Treasure Valley PRCA Rodeo

A hay field on Cherry Lane

The Treasure Valley Rodeo is held in a hay field on the northeast corner of McDermott Road and Cherry Lane, at the edge of Meridian, Idaho. The field still has its ruts. Members of the Treasure Valley Lions Club mark the worst of them and direct the parking, but the ground belongs to the city, and the club’s own page says there is only so much it can do. The arena stands in the middle of the field. In recent years the club has expanded the bleachers and seating and reworked the arena set-up, and in 2026 it added a video board.

The rodeo runs two evenings at the end of June. In 2026 it was the 37th annual, held June 26 and 27. Gates opened at 5 p.m., the pre-rodeo began at 6, and the rodeo at 6:45. The Thursday before, June 25, was slack. In a KIVI report, slack night featured overflow competitors sharpening their rodeo skills ahead of the weekend.

The card is the full professional program: bareback riding, saddle bronc riding, bull riding, steer wrestling, tie-down roping, team roping, and WPRA barrel racing and breakaway roping. The rodeo is sanctioned by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association in the Wilderness Circuit, which takes in Idaho, Nevada, and Utah, and is co-approved with the Columbia River Circuit. In 2025 the Wilderness Circuit contestants voted it the Idaho Small Rodeo of the Year. In 2026 the rodeo’s announcements invited the crowd to “come laugh with” Matt and Stacie Tarr.

Food comes from the Bob Hays Memorial Cook Shack, where hamburgers and finger steaks are always on the menu. A shaded beer garden sells beer and seltzer with a view of the arena. The concession money goes back to the community through the Lions, and so do the proceeds of the whole event. Most of it goes to Lions Envision Sight, the Lions’ foundation in Boise. The foundation runs a vision clinic, recycles eyeglasses, and supports corneal transplants across Idaho and eastern Oregon. Some of the money also goes to local food banks.

No one on the grounds is paid except the stock contractor and contract personnel. Lions members, members of other clubs who swap service hours, and people from the community do the rest. “We try to keep it going, and as Western as we can, and not too commercial—just a good old down-home rodeo,” Doug Beehler, the production director and treasurer, told Farm & Ranch in 2026.

Sheep, junior bulls, and three queens

The pre-rodeo hour belongs to children. Mutton busters are four to seven years old and under 60 pounds. They are loaded onto sheep from Thompson Ranch in mini bucking chutes, built the same way as the chutes for the horses and bulls. When the rider is ready, in the club’s words, “the chute is opened and away they go!” Every child wears a helmet with a face mask, and the rodeo lends one to any child who lacks it. A bicycle helmet is not permitted. The highest score each night wins a buckle.

The chutes are dedicated to Clayton Tully, a Mutton Busting champion of the old Meridian Lions Rodeo. They were given through the Clayton Tully Memorial Foundation of Mick and Andrea Tully.

Junior bull riders, ages seven to thirteen, follow on bulls supplied by Rodeo Fever. The best score from either night takes a buckle, and second place pays $50.

Each year the rodeo has three Rodeo Queens:

• Senior Queen. The 2026 Senior Queen, Olivia Myers, is a fourth-generation Idahoan who grew up mostly in Eagle. Her horse that year was Belle, a red dun mare.
• Teen Queen. Rilynn Lucas, 18, of Nampa, started riding English at eight and has trained BLM mustangs. She rides her horse Ego on the Liberty and Jump Teams of the EhCapa Bareback Riders.
• Mini Queen. The 2025–2026 Mini Queen is nine-year-old Adalyn Preece, also of Nampa. She rides with the EhCapa troupe in summer without a bridle, on a big black gelding named Pilot whom she calls her “unicorn.”

The EhCapa Bareback Riders performed at the 2026 rodeo in their 70th anniversary year. That year there were also flag presentations for the 250th anniversary of the country.

The Mini Queen before Adalyn, Amelia Palmer, who held the title for 2024–2025, died in September 2025. A year later the rodeo’s page wrote, “Once our Mini Queen, always our Mini Queen.”

Hail on Friday, mud on Saturday

A storm struck the 2026 rodeo on Friday night, June 26, with torrential rain, hail, and heavy winds. Among other things, it broke up the live auction planned for the weekend.

On Saturday morning the rodeo’s page posted “Just a sprinkle.” A few minutes later it announced: “WE’RE RIDING TONIGHT!” The grounds were very muddy, spectators were told to wear suitable footwear, and the concessions would be limited while the crew recovered. “We’ll buck. We’ll ride. We’ll rodeo.” The stock arrived late in the afternoon. By evening the sun was out, and the page thanked the crowd “for coming out tonight and playing in the mud.”

The auction item was a commemorative America 250 flag signed by the 2026 contestants. It was sold online in July instead, with all proceeds going to Honor Flight Boise, which sends veterans to see their memorials in Washington, D.C. Christy Workman placed the winning bid.

The Meridian Lions and a September rodeo

The rodeo began in 1989 as the Meridian Lions Rodeo, and it began very small. The Meridian Lions Club had been organized in 1938 and has served Meridian since it was a village of 500. Beehler, a financial advisor, was one of the founders. “When this idea was brought to our Lions Club, I got excited about it and said that if the Lions Club decides to take this on as a project, I would serve as co-president. There were two of us who wanted to do it, and we served as co-presidents the first year,” he said. He was president or co-president for the first 30 years, through 2018. Darrin Moe led the rodeo from 2019 to 2024, and Chris Taylor is now president.

For most of those years the rodeo was held in September. The 25th annual ran September 27 and 28, 2014, with the rodeo starting at 2 p.m. and adult tickets at $10. Contestants came from the Idaho Cowboys Association, and Beehler called it “the last chance for cowboys in the Idaho Cowboy Association ... to get points to qualify for their final rodeo in October.” Students from Renaissance High School’s Leo Club volunteered alongside the Lions.

That year the club lengthened the arena by 40 feet and added a new roping chute. It also introduced steer riding for kids and a calf scramble, in which children raced to untie ribbons from calves’ tails. Spectators were asked to wear yellow on the first day and purple on the second. Beehler expected 2,000 people a day and hoped to raise $10,000. “We have plans to grow even bigger yet,” he said.

The rodeo was then approved by the PRCA. In 2016 it moved to June, on the last days of Meridian Dairy Days, a week of parade, fireworks, rides, and dairy shows that had celebrated the valley’s dairy industry for 87 years. Beehler explained the move: “Now that we are a PRCA rodeo, we wanted to move earlier in the year to accommodate the contestants. They tend to be healthier and more willing to travel earlier in the year than later in the year.” June also kept the rodeo clear of fall sports and school activities.

The rodeo skipped the COVID year. Within the four years before 2026 it took its present name and became the Treasure Valley Rodeo, presented by the Treasure Valley Lions.

By the 35th rodeo it had been on Cherry Lane more than ten years. That year a KIVI reporter asked Beehler whether Meridian’s growth might push it off the field. “This is Meridian city park land, it’s designated as park land, it’ll stay a park, it’ll be developed as a park, which unfortunately means we may be moving,” he said.