Let 'er Buck: Pendelton Round Up & Yakima Canutt

This week marks the 100 year anniversary for the prestigious Pendleton Rodeo.

One of the world's top rodeos with attendance typically reaching 50,000, the Pendelton Round Up humbly began in a baseball field in Pendelton, Oregon and was touted as,

a frontier exhibition of picturesque pastimes, Indian and military spectacles, cowboy racing and bronco busting for the championship of the Northwest.

Well today, a hundred years later, it is every bit of that and more with over 750 contestants competing for nearly $400,000 in prize money.

.

In the early days, the excitement and unscripted showed thrilled spectators of all ages.  Both cowboys and cowgirls competed not on pre-arranged "cues", but with a suspenseful "let'er buck" attitude.

It was at the 1914 Pendleton Round-Up where a rowdy bronc buster, Enos Edward Canutt,  first got his nickname.  A newspaper caption misidentified this daring crowd pleaser as "Yakima" and the name stuck ever since.  Canutt quickly went on to become a four-time World Champion, an actor, and an innovative Hollywood stuntman.  It is actually Yakima who saves Miss Scarlet O'Hara from the flames and burning ruins of Atlanta -  not Rhett Butler.

Here is a series of my favorite Hollywood western stunts of all time.  Watch Yakima in action, as he doubles for John Wayne in Stagecoach, leaping from a stagecoach onto runaway horses, deftly maneuvering them under control. There's no sound but imagine galloping horses and a couple of gasps.

I know you are wondering where all of this "Yakima" is going... well, I used this vintage Miller Bros. 101 Ranch show poster featuring Yakima to inspire Double D Ranch's aptly titled Out of Control Tee.