Kansas’ Biggest Rodeo

Kansas’ Biggest Rodeo has always been unique. Many factors have come together to make it a successful rodeo, and seventy-five years of rodeo hold lots of memories and traditions for rodeo-goers to the Phillipsburg rodeo. The rodeo started months before the stock market crash of 1929. The Great Depression and the Dirty Thirties had hit north central Kansas, but bad times didn’t appear to affect the rodeo’s success. If anything, people wanted to forget their troubles for a while and the rodeo was a good place to do that. Attendance at the first rodeo in 1929 was 4,000, and three years later, attendance had grown to 20,000. During the worst times of the Dust Bowl, in 1935, the Sunday afternoon attendance smashed all records and 17,000 programs were printed and used.
The rodeo was first held in town at Morse Park. After its highly successful first year, it was moved to Dr. Buchner’s farm north of Phillipsburg, its present location. In 1930, fences were made of hog wire, cross ties, cable, bridge planks, anything the committee could scrounge up. The arena started out being nearly five acres in size, and parked cars were used for fencing. The committee borrowed 2 x 12’s from the lumberyard and those were used as seating. Snow fence was borrowed from the state and stretched above the bleachers as shade from the sun. Dr. John Buchner sold the farm to Everett DesJardins in 1943, and in 1949, the Phillipsburg Rodeo Association bought the pasture from DesJardins. In 1949, the rodeo grounds boasted two grandstands – the original one on the west side, and a second grandstand on the northwest corner of the arena. In May of 1950, a tornado came through and destroyed the original grandstand. The committee had it rebuilt by rodeo time of that year.