ProRodeo Sports News - June 23, 2022

COMMITTEE

PRCA ProRodeo file photo

Burwell, Neb. A rodeo to remember

BY JOLEE JORDAN Special to ProRodeo Sports News I t’s been 101 years since the first edition of Nebraska’s Big Rodeo (NBR), the pride and joy of the tiny community of Burwell. From humble beginnings, using the spectators’ cars to form the arena fence, to the days when the town swelled with 20,000 daily spectators arriving by train

grandstands were listed on Nebraska’s Historic Register and easily identifiable in photos with their tall wooden pillars. Clean up and rebuilding has been slow, but there are no plans to cancel the 101st NBR slated for July 27-30. “We’re such a close-knit community,” Helgoth said. “We will rebuild bigger and better.” Service to the rodeo has been a generational legacy for years in Burwell. Helgoth’s great grandfather was one of the rodeo’s founders and he estimates at least three-quarters of the current NBR Board grew up in Burwell. “If you’re originally from here . . . people from here, they know,” Helgoth said. “It means a lot to our community.” NBR hopes to create a positive from the destruction, incorporating the long-held goal of creating a NBR museum to preserve the rodeo’s history into rebuilding efforts. “We started demolition last week and we couldn’t believe what we uncovered,” Helgoth said. “There was paint on the wood probably from the 1920s.” As for the induction ceremonies, to be held just a couple of weeks prior to the rodeo, Helgoth says most of their 15-member Board will be in attendance as well as past Board members. “Guys who’ve played a big role here, some of our volunteers…Burwell will be well represented in Colorado Springs.”

from Lincoln and Omaha to today’s modern event, Nebraska’s Big Rodeo has hosted many of ProRodeo’s champions inside its legendary huge arena. In 2022, NBR joins 31 other ProRodeo committees as members of the ProRodeo Hall of Fame. “It means a lot to our small community,” Jess Helgoth, President of the Board of Directors, said. “Our rodeo is what put Burwell on the map one hundred years ago.” Today, Burwell is home to 1,200 people, yet is still able to put on a top notch, four performance rodeo each July, filling to their 4,600 nightly capacity. As NBR celebrates its biggest accomplishment going into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, it has also been dealt one of its toughest blows in 2022, when the historic grandstands were destroyed by a major windstorm on May 12. As much part of the NBR identity as anything, the 100-year-old main

ProRodeo.com PRORODEO HALL OF FAME 36 ProRodeo Sports News 6/24/2022