War Bonnet Round Up

Gates at Sandy Downs open at 4:30 in the afternoon. General admission seats in the bleachers go to whoever arrives first. Under the grandstand, American Legion Bonneville Post 56 sells quarter-pound burgers “with all the trimmings” and French fries. By Bob Skinner’s account, no one else on the grounds may sell them, though other vendors work the crowd with kettle corn. The kids’ rodeo starts at 5:45, the PRCA rodeo at 7, and the night ends around 10. The arena is city-owned, six miles east of Exit 113 off Interstate 15.

The War Bonnet Round Up runs the first weekend in August, Thursday through Saturday, under the Idaho Falls Parks and Recreation Department. A free kickoff comes the Wednesday before. The 115th edition opened on Wednesday, July 29, 2026, with the Toyota Wild West Family Fest. It offered a mutton bustin’ qualifier, a free kid zone, food and merchandise vendors, and a run of breakaway roping as a sample of the nights to come. The first 1,000 through the gate got a commemorative cup.

Four nights at Sandy Downs

Each 2026 rodeo night had a theme:

• Thursday, July 30: First Responders Night
• Friday, July 31: Tough Enough To Wear Pink Night
• Saturday, August 1: Salute To Veterans Night

Saturday sold out online. Kassi Jones, the rodeo’s chairman and executive producer, has called the Saturday presentation for retired, active-duty and future service members “one of the most moving moments of the rodeo.” Each night closed with a 14-minute drone show from Zions Bank, and fireworks followed on the last night.

Jones changes the clowns and specialty acts every year. “We want to make sure we give lots of opportunity, lots of variety, that way it’s not just the same show every single year,” she told BYU-Idaho Radio. The 2026 barrel man was Kyle “Hashtag” Lamon, who gave a Fan of the Night belt buckle to one spectator each night. Kade Rogge and Marty Campbell announced from the stand. Zach Ekstrom, a former tie-down calf roper, ran the pre-rodeo and the winner’s circle. Drew Taylor, “The House Rocker,” directed the music; Jones said his off-the-cuff “The Tractor Song” from the year before had traveled with him across the nation. The stock came from Korkow Rodeo of South Dakota, the main contractor. Rogge had announced the rodeo for 13 years by 2026. “To me, this is a rodeo with history you want to tell your grandkids you showed up to,” he said.

Organizers told EastIdahoNews.com they had nearly twice as many contestants in 2026 as in years past. The city’s own figures give more than 450 cowboys and cowgirls competing before more than 12,000 spectators. Jones, speaking in 2025, put it at more than 500 contestants and over 20,000 people, and gave the purse as $76,500 before entry fees.

The 2026 slack opened on July 29:

• Tricia Aldridge and Adios Pantalones ran the standard barrel pattern in 16.71 seconds, which BarrelRacing.com called potentially an arena record.
• Clay Hurt of Texas led the steer wrestling at 3.5 seconds.
• On Thursday night, Bo Vocu of Montana rode Leftover Salamon for 84 points.
• On Friday, Adeline Van Hoff won the mutton bustin’ with a 94 on a sheep named Lamb Chops.

Saturday was Chuck Swisher’s birthday and his last performance in the arena on a goodbye tour, after a decade with the rodeo. Talonnie Staples, who has carried the rodeo’s flags on horseback since 2016, was named the 2026 Volunteer of the Year. Edie Barnes rode as Miss War Bonnet Rodeo Princess. “It’s nice to see little kids’ faces light up when I enter a room,” she said.

The Shoshone-Bannock riders

Each year the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of Fort Hall bring tribal horseback warriors, drum groups and dancers into the arena. Outside it, they host vendor booths and educational exhibits. Skinner, a longtime Legion hand, described the arena ceremony for the Post Register:

“They do a special ceremony, with the Lord’s Prayer, and an Indian lady in full dress does it by signing. Dancers come out while the drummers drum, and the little kids come out in full regalia.”

He added that the tribes put up a teepee where people can take pictures. Jones has said the rodeo’s timing serves as a lead-in to the Shoshone-Bannock Indian Festival, a powwow. Shelby Woolsteahulme, who manages tribal relations for the board, put it plainly: “We would not have this rodeo if it wasn’t for the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes.” Skinner said more than half the people in the first rodeos of the early 1900s were Indians.

