders 5 to 7 years old and under 55 pounds try to stay on a sheep for eight seconds. The rodeo supplies their safety vest and helmet. Every rider gets a mutton busting buckle, and the one who holds on longest each night wins a gift certificate for a pair of Justin Boots. A calf scramble, added in 1999, and a junior rodeo also give young competitors the arena where their rodeo idols ride.

On Stampede for the Cure night, in the words of Nampa’s mayor in 2014, “folks and cowboys alike wear pink.” A Pink on the Dirt Luncheon offers food and a live auction. The campaign began in 2006 as Wrangler Jeans’ “Tough Enough to Wear Pink.” Four years later the Stampede took it over locally as Stampede for the Cure, which pays for breast cancer screenings and awareness education for women in the Treasure Valley. The Idaho Press counted more than $600,000 raised by 2015. The Stampede’s own site now puts the total at over $1,000,000.

Board member Rance Pugmire listed what else a visitor finds: “The Snake River Stampede is a destination rodeo; from our new edge-of-the-dirt seats and outdoor amphitheater viewing experience, to our Western fashion vendors and Snake River Stampede Canadian Whisky, there’s a little something for everyone to enjoy.” The whisky dates from 2007. In 2025 the open-air amphitheater held a watch party with food trucks, music and vendors, and a Buckaroo Breakfast raised money for the Canyon County 4-H Endowment Program. In 2014 the week began in downtown Nampa with a pancake breakfast and then the Snake River Stampede Parade, which the mayor called one of the largest horse-drawn parades in the nation.

The Stampede’s stagecoach rides in the parades and the arena. It is a mud wagon dating to 1870 that first ran the southern routes from Murphy, Idaho, to Chico, California. It later belonged to Ed Matheson, who ran stage lines in and around Silver City. It has carried the Sons of the Pioneers, Doc and Festus, Barbara Mandrell and Reba McEntire, and in 2018 the Idaho Heritage Trust gave a grant for its care. A nonprofit governed by the Snake River Stampede Board runs the rodeo. Lynn Calvin and Brandie Ambroz work in its office on Idaho Center Boulevard.

A roped-off block in 1913

The Stampede descends from the Nampa Harvest Festival, first staged in late September 1911. It had crop and stock exhibits, prizes for the best products of Nampa farms, orchards and gardens, sports, contests and free amusements. After two years the festival committee added a bucking contest. In 1913 it was held in a large roped-off area on the block where the Nampa Post Office now stands. There were no stands, so spectators stood outside the rope. The Idaho Press’s 2015 timeline drew on Jimmie Hurley, the paper’s past reporting and the book “Snake River Stampede: Celebrating a Century of Memories.” It counts September 1915, the first year admission was charged, as the official start of the rodeo.

Calf roping and bulldogging were added year by year. By 1923 people were calling “the buck show” the backbone of the Harvest Festival, though it still had no name of its own. Ed Moody herded the bucking stock about 50 miles to Nampa from his ranch north and east of Horseshoe Bend. He furnished the stock until 1937.

A golden key at Hyde Park

In 1937 the rodeo separated from the Harvest Festival and moved from September to July. It joined the Rodeo Cowboys Association and has been a professional rodeo ever since. The organizers considered the names Ski-Hi Rodeo and Thunder Mountain Round Up before rodeo director Ike Corlett chose Snake River Stampede. Lights went up on the grounds, and the afternoon show became a night show. Leo Cramer, a professional stock contractor from Montana, brought his stock to Nampa by train.

President Franklin Roosevelt opened the new rodeo from his home in Hyde Park, New York, by pressing a golden telegraph key. The key was studded with the first 22 nuggets of gold found in Alaska. Presidents had used it since 1909 for such events as starting operations at the Panama Canal and setting off the power generation machinery at Boulder Dam. Roosevelt pressed it at 11 p.m., which was 8 p.m. in Nampa. The Idaho Press says the key turned on the lights.

The Idaho Press records a five-year absence during the war years, 1939 through 1943, and a return as a yearly event in 1944. In 1949 Carol Blocher was crowned the first Stampede rodeo queen. The queen contest was held the week before the rodeo until 1960, and by 1961 it had become a rodeo event.

The green arena on Garrity Boulevard

In 1950 a horseshoe-shaped stadium seating about 10,000 went up on Garrity Boulevard, and a western star was brought in to sing at half time. Gene Autry came first and filled the stands every night. People who could not get in stood outside in the park to listen. Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Rex Allen, and the Sons of the Pioneers followed him.

Mildred Farris won the first professional barrel race on the Stampede program in 1959. The event ran four more years and was then dropped. The Idaho Press has it returning as a permanent event in 1976, while the Stampede’s own history lists ladies’ barrel racing among events added in the 1980s. In the 1970s and 1980s, after the Hollywood singing cowboys and television westerns had faded, country singers took the half-time slot, among them Glen Campbell and Barbara Mandrell. Reba McEntire, a former rodeo barrel racer, played her first show as a headliner at the Stampede, in 1983 by the Idaho Press’s count. During the 1980s the singers were dropped to make room for more rodeo: team roping, ladies’ barrel racing and the Wrangler bull-fighting event. Mutton busting began in 1986 by the Stampede’s account and in 1988 by the Idaho Press’s.

Kimberly Wells of Nampa was crowned the last Stampede queen in 1995. Since then, contestants for Miss Rodeo Idaho come to the rodeo to compete. After the last performance of 1996, the green arena was retired after 46 years and torn down. The rodeo moved indoors to the Idaho Center, now the Ford Idaho Center, and added a Saturday matinee.

Jimmie Hurley’s drill team and the hall

Jimmie Hurley, then the Stampede’s executive secretary, formed the Stampeders in 1997, the year of the move. The move from an outdoor arena to an indoor one gave her the idea. The Idaho Rodeo Hall of Fame inducted the Snake River Stampede with its Class of 2024, ten years after the national honor. In 2014 Hurley had nominated the rodeo for the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, and the Hall approved it. The ceremony took place at the headquarters of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, on the Hall’s grounds in Colorado Springs. Dan Ward, Ken Nicodemus, Jeff Agenbroad, Dean Oliver and Hurley represented the Stampede. They brought home a buckle and a replica of The Champ, the statue of Casey Tibbs that stands on the Hall’s grounds. “I promised myself and the board of directors,” Hurley said, “I wouldn’t quit until I got the Stampede inducted into the hall.”