Wild West Parade

On the first Saturday of July at ten in the morning, horses come down the streets of downtown Toppenish. Wagons, floats, classic vehicles and the town’s local organizations follow them. Visit Toppenish calls it the “ORIGINAL Western parade” and counts more than 100 entries. The entries gather from 7 a.m. at the Toppenish Rodeo Grounds, 600 South Division Street, before moving downtown. There is no charge to watch.

Breakfast, then the route

The morning begins with the Lions Club Breakfast in the Park, served from 7 to 10 at $10 a plate. The rodeo weekend schedule posted by Yakima Valley Tourism calls it a pancake breakfast at Railroad Park, hosted by the Toppenish Lions Club, and has it running until 10:30.

In 2026 the first Saturday fell on the Fourth of July. On June 12, 2026, the city announced “NEW START TIME: 10:00am” and urged spectators to arrive early. The rodeo weekend schedule on the Yakima Valley Tourism listing still gave the parade at 11:00 a.m. From 6 a.m. that morning no vehicles were allowed along the route until the parade ended, and cars left there were towed at the owner’s expense. Restrooms were set up at the West Rooms, and City Hall had none open to the public.

The rodeo weekend around it

The parade belongs to the Toppenish Rodeo’s weekend, which the Toppenish Rodeo & Livestock Association billed in 2026 as its 91st annual. The rodeo, part of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s Columbia River Circuit, ran July 3 and 4 at the rodeo grounds. Friday opened at 10 a.m. with the Rascal Rodeo in the arena. On Saturday the slack, the extra competition runs, began at 8 a.m. and was free and open to the public. Each evening children rode sheep in the mutton bustin’ at 7, and the pro rodeo followed at 7:30. Afterward the Beer Garden had DJ Armando on Friday and the country singer Hunter Stiles on Saturday. The town’s motto is “Where the West Still Lives.”

Toppenish is the largest city on the Yakama Reservation. It sits among orchards and fields about two miles from the south bank of the Yakima River. Its name comes from the Yakama-Shahaptian word T-hoppenish, which meant roughly “sloping downward and spreading,” the shape of the land between the Cascades and the river. HistoryLink counts 75 outdoor murals of local history in the town. In 1983, according to HistoryLink, some citizens proposed making Toppenish over into a Wild West theme village “to provide a little spark to a depressed economy.” On June 6, 2026, local artists repainted the first of those murals, Clearing the Land, at the corner of Washington and Toppenish Avenues.

Cattle, a depot and the first roundup

White ranchers found the valley’s grazing by the 1860s. Ben Snipes and Charlie Newell, stockmen holding Indian Agency grazing permits, ran big herds of cattle and horses there. Snipes made his fortune driving cattle from the Central Washington grasslands to the gold fields of British Columbia and became known as the region’s “cattle king.” The Northern Pacific built a depot on the sagebrush flat in 1884. After the line crossed the Cascades in 1886, stockyards went up nearby and the depot became a busy shipping point for cattle.

According to the Yakima Herald-Republic, Native American fairs were held in Toppenish every year from 1906 through 1911. The first “Toppenish Roundup” in 1912 added rodeo events: branding calves, roping, bronc busting, bulldogging, wild horse races and steer riding. At that roundup, HistoryLink reports, Sam Hutchinson of Sunnyside “rode up to a steer, caught it by the tail, tossed it head over heels, and then helped the steer to get to its feet because the animal’s horns had been rammed into the ground.” People from what is now Yakima came down by train to watch. In 1913 Ruth Barton Webster placed second in a racing event there. She later became known as the “Mother of Thoroughbred Racing” and entered the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. In 1914 a bulldogger, Jim Crouch, died after a bull hit a fence and a piece of lumber struck him in the stomach.

The Herald says the roundup ran each September until 1915 and was revived in 1925 and 1927. The 1925 program promised horse racing, bareback riding, bucking horses, Native American races and dances, and “an epic drama of the West.” The accounts differ on what came next. HistoryLink dates the Toppenish Powwow and Rodeo, held every Fourth of July weekend, to 1922, and says members of the Yakama tribe took a “prominent part.” Its 1948 highlight was an Indian pageant, “Sacajawea.” Yakima Valley Tourism says the present rodeo began “as a grassroots local gathering in 1934.” The Herald places its return in 1939, as part of the town’s annual Independence Day Celebration. HistoryLink’s essay on Washington rodeo calls it unclear whether today’s rodeo descends directly from the 1912 roundup.

War bonds, a fire and a lean year

Gov. Clarence Martin attended the 1940 celebration, which included an “Indian Village” and a show by Yakama Nation citizens. The 1942 rodeo was canceled after the United States entered World War II, and a community picnic took its place. It came back in 1943 with free admission for members of the military in uniform. In 1944, 7,000 people attended and pledged $76,000 in a war-bond drive, which the Herald puts at $1.4 million in present dollars.

The rodeo association formed in 1946. After that the rodeo ran every year, even after a fire destroyed the grounds in 1957. The 2008 rodeo was canceled when embezzlement and a settlement over a motorcycle crash brought the association to the brink of bankruptcy. It resumed in 2009, and its only other gap came in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 90th anniversary came in 2025. The city calendar has already set the next parade for Saturday, July 3, 2027, at ten in the morning.