Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame member Larry Mahan at the 1969 St. Paul Rodeo. The rodeo has had trees in its arena, marking the horse race track, since the 1940s.
Larry Jones, courtesy of the St. Paul Rodeo
The Sisters Rodeo has begun. The event will last through June 9 and features multiple performances and a parade. Next month, St. Paul will host its rodeo on the 4th of July. The rodeos have run for more than 80 years and host thousands of spectators in their rural communities. We hear more about the events from Brian Greig, the director of sponsorships and marketing for the Sisters Rodeo Association and Karen McKillip, the general manager for the St. Paul Rodeo.
Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. We turn to two Oregon rodeos right now. The biggest little show in the world, otherwise known as the Sisters Rodeo, started yesterday. The nation’s greatest 4th of July rodeo, otherwise known as the St. Paul Rodeo, starts next month. Combined, they have been around for more than 170 years. They remain big draws and big money makers for their respective cities. Brian Greig is the director of sponsorships and marketing for the Sisters Rodeo Association. Karen McKillip is the general manager for the St. Paul Rodeo. They both join us now. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud. Welcome.
Brian Greig: Great to be here. Thanks for having us.
Karen McKillip: Yes, thank you. Happy to be here.
Miller: And it’s great to have you both. Brian, your rodeo in Sisters started last night. How did it go?
Greig: It went very well. We had a sold out crowd in the stands. We had a standing room only bracelets that were sold as well. We were able to really contribute to this wonderful community and we did so by just welcoming the fans here to really kind of kick off the rodeo season and night one is in the books and we’ve got four more to go. So we’re really excited.
Miller: What are your jobs over the course of the next three or four days?
Greig: Yeah. So my job in particular is that ‒ and it’s me and 13 directors ‒ and with our directors, we all have individual roles. We have a great volunteer group. We have about 200 volunteers. But my role specifically is making sure that the wonderful sponsors and partners who help financially contribute to this rodeo are well taken care of, as well as making sure that our merchandise booth is offering great apparel to our fans and really just trying to provide an environment for our sponsors where they feel that they’re really getting a lot of value. They do it to contribute to the community, but also an opportunity for them to entertain their clients and their customers as well. So I certainly play in that space.
Miller: Karen McKillip, what have you heard about what the St. Paul Rodeo was like at the very beginning, 80 plus years ago?
McKillip: Well, my parents were involved with it and were children when it first started and both of my grandfathers were founders of the rodeo. So I have lots of family history that I get to draw from. And when it first started, living in the town of St. Paul, there’s just, the rodeo is what we are. So everybody knows about it. But to see it grow as much as it has over the years has been tremendous and we do our best to capitalize on what they started for us back in the day. But at the same time, to make it better, year after year.
Miller: How much has it grown? I mean, can you give a sense for its size now, compared to the size of St. Paul itself?
McKillip: St. Paul is a town of less than 420 people. And over the 4th of July holiday, we bring in over 60,000 over the five days. So it busts at the seams. We have one stoplight in town and it gets, it’s amazing how much it gets rolling with the town. But it’s grown a lot and the community all takes part in it. We couldn’t do it without everyone doing their part to pull it off.
Miller: Brian, what does the Sisters Rodeo mean for the community culturally?
Greig: Yeah. So the city was… there’s a lot of history here in Sisters with the mills that really were the driver of the economics here in this community. And when the rodeo started in 1940, the local community brought together $10,000 to put on the first Sisters Rodeo. And, fast forward today, 84 years, and just the shot in the arm to the community here. I mean, we’re, we’re a little, a bit bigger than St. Paul, about 3,500. So Karen’s got us there a little bit. But from a community as a whole, a lot of folks say this is their Cowboy Christmas. I mean, we have retailers here who say that the Saturday of the parade is their largest sales day of the year.
I mean, we’re going to put 35,000 people through the gates. You have the folks in the stands and then there’s people that just come to town and visit the restaurants and shops and the bars as well, and people just want to be a part of it here. And, when you come to Sisters, the community, all the buildings look like an old western town that was certainly inspired by the Sisters Rodeo a number of years ago. So it really has continued to have that western feel when you come here. You’ll certainly see folks wearing Wranglers and cowboy hats, not just during the rodeo. But the rodeo tends to be the centerpiece of the community and just allowing the businesses to grow and to thrive. And so every business here opens up their doors and knows that the foot traffic that walks through here is crucial to their success. And us volunteers and directors like to make sure that we support them because without the rodeo, things might get a little tough at times. So we try to do our best to make sure we’re always in the community and helping them flourish and let them grow as well.
Miller: Karen, along those lines, what does the St. Paul Rodeo mean for businesses in town?
McKillip: There are not too many businesses in town, but it is the livelihood of our town and the same. all of the kids that are in school in town are participating and volunteering and the money that is raised from the concessions, the parking, all goes right back into the schools, and we couldn’t do it without all of them doing their part. And again, the businesses that are in town do a lot more business, of course.
