In 1950 Les Boe, who ran the Miles City livestock sale yard, and his son-in-law Bob Pauley went down to Ekalaka to buy yearling steers from a rancher known as Heavy Lester, and Lester threw in some thirty-five head of unbroken horses. Boe had no idea what to do with them. He and Pauley found more and held a sale of bucking stock, which ran three days and went well enough that in May 1951 a full-page advertisement in the Miles City Daily Star announced the first annual Bucking Horse Sale, two days at the Eastern Montana Fairgrounds. It has been held every May since, whatever the weather.
The point was business. Rodeo stock contractors came from across the United States and Canada to buy, and riding jobs were open to anyone willing to get on a horse in front of the buyers. Miles City, a cow and horse town since the days of the Fort Keogh remount depot, was the natural place for it. The wild range horses that filled the early sales are long gone; most contractors now breed and raise their own, and many of the broncs and bulls consigned today were bred to buck, some of them veterans of the National Finals.
It has grown into the town's biggest weekend, the third full weekend in May: a trade show and bucking bull sale on Friday, match bronc riding, wild horse races and some of the last pari-mutuel racing in Montana at the fairgrounds, a parade down Main Street on Saturday morning, cowboy church on Sunday. Motels fill for a hundred miles around and the town more than doubles. Book early.
The closest stops worth working into your route