Sheridan WYO Rodeo Parade
Marches from Past to Present

For one Friday morning in July every summer, downtown merchants in Sheridan, Wyoming, close up shop. Parking is restricted on Main Street as crowds of spectators-townspeople and tourists alike-gather for the annual Sheridan-WYO Rodeo parade, a spectacle unlike any other in the nation.

National Guard units, military veterans, Indian dancers on flatbed trucks and a host of colorful floats stream past in the city's largest annual tribute to its Western heritage.

The parade has been a part of Sheridan's famed rodeo weekend since the three-day cowboy extravaganza began in 1931, but-like the rodeo itself-the parade has a longer history. A newspaper account from 1987 describes the procession that launched that year's "Old Timers and Cowboy State Reunion and Revival."

"The Sheridan Cornet Band marched in the lead and discoursed martial music. Following were between 400 and 500 Indians-bucks, squaws and papooses-all mounted and decorated in their finest blankets, feathers and other paraphernalia. At frequent intervals there were groups of cowboys and old timers in the procession, together with a number of interesting gypsies with their handsome wagons. It was a beautiful, interesting and impressive spectacle, over three-quarters of a mile long, and worth going hundreds of miles to see."

Times have changed, and nobody talks about "bucks, squaws and papooses" anymore. But the Sheridan-WYO Rodeo Parade still celebrates harmony among the Native Americans descendants of the white settlers who joined them at the base of the beautiful Bighorn Mountains. And it's still "worth going hundreds of miles to see."