Like Brian was saying too, it’s part of the year, you have to depend on that to get through it. And it doesn’t just start and end in St. Paul. It’s the communities around us too, with Newberg, Woodburn, people are coming and they’re staying in their hotels. We don’t have anywhere to stay in St. Paul, of course. So, they’re using hotels that are in our local area outside of us, and it’s a big part of the Willamette Valley. That’s what makes St. Paul so great is we have a good location here to the Portland and Salem area. And so we’re drawing from crowds that are 45 to half an hour drive away, but yet can come out to this little slice of heaven here and get the 4th of July experience in the old time western atmosphere.
Miller: We asked our listeners on Facebook what they love most about their local rodeos.
Kathy Cornell wrote, “The people that take their hats off at the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner and stand to fly by, by the Air Force as the song is sung, the prayer that opens the Red Bluff round up, prefaced by the comment that it’s open to all faiths and one does not need to join in if one is not moved to do so, the huge family atmosphere. Other than this,” she wrote, “the St. Paul Rodeo in St. Paul, where I took my kids for 30 years, I never in life expected to find a rodeo that came close. I am so grateful.”
Hipolito Medrano in answer to our question what you love most about the local rodeo wrote, “Wrangler butts. It is a thing worth appreciating.”
Karen, I’m curious. This rodeo goes back two generations in your family, your parents and your grandparents. What does it mean to you now to be one of the bosses of it, to be the general manager after attending it for so long yourself, and having this deep family history with it?
McKillip: Very proud. I also had the honor when I was just out of high school to be an ambassador on the rodeo court. And truthfully that probably planted the seed for me there besides my parents. I just knew that’s what I wanted to represent and be a part of the rest of my life. I was very fortunate to be able to get into the positions I have. I started out doing the ticket office and managing that for the last 20 years. And then I was able to move into this role as a general manager.
To be honest, I live and breathe it and think it every day of my life. My family is very supportive of helping me get through it and understanding of that. But it’s just something that I’m so proud to be a part of. We have a board of 11 directors that dedicate just as much time as I do to this and their families that are involved as well. About, well, 6 of the 11 are descendants of the founders themselves. So, it’s a whole package deal of a family around here and we just wanna do our part to make it better than we found it and produce a world class rodeo.
Miller: Brian, do you have a favorite part of the Sisters Rodeo every year?
Greig: I would certainly say that probably the national anthem. Like your listener wrote in, there’s something that’s just spectacular about seeing the red, white and blue and the Star-Spangled Banner in the arena. And that would… probably was the part that just moves us and to see everybody standing and to see that flag go around the arena. I know that regardless of if it’s here at Sisters or the number of times I’ve been to St. Paul as well and their great tradition as well. It’s just it’s a moment of of quietness, but also a great time for reflection as all of us come together here in this country and it’s what usually moves me and I know that it moves everybody else that walks through the stands here.
Miller: Do you breathe a sigh of relief when it’s over? I mean, the actual rodeo itself, not the Star-Spangled Banner?
Greig: No, like Karen said, and it’s so true, that we think about it every day. We live and breathe it. And we’ll take a little bit of time off. But we have to start planning once again in August. It’s just a big huge puzzle and all the pieces have to come together. We do like to have a little fun. We, our committees, try to visit other committees. So I will be seeing Karen here coming up in July.
McKillip: I’ll be over your way this weekend.
Greig: Yep, coming over to see us. So, we do support one another, but from the day to day stuff, it does slow down a little bit. But again, it’s a year-round type responsibility, certainly, because here at Sisters we own our rodeo grounds. And so that requires a significant number of time and energy and resources to continue to keep it looking plush and looking very pretty right here in the heart of Central Oregon. So there’s never really much of a downtime. But we have a great committee and we have great volunteers that continue to support.
And the other piece in the off season is that we have a great scholarship program, and we contribute a significant amount of dollars to students and freshmen in college to allocate sponsorships. So we’re always looking for folks that are looking to have some of their college opportunity be subsidized a little bit.
So, again, to answer your question, it’s a little bit of a sigh of relief, but I guess when it’s in your blood and when you think about it all the time, you’re trying to always make it better. So there is a little bit, but I would say probably we’ll probably miss it come Monday.
Miller: Karen, I know that there is a philanthropic aspect of the St. Paul rodeo as well, especially for injured riders, but we are out of time. But I want to thank both of you very much for joining us and best of luck for both of your events now and this summer. Thank you.
McKillip: Thank you very much for having us.
Greig: Thank you for having us. Thank you.
Miller: Brian Greig is the director of sponsorships and marketing for the Sisters Rodeo Association. The Sisters Rodeo started just yesterday. Karen McKillip is the general manager for the St. Paul Rodeo that starts on July 1st.
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