This is not our first rodeo.
It is our 82nd.
We speak of the annual Helldorado Days rodeo, parade and festival staged each spring in Las Vegas. In a city when any person, place or thing dating to the 1930s requires special care and attention, Helldorado is dusting itself off and moving to the Strip.
Set for May 13-15, Helldorado Days is entering a new era with a muscular new partner — Professional Bull Riders — and a grand new stage — Las Vegas Village across the Strip from Luxor and Mandalay Bay.
Standing tall in the saddle as the world’s premier bull-riding organization, PBR has made two bold moves to the Strip in the past nine months. The organization moved its PBR Finals to T-Mobile Arena for its November competition after spending 16 years at the Thomas & Mack Center.
Helldorado Days could certainly use the boost PBR supplies. The event had been largely out of mind, if not out of site (as it were), over the past two years as the rodeo was at the open parking lot just east of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.
By then, Helldorado Days had become something of a relic of a bygone time. The event is certainly steeped in history. The rodeo, parade and beauty pageant were launched in 1934 as a way to provide entertainment and activities for the new residents and visitors to Boulder City as a result of the construction of Hoover Dam.
After its first year, Elks Lodge No. 1468 famously seized the event, joined by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and the new businesses sprouting up in the valley’s new growth, and ever since, Helldorado Days has been a fun annual event for locals.
“This has been going on in Las Vegas since 1934, and that reason alone is enough to want to see it continue and grow,” said Sean Gleason, CEO of PBR. “But for me, it’s not just about the city of Las Vegas, it’s about the lifestyle in general. I see a lot of great, historic, western celebrations — not about rodeo — that have been dying in the West and wherever else they have had them.”
Fueled by the PBR events and the annual National Finals Rodeo, Las Vegas still has that Old West swagger. But a new generation of Las Vegans and tourists had no idea what Helldorado — a reference to tough times during Nevada’s early mining days — was or what it meant.
“It was the wild, wild west, before casinos ever got here. When you understand that heritage and history, you appreciate it,” Gleason said. “But I’ve met a lot of people in town who don’t know what Helldorado is, let alone the history dating to the 1930s.”
Tourism officials also extol Helldorado’s civic and historic relevance.
“For those who have lived in Las Vegas for many years, there is a fondness for Helldorado. More recently, the event has provided another way for Las Vegas to reacquaint with its western roots,” Las Vegas Events spokesman Michael Mack said in a statement. “The move to the Las Vegas Village and the partnership with the PBR ... have provided a new energy to the event.”
Thus, PBR worked with Centennial Committee and Elks Lodge to license the Helldorado name and stage the event in this grandiose forum. A new name sponsor — Monster Energy drink — has been recruited, but the country flair remains.
The annual Helldorado Days Parade returns to downtown, beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday and running along Fourth Street from Gass to Ogden avenues. The activity at the Village is highlighted by the Last Cowboy Standing Rodeo, and the music lineup features Moe Bandy, T.G. Sheppard and Kelly Lang. Spread across the 15 acres of festival space are carnival-style games, a food court, a saloon, Native American teepees and dance performances, a temporary saloon and tavern, all leading to the Helldorado Days Arena (for a full schedule of events and ticket pricing, go to elkshelldorado.com).
At age 82, the event still has room to grow.
“I see us outgrowing this space; maybe we’ll end up on the (Las Vegas) Festival Grounds or another location,” Gleason said. “Basically, we’re building this out of a parking lot, so we can build it anywhere. We’re hoping for a great response and, in a year or two, moving it to a new location.”
It’s only fitting. If Helldorado has proven to be anything, it is a beacon of Western expansion.
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