Every July the Oakley Rodeo attracts hundreds of professional contestants and thousands of spectators to a four-day event in Summit County.
Ernie’s Rodeo wasn’t anything like that. It was for amateurs only, held in a makeshift arena near Kimball Junction, usually spur of the moment. Some county folks called it “Park City’s Hippie Rodeo.”
Everyone knew Ernie Scow as the Bread Man. In the early 1960s he bought the Wonder Bread distributorship for Wasatch and Summit counties and, for the next 35 years, his bread truck was a de facto welcome wagon.
“Kids knew him – they’d hang on the back of his truck and he’d toss them Twinkies or cupcakes,” his friend Lew Sadleir told the Park Record in 2000.
In 1975 Ernie bought a few acres of horse property on the north side of I-80 to give his kids a place to ride. A year later he launched the first of his now-legendary rodeos. He would rustle up some “stock” from a local rancher and go from there.
“Ernie and his crew made it up as they went along. They would be only a few hours away from putting on a rodeo and they wouldn’t have livestock, chutes, or an arena,” Park Record columnist Jay Meehan wrote in 2003. “The arena and chutes that they threw together had the strength-to-weight ratios of a china shop. Animals mixed freely with spectators – who mixed more than freely with each other. It was all part of Ernie’s alchemy. The Bread Man delivered!”
Credit: Photo by David Hampshire and courtesy of Bonnie Park.
The closest that Ernie’s Rodeos came to respectability occurred in May 1979 when Park City hosted a convention of the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA). “The schemers at the Park City Chamber of Commerce and Utah Travel Council [came up] with a unique participatory experience for the visiting delegates,” Meehan wrote in 1990.
The key word here is “participatory.” The visiting “cowfolk” were organized into competing teams and practices were held before the rodeo. Meehan was told the team representing Hawaii showed up for practice in Hawaiian shirts, white pants, and flip-flops.
“Naturally … the Hawaiians emerged victorious,” Meehan wrote. Among those attending the awards ceremony was Utah Gov. Scott Matheson.
By June 1980 Ernie’s Rodeos were being billed as Bar Wars, a contest between teams representing Park City’s various drinking establishments. At that time Bonnie Bedford (now Bonnie Park) worked for the Chamber of Commerce, which also fielded a team.
Bonnie told me she had no plans to compete until another member of the Chamber team got cold feet and, well, you could say she got roped into it. She fortified herself with a shot of Jack Daniel’s, covered her bare legs with scrubs borrowed from local veterinarian Buzz Marden and entered the women’s calf-riding competition.
Unfortunately, the “calves” that were supposed to weigh “only” 500 pounds were more like 800. “They were young bulls,” said Ernie’s wife Joanne, affectionately known as The General. As about 500 people watched from the stands, Bonnie burst out of the chute smiling but ended up biting the dust. Nevertheless, she stayed on long enough to win first prize.
Credit: Photos by David Hampshire and courtesy of Bonnie Park.
That day volunteer rodeo clown Wayne “Put Put” Putman came perilously close to being punctured by a rampaging bull. Fortunately, the animal’s horn lodged not in Put Put’s ample midriff but in an inner tube he had donned for the occasion. “If he hadn’t had that inner tube around him, he would have been dead,” The General said.
Ernie held his last rodeo in 1984. By 1985 demolition derbies had become the main attraction at Ernie’s. The one common denominator was that people would still party ’til the cows came home. Ernie also used his arena for fundraisers and was a faithful supporter of many local organizations.
In 2000 the Scows sold the property to Mike Cornu, owner of the adjacent Red Barn Nursery. Ernie died in 2003.
“I was always in awe of Ernie’s stamina, love of people and ability to organize a great party,” Kathy Whalen Jones recalled in a letter to the editor. “While most young gals’ prince charming is young, handsome and riding a white horse, mine was a middle-aged squeeze-stealing sweetheart in a rusty bread truck.”
Main Street walking tours and Glenwood Cemetery tours led by the Park City Museum begin on June 26 and June 27, respectively. Sign up for the Main Street tours by calling or visiting the Museum’s front desk. Sign up for the Glenwood tours on parkcityhistory.org.