1949
RODEO
COURT
As this ad in the July 28, 1949 Wallowa County Chieftain notes, the 1949 Chief Joseph Days celebration ran for three days. It
included a carnival and speedboat races, as well as the rodeo.
constructed arena. Temperatures were
torrid for Wallowa County — highs in
the 90’s. A total of 82 cowboys entered
the contests, including Eddie Acreage,
who had just won the all-around title at
the prestigious Calgary Stampede. Mr.
Acreage rode away with the all-around
cowboy title at Chief Joseph Days as
well. “We had some really good riders
at those early rodeos,” Ruby Zollman
said.
“Back in those days,” said Mari-
an’s husband, rancher Mack Birkmaier,
“many of the cowboys in the rodeo
were pretty local. And a lot of them
worked on ranches. A few came from
Lewiston or Walla Walla, but that was
a long way to haul a horse. To have a
cowboy from so far out of the area as
Acreage was kind of unusual.” Mack
also remembers that the bulls were all
Brahma bulls. “They weren’t as mean
as those bulls today,” he said. “They
weren’t out to get you.”
Seventy years ago, additional attrac-
tions of Chief Joseph Days included
speedboat races on Wallowa Lake for
boats with 22 hp, 33 hp and 50 hp out-
board motors. Midwest Shows Carni-
val provided extra entertainment for
C10 | Chief Joseph Days 2019
rodeo-goers, along with the Nez Perce
Indian band which was organized and
conducted by celebrated actor and local
rancher Walter Brennan. Although the
Nez Perce and other Native American
presence was substantial, Marian Birk-
maier recalled that Indians all had to sit
in the northeast section of the stands,
which faced into the afternoon sun.
A national attention-getter for the
1949 rodeo was the presence of Mrs.
Juanita O’Connell of Hollywood, Cal-
ifornia. Mrs. O’Connell was a winning
contestant on the very popular Mutual
Broadcasting radio program “Queen
for a Day.” That program, hosted by
Jack Bailey, brought women who had
endured fi nancial and emotional hard
times, and a variety of signifi cant trau-
mas or losses onto the air. Each contes-
tant was asked what she needed most.
The requests ranged from medical care
for a polio-stricken child, to a new
washing machine, and often found the
contestants sobbing as they described
their needs. One of Mrs. O’Connell’s
rewards for her winning plea was to
be the “Queen for a Day” at the 1949
rodeo, which she did on Friday, July 29,
replacing Queen Beverly Oliver. The
rodeo court rode their horses out to the
Joseph Airport to welcome O’Connell,
Zollman recalled. But, Birkmaier said,
instead of galloping around the arena
on horseback, O’Connell was driven
sedately around the rodeo grounds in a
buggy, waving to the crowd. Her tour
as rodeo queen for a day also included
a ride in a racing speedboat on the
lake. “She was a really nice, nice, quiet
lady,” Zollman said.
The people of the community and
the Chamber of Commerce have always
rallied around this rodeo, Zollman said.
“People would work at the mill all day
and then right after work they would go
to the rodeo grounds and they would
build, build, build. The town was really
behind the rodeo. Chief Joseph Days
was something for the community to
support, and it put Joseph on the map.
The cowboys were good. The livestock
was good. It was a good, fast rodeo,”
she said. “It was much better than the
Pendleton Roundup.”
“The rodeo, and the things that the
Rodeo Court do, are so much better
now,” Marian Birkmaier said. “But we
were there at the beginning. We had a
good time.”