In about 1948 my grandfather took me to the Calgary Stampede. They travelled with teams and wagons driving ponies behind. Calgary now has a population of over a million and a half but in 1948 it was maybe fifty thousand. We stayed with friends who ranched southwest of town. The day before the Stampede was to start we headed for town and looked around. A lot of corners on main street had chuckwagons set up and service clubs like rotary, etc served pancakes for breakfast every day during the rodeo. The reason they called it a stampede was later that morning all the stock used in the rodeo was stampeded down main street from the ranch west of town out to the exhibition grounds. It was pretty exciting to see the cows, calves bucking bulls led by the bucking horses stampede flat out down a city street.

The next time I saw bucking horses driven down a city street was the first time I was in this county during Chief Joseph days. This tradition is a big part of our local rodeo and one of the few places you can still do that. The horse drive down main street is a real crowd pleaser and is fairly well controlled except for Luke riding his horse into the Stubborn Mule sometimes. By far the most exciting horse stampede through Joseph had nothing to do with the rodeo and was witnessed only by locals as it happened in the off season.

I can’t remember the exact year, probably about 2012, a ranch out north of Troy had about a hundred and fifty head of Andalusian looking horses owned by a lady that could no longer take care of them. The Sherriff’s Department had to confiscate them and bring them to town to feed and take care of. The horses were hauled to a field that Dan DeBoie had just northeast of Joseph. The horses had feed and water and were supplemented with hay. It was determined that the lady who owned the horses was not going to be able to get them back and they were to be sold by the Sherriff. The horses were chipped and we had to scan them individually to match up papers prior to the sale. The Sherriff assembled a team of top-notch cowboys and we gathered them up. The drive to the rodeo grounds came in from the east and everything went pretty well until we were about two blocks into town. Don and Fred were in front of the herd leading them. When the lead horses saw the action ahead in town they stalled. The following horses kegged up behind them and after a little milling they scattered like quail with horses going down side streets on both sides of the hi-way. Some got into a field on the north side of the road and tried to head back to the field they came out of. Mark and I were riding drag and saw the wreck developing. We had a cop car behind us and we abandoned him to retrieve the horses from the side streets and yards. Lucky we live in an area where we have fairly tolerant neighbors. After about thirty minutes of chasing by all cowboys we had them all collected back on the main road. The drive crossed main-street and we got them turned into the rodeo grounds and collected in the arena.

The fun wasn’t over. Everything we tried to do seemed to require a big fight. We processed all the horses and were ready to return them to Dan’s pasture. Mark and I had discussed the return trip and decided that a horse herd going somewhere is easier to control than one that is viewing side streets as an escape route. With Fred and Don stationed near the Cheyenne Café, Abby off on Mill st. and me at the gate to turn them east Mark brought them out of the arena. I still don’t know how he got them coming that fast. He must have circled them once to get up speed and then opened the gate. The herd roared out of the arena and with great difficulty I hazed them down the road toward the Cheyenne. The horses were going flat out and Sherriff Rogers stationed at main street barely had time to stop traffic before the lead crossed running hard on slick pavement. When the last of the herd passed me I rode as fast as I dared to catch up and help keep the herd on the right road. Not far from the R&R drive in Fred and Don attempted to slow the stampede. I saw Fred’s horse slip on his hind legs and almost go down on the pavement. Had he gone down, like Little Joe the Wrangler, his spurs would have rung the knell. The lead horses in the stampede were some colts and young horses and luckily they knew where home was. The herd passed Don and Fred and a cop car down the road sent them down the road to Dan’s. We got them stopped in his yard and put away. We turned off our adrenalin pumps and called it a day. The following week in the Oregonian paper there was a picture of the horses with me in hot pursuit near the Cheyenne, my slicker flying straight out behind me. God I love that picture.