A county fair and a contested name

Afton Boam Dale, in her 1968 history of the roundup, wrote that civic leaders began a fair in 1908. That same year Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show gave a local exhibition. “The fair continued without much success until 1911,” Dale wrote. That year a group of local businessmen added events and held them with the county fair at Tautphaus Park, September 5–8. The program was mostly horse racing, with relay races run by Shoshone-Bannock riders from the Fort Hall reservation. Among them was the Indian Relay: twelve horses and four teams, with riders leaping bareback from one moving horse to another. Attendance, by the Visit Idaho account, ballooned.

The War Bonnet Round Up was officially inaugurated on September 23–27, 1912. The card included:

• stagecoach races and four-horse chariot races
• wild mule riding, bull riding and steer riding
• Indian cowboy racing and cowgirl bucking
• bulldogging and Roman riding
• championship bucking, trick roping and trick riding

A city history of Idaho Falls dates the first roundup to that 1912 meeting. It says the event was held with the Bonneville County Fair, which boosters wanted to enliven, since the county had split off from Bingham County the year before.

That 1912 show drew the cowgirl Annie Moran, who jumped her horse White Eagle off a 35-foot platform into a nine-foot tank of water. Visit Idaho reports that the War Bonnet’s early prize money exceeded that of Cheyenne and Pendleton combined. It also lists the riders who came:

• the cowboys Everett Colborn, Slim Wager, Buffalo Vernon and Stub Farlow
• the world champion bronc rider Nancy Price
• the trick-and-bronc rider Bonnie McCarrol
• the African American cowboy Snowball Johnson
• the Nez Perce rider Jackson Sundown, who won the 1916 Pendleton Round Up championship at 50

The name has more than one story. Jones’s version is that it honors Chief War Bonnet and his tribe, who in the early 1800s gathered on the shores of Bear Lake to round up and break wild horses. The city history says there never was a Chief War Bonnet, and no evidence of the War Bonnet cattle spread that some have imagined. In that account, boosters with William Cody’s Wild West shows in mind proposed staging a fictitious “Battle of War Bonnet.” One hundred Native Americans were to ambush an old stagecoach while as many cowboys defended it. The event was canceled when the Indians refused to take part. T. H. Stickley of the American Legion offered a third explanation: the rodeo was “probably called War Bonnet because of the use of many Indians in the Parade.”

Reno Park, the Legion, and the city

Stickley recalled that a race track and grandstand were built at the park, and the rodeo “was held for many years inside the track.” Frank Reno bought the park from Mr. Tautphaus, and it was known as Reno Park, by one account from 1915 to 1932, before it took back the Tautphaus name. In 1915 the Reelplays Corporation of Chicago filmed The Cowpuncher at the roundup there, said to be the first silent motion picture shot in Idaho. Among the extras was Paul D. Fisher of Idaho Falls, 12 years old, riding his pony Duke.

Bonneville Post 56 of the American Legion first sponsored the rodeo in 1921, by the city history’s date. The city’s account has the Chamber of Commerce running it before the Legion took over. The rodeo eventually moved to Sandy Downs. It has gone unheld during the world wars and, in 2020, during the pandemic. It was also canceled in 2009 and 2010 after three straight years of losses. When the Legion brought it back in 2011, it lost money again. That 2011 rodeo was the 100th anniversary, and its queen was Kassi Jones, who began helping chairman Bob Skinner that year.

In November 2015 Skinner, then Post 56 commander, handed the rodeo to the city. It had become too large for the post, costing about $250,000 a year to put on. “We put more money into the prize pool for cowboys than it used to take to run the whole rodeo,” he said. The Legion kept the grandstand concessions, which Skinner said could fund the post for a full year. Since then the arena has gained new chutes and lights, and the grandstand has been refurbished. “No more wooden seats,” Skinner said.

The rodeo has collected honors since:

• In 2019 it added breakaway roping, a Women’s Pro Rodeo Association timed event, and later that year became the first recipient of the WPRA’s Breakaway Trailblazer award.
• In 2021, its 110th year, it entered the Idaho Rodeo Hall of Fame, one of three rodeos ever inducted, according to that body’s president, Judi VanDorn-Thacker.
• The PRCA Wilderness Circuit named it Idaho’s Best Medium Rodeo in 2022, 2023 and 2024. The 2022 award came after torrential rain turned the last night into mud.

Skinner gave four boxes of Legion keepsakes to the museum in Idaho Falls: hats, chaps, old programs, and pictures of rodeo queens. When he first became committee chairman, the rodeo had 50 Henry rifles made as a fundraiser, their stocks laser-engraved with the state flower, state bird and state horse. One was left, and it was to be raffled at the 115th rodeo.