story by Siri Stevens
The North Park Never Summer Rodeo has been a mainstay in Walden, Colorado, for more than 75 years. “It’s a weeklong event that involves the whole town,” said Chris Niederhauser, the president of the committee. Chris has been involved in the rodeo since the mid 90s. “The football team rakes the barrels. More than 50 folks show up on Monday and help us for a week, it’s great.” Held the weekend after Father’s Day, the event was the first CPRA rodeo of the season this year due to state restrictions. “July 10 they start haying, feeding cows in October, and it’s all cyclical – but come rodeo week, everything shuts down and that’s what we do. “After March, it didn’t seem like we were going have a rodeo – how do you go after a restaurant that’s been closed? So we didn’t charge a gate and we put hand sanitizing stations everywhere.”
Walden is home to 600 folks, with 8 in the graduating class; there are only 1,400 people in the whole county,. “The CPRA is a pretty special association. They’ve got great contestants, and the watching is amazing. They came to play – they show up here every year and happy to be here. Jerry Berentis brings great bucking stock and hopefully we’ll bring some of those college kids out here next year on their way to the CNFR. At the end of the day it’s show business. I look at it three ways – the animals and the people that come to compete. But beyond that it’s the town that gets behind it and shows up.” The rodeo was supported by both the county and sheriff. “We visited about it and there was no fanfare involved just to get the contestants there. It turned out that social distancing happened by the pickups rolling in and parking far enough apart. There are no Covid cases up here – we are insulated.” We asked for donations at the gate – never charged. The county commissioner asked for donations on Saturday and the retired sheriff manned the gate on Sunday.”
If it wasn’t for the cooperation of the community and the local officials, we couldn’t have had this rodeo. Our sponsors were behind us all the way.” said Matt Shuler, publisher of the weekly paper, the Jackson County Star. Matt also serves as the rodeo committee secretary; he’s the president of school board and is the only barber in the county. “We are pretty resilient, we were put on the top ten endangered communities in America in 1990, but we’re still around.”
“I like going to Walden – It’s like a family reunion every year,” said Jerry Berentis, who runs Berentis Rodeo Company and has for 39 years. “I think we’ve been going to Walden for 25 years or more.”
The weather was perfect, unlike the rodeo last year. “The 2019 rodeo wasn’t’ that great – we had 8 inches of snow on Friday during the Junior Rodeo.”
