Explores the drama and history of one of the West's premier rodeo and cultural events, the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale. Begun in 1951 as a way to sell "spoiled" and unruly ranch horses for use in rodeos, the sale has evolved into a four-day celebration that features horse racing, country music, a parade, and rodeo riding. Includes more than 60 photographs.

STICK HORSES And Other Stories of Cowboy Life HERE ARE TRUE-LIFE STORIES about cowboys, Indians, (ranch hands, sheriffs) and the milieu of characters that populated the legendary American West. McRae tells about his heroes and also the town vagabonds who came and went through the landscape of his growing up as a ranch kid and his adult life as a third-generation Montana rancher.Both humorous and poignant, the people and events in McRae's stories portray the living Cowboy Code. Enjoyable, can't-put-it-down reading in a conversational style from one of the West's best storytellers. Don't pass this one up!

For centuries, on prairie grasslands, dusty streets and racing ovals, everyday Montanans participated in the sport of kings. More than a century after horses arrived in the region, Lewis and Clark's Nez Perce guides staged horse races at Traveler's Rest in 1806. In response to hazardous street races, the Montana legislature granted communities authority to ban "immoderate riding or driving." Helena led the way to respectable racing, with Madam Coady's fashion course hosting the first territorial fair in 1868. Soon, leading citizens like Marcus Daly built oval tracks and glitzy grandstands. By 1890, a horse named Bob Wade set a world record for a quarter mile in Butte, a mark that stood until 1958. Horsewoman and historian Brenda Wahler highlights the Big Sky's patrons of the turf and courageous equine champions, including Kentucky Derby winner Spokane.

Do you breed rats and mice that could preen like poodles in a pet show? Have creative juices yearning to be set loose on a 20-ton block of packed snow? Possess a melodious voice best suited to singing the praises of SPAM? Nope? That's okay, with America Bizarro, you can find out all about people who do! It's a weird place, America, and even if you have a hobby or interest that no one you know shares, there's probably a group of people meeting somewhere in America to enjoy it together. Not only that, but someone else's obsession or bizarre display of civic pride is being celebrated right near you. Organized state-by-state, and illustrated with some pretty funny pictures, Nelson Taylor's America Bizarro is an hysterical armchair read which doubles as a practical guide in case you want to: See the Jumping Frog competition immortalized by Mark Twain in Calaveras County, CA Be a delegate at the Dukes of Hazzard Fan Club Convention Munch on Rocky Mountain oysters at Montana's Testicle Festival Get lost in Grandpa John's Amazing Maze in a Nebraska cornfield Tickle, caress, and seduce the ivories in Las Vegas' Liberace "Play-A-Like" Competition Join Polar Bear plungers in the Atlantic in February at the Jersey Shore Win a truck in Texas' famous Hands on a Hardbody contest You never know. You could be the next International Pack Burro Race champion or just enjoy taking in the annual ArtCar Parade in San Francisco. America is what you make it, so make it Bizarro!

The Montana Cowboy brings together true stories of real cowboys and cowgirls from across the Treasure State. Cowboys who have chased wild horses in the Missouri River badlands, ridden through freezing blizzards, and followed the roundup wagons while branding calves in the spring and gathering in the fall. Many of these stories come from early day settlers and exhibit the fortitude and toughness needed to survive when Montana was little more than a land of wolf tracks and unfenced grass. Others relate more modern experiences, some dangerous, others unpredictable, as so often happens when working with livestock. Through them all, a thread of humor and respect for fellow man runs like an invisible strand, just as the cowboy’s heart is never far from a jest or a practical joke.

"What would rodeo look like if we took it as a record, not of human triumph and resilience, but of human imperfection and stubbornness?” asks animal historian Susan Nance. Against the backdrop of the larger histories of ranching, cattle, horses, and the environment in the West, this book explores how the evolution of rodeo has reflected rural western beliefs and assumptions about the natural world that have led to environmental crises and served the beef empire. By unearthing behind-the-scenes stories of rodeo animals as diverse individuals, this book lays bare contradictions within rodeo and the rural West. For almost 150 years, westerners have used rodeo to symbolically reenact their struggles with animals and the land as uniformly progressive and triumphant. Nance upends that view with accounts of individual animals that reveal how diligently rodeo people have worked to make livestock into surrogates for the trials of rural life in the West and the violence in its history. Western horses and cattle were more than just props. Rodeo reclaims their lived history through compelling stories of anonymous roping steers and calves who inspired reform of the sport, such as the famed but abused bucker Steamboat, and the many broncs and bulls, famous or not, who unknowingly built an industry. Rodeo is a dangerous sport that reveals many westerners as people proudly tolerant of risk and violence, and ready to impose these values on livestock. In Rodeo: An Animal History, Nance pushes past standard histories and the sport’s publicity to show how rodeo was shot through with stubbornness and human failing as much as fortitude and community spirit.

During two and three week periods in each of the last seven late-summers, I have wandered about southwest Wyoming's highways and two-track trails...learning much about the geographies of Great Divide Basin and many interesting sites immediately surrounding that awesome, fascinating, wind-blown and sun-burnished stretch of high desert, making too short, pleasurable journeys into nostalgia. During these seductive and productive travels, my eyes, ears, nose, hands and feet have researched, catalogued and accessioned much new material. Memories will lure me back for more.