Days packed with Cowboy Culture

Elko/Nevada is a railroad town – founded 1868 during the building of the transcontinental railroad – and gold mining town, or, rather it’s the headquarters of mining operations and miners. Also, Elko forms the heart of Northern Nevada's cowboy country and is a ranching community, beautifully framed by the jagged Ruby Mountains. With about 20,000 people it is one of the largest cities in Nevada, after the Las Vegas and the Reno/Sparks Metro Areas and the state capital, Carson City. We’ve been visiting Elko last year on a group fam tour and were surprised by the high-class museums: the Northeastern Nevada Museum, the California Trail Interpretive Center and the Western Folklife Center (the heart and soul of the Cowboy Poetry Gathering). Last year they let us catch a glimpse of how the new Cowboy Arts and Gear Museum (see pic below) will look like and now it celebrated its grand opening and is well worth visiting.

The annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko – 2018 was the 34th Gathering – is the original, the authentic one, the „Grand Daddy of 'em All“ - like they call the Cheyenne Frontier Days for rodeo. The event started 33 years ago, in 1985, as a place where western ranchers and cowboys could gather to share poems. Waddie Mitchell and Hal Cannon organized the first gathering, on a rather small scale then. In the meantime it has become a nationally renowned event which showcases poets, musicians, bands, filmmakers, artists and craftsmen, professionals and amateurs. The audience (as well as the performers) consists of people from all over the U.S., with a focus on the western part, of course: Oregon, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, Arizona, Utah, California, and, of course