Woodchoppers Jamboree & Rodeo

Saturday of the Woodchoppers Jamboree & Rodeo begins at seven in the morning at the Encampment Volunteer Fire House, with pancakes and sausage. At nine a parade leaves the Grand Encampment Opera House and goes down the highway through Encampment to Riverside. By ten the crowd is at the Lions Club Arena. In the words of the organizers’ 2026 announcement, “seasoned loggers and brave amateurs compete with chainsaws, axes and handsaws” there. The Encampment-Riverside Lions Club has put on the weekend every Father’s Day since 1961. The 65th was held June 20 and 21, 2026, and the club’s site gives June 19 and 20, 2027, for the next.

Saws and axes at the Lions Club Arena

The woodchopping runs Saturday at ten and Sunday at nine. Tree felling opens it, with a drawing for trees fifteen minutes before the start. The timber comes from Traher, LLC, of Cowdrey, Colorado. Then come the saws: two-man, two-woman, one-man, and man-and-woman handsaw. The program also has team choker setting, axe chopping, power-saw log bucking for saws up to 72cc, and two classes of modified chainsaw. Points run from five for first down to one for fifth. The all-around titles go on the combined total of both days: Rocky Mountain Champion Lumberjack for the men and Lumberjill for the women. The Larry Jones Spirit of Competition Award is given alongside them.

Some events count nothing toward the titles. Open-class log bucking is listed as “Anything goes.” The Mom and Pop Race is entered by couples. The club’s own page announces “even a ‘Mad Logger’ chainsaw throw!” The schedule notes that children can compete too in the axe throw and pole throw. They also have a sawdust pit and a greased pole of their own.

Barbecue, broncs and trick riders

The Lions Club barbecue opens at 11:30 on both days. The club describes it as wood-fired, and it also lists pie, ice-cold beer and soda, and local vendors’ handicrafts. At one o’clock the arena turns over to the rodeo: barebacks, steer wrestling, ladies’ breakaway, saddle broncs, tie-down roping, mixed team roping, team roping, ladies’ barrels and bull riding. Ranch bronc riding was added for 2026. The special events are Neacy and Riata trick riding and the Cheyenne Trotters riding group, and there is mutton busting for the children. The 2026 announcement asked the crowd to cheer for “WRA and local competitors,” and the club sends rodeo questions to the Wyoming Rodeo Association. A visitor from Denver, signed Craig H., gave the club a testimonial it prints on its website: “It’s like the Loggers Olympics meets Iron Man Rodeo.”

Melodrama on Rankin Avenue

On Friday and Saturday nights at seven, melodrama plays at the Grand Encampment Opera House, 622 Rankin Avenue. Residents built the hall in 1902 as a meeting place. That was during the copper boom that began with sheepherder Ed Haggarty’s find in 1897. In the boom years a 16-mile aerial tramway carried ore from the mountain mines to the smelter in town. The boom lasted about a decade. The town took its name from the rendezvous that trappers and traders held in the 1830s at the base of the Sierra Madre, at a place they called Camp le Grand. A renovation completed in 2011 enlarged the Opera House stage, renovated the bell tower and added a kitchen. The town hall was once housed in the building.

Hammers, Talbotts and Petits

Timber came to the valley before copper. From the 1860s and 1870s, tie hacks cut logs and floated them down the creeks to the North Platte River in the spring runoff to supply ties for the Union Pacific. By the 1930s trucks had largely replaced the drives. One tie hack, Lee Hammer, taught his trade to his son, Robert L. “Mike” Hammer. Mike bought a portable sawmill in 1950 and worked it around the county, Elk Mountain among other places. Soon after the next decade began, he moved it to Encampment. WyoHistory.org records that his Hammer Timber & Lumber Company, where his sons David and Tom joined him, at one time employed more people than any other business in town. He retired in 1998 and the mill closed. In 2009 the town paid more than $629,800 for the ground where it stood. That ground is now the Grand Encampment Business Park, where Thompson Logging and Doggett Greenhouse operated when WyoHistory.org wrote about it in 2014.

The Jamboree’s list of champions begins in 1961 with the name Mike Hammer. The list does not say whether he is the sawmill man. In 1964 the title went to Dave Hammer. Albert Wertz won it four straight years from 1965 through 1968, and Marvin Brandt won five times between 1969 and 1975. Women’s champions first appear beside the men in 1981, beginning with Helga Nordin. Jay Talbott held the men’s title every year from 1992 through 2002, and again in 2010. Debbie Heggie held the women’s title from 1992 through 1997, and Glenna Talbott for the three years after. Barb Petit’s name appears on the women’s side thirteen times between 2003 and 2023. Skyler Petit’s appears on the men’s side from 2014 on. The entry for 2020 reads “pandemic postponement.”

On June 22, 2026, the club posted the results of the 65th. Skyler Petit was Rocky Mountain Champion Lumber Jack with 72 points. The Lumber Jill was Hanna Heggie, with 25.