Weippe Rodeo

Gates opened at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, August 14, 2026. At 6:00 the DEBCO Bull Bash began on the rodeo grounds at 707 Musselshell Road in Weippe, Idaho, with thirty open bull riders, ten junior bull riders, and $5,000 in added prize money. That was the first year of the bull bash. Mathew Stoddart won the open bulls, ahead of Brock Cooper, Colt Jared and Ricky Dyer. Colt Jared also won the junior bulls, with Ricky Dyer second and Vincent Poxleitner third.

Three performances on Musselshell Road

The bull bash opened the 65th annual Wild Weippe Rodeo, held August 14–16, 2026. The Clearwater County Chamber of Commerce gives the rodeo’s date as the third weekend in August every year and describes it as open to “local contestants and the best cowboys around.” The rodeo’s own page invites “professional and local contestants alike.”

On Saturday a parade ran through downtown Weippe at 10 a.m. The pre-rodeo followed at 1:00 and the main performance at 2:00. Sunday began with a Cowboy Breakfast at the grounds from 7:00 to 10:00 and a Cowboy Church service at 10:00 at the Weippe Community Hall. The pre-rodeo started at noon and the final performance at 1:00. The rodeo is sanctioned by the Idaho Cowboy Association at its Prime level. The events are team roping, tie-down roping, barrel racing, saddle bronc, bareback, steer wrestling, breakaway roping and ranch broncs.

Several things were new in 2026. P9 Rodeo Company came on as stock contractor. A young trick rider, Cowgirl Laramie, and The Wild Bunch performed at both the Saturday and Sunday shows. J7 Cattle & Construction donated the work of putting tin around a new announcer’s stand. Randall Eschler returned to that stand to call all three performances and the parade. Clay Hosley and the crew of Chubby’s Pizza gave their time to run the beer garden all weekend. Contestants parked their rigs in a hay field lent for the occasion, and organizers asked them not to clean out their trailers on it.

The town around the grounds is small. The city counts about 400 residents and traces the town’s roots to timber and ranching. The name comes from the Nez Perce word Oy-ipe, for the level meadows that served for centuries as a trade junction and gathering place. South of town lies the Weippe Prairie, where Nez Perce people harvest camas root and where they met the Lewis and Clark Expedition in September 1805. Musselshell Meadow, east of Weippe, was another long-used Nez Perce gathering ground. The city calls the August weekend Wild Weippe Days.

Queens, marshals, and the voice in the stand

The 2026 Grand Marshals were Buck and Gloria Jared. They rode in the Saturday parade, appeared at all three performances, and between times kept the merchandise booth, selling shirts, hats and raffle tickets. The 2026 Rodeo Queen was MaKadee Larson. Harlow Steiner, a contestant for the 2027 crown, rode into the arena on Gem, a 22-year-old Rocky Mountain gelding. She was entering her junior year at Orofino High School and planned to go on to Washington State University and veterinary school to become a large-animal veterinarian.

A volunteer board runs the rodeo. In 2026 it was President Tony Christopherson, Vice President Jake Jared, Secretary Ana Jared and Treasurer Shawnean Larson, with directors David Turnage, Bejay Marshall and Brett Hubbs.

That week the board asked the community to remember two people. Hal Olson had been “the voice of the Wild Weippe Rodeo for over 35 years” and served as Grand Marshal in 2006. Shannon Simpson, known as “Spike,” had supported the rodeo alongside her husband and DEBCO Construction, the company whose name the new bull bash carried. After the weekend the board reported record-breaking numbers “across the board, all weekend long.”

A ball field and a borrowed caterpillar

Eva Wolfe, who wrote the Weippe News for many years, set down the rodeo’s beginnings in an article titled “Weippe Rodeo History.” It was printed in the Weippe Hilltop Heritage Museum’s 2012 calendar of the rodeo’s queens, and Norma Brand retold it in the Clearwater Tribune in 2023. The museum occupies the 1933 Brown’s Creek Civilian Conservation Corps camp barracks, which were moved to their present site in 1947 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Brand wrote that the museum staff set up displays for rodeo weekend.

According to Wolfe, the first rodeo celebration was a smaller affair held on the ball field next to the Weippe Elementary School. In the late 1930s Weippe resident Steve Russell furnished his own stock and directed rodeo events there each year on July 3 and 4. When Russell sold his stock and moved to Montana, a number of years went by with no rodeo.

In 1959 a group of local residents began looking for land for bleachers, stands and stock pens. Bob Hamilton owned the right spot. He let the group clear and level it, cut the trees and put up a fence at no additional expense. Henry Schlader, a Nez Perce resident, donated the wire for the first fence. Al Spence of Weippe donated his caterpillar and helped clear the trees and stumps. Everyone who was interested helped build the bleachers and stands.

From the secretary’s minutes Wolfe listed the people who wanted to form the first rodeo: Fred Young, Pat Schlader, Lloyd Schlader, Andy Schlader, Bud Bonner, Al Smith, Leroy and Kenneth Chapman, Dean Weidner, Al Spence, Pete Mathews, Glen and Don Erickson, Gordon Hueth and Melvin Ruark. She noted that the minutes might not hold every name and that any omission was unintentional.

A small rodeo was held on the new ground in 1962, without royalty. The Weippe Rodeo Association was incorporated in 1963. That August’s rodeo, a two-day event drawing mostly amateurs who had competed at other area rodeos, crowned 15-year-old Cathy Currin as queen. She rode a quarter horse named Ginger Snapper, and her princesses were Gwen Snyder and Paula Vanderpool. The events were bareback and saddle bronc riding, calf roping, team roping and girls’ barrel racing. Gwen Snyder was queen the next year, and Paula Vanderpool the year after.

Lloyd and Jo Anne Schlader

In 2011 the Grand Marshals were Lloyd and Jo Anne Schlader, who took a break from haying to talk with Alannah Allbrett of the Clearwater Tribune. Lloyd laid out the rodeo’s milestones:

• 1963: the rodeo was incorporated.
• 1964: land was purchased.
• 1969: a concession stand went up.
• 1970: the loading chutes were moved.
• 1971: the first parade was held, with Lloyd’s father, Andy, as the first Grand Marshal.
• 1972: the rodeo affiliated with the Idaho Cowboy Association.

Wolfe’s account adds that a deep well was drilled the same year, along with later improvements: covered bleachers, a better cook house and more land.

Both Schladers grew up in Weippe and married in 1964. Lloyd raised cattle and worked in the woods. Jo Anne drove a school bus for Timberline and Weippe schools for 33 years. Three of their daughters were rodeo royalty. Lloyd served as rodeo president in 1964, 1983 and 1984. Jo Anne was secretary from 1971 through 1974 and again from 1994 on.

The 2011 rodeo ran Saturday and Sunday, August 20 and 21. The parade was at noon on Main Street, the band Coltrain played a dance at the Community Hall, and the Cowboy Breakfast ran from 7 to 11. The EhCapa Bareback riders came from Boise, Myrissa Wolfe was queen, Eddie White worked as clown, and Hal Olson announced.

Asked for a picture of the two of them together at the rodeo, the Schladers had none. “I was usually busy at one end, and he was busy at the other end,” Jo Anne said. “And never the two shall meet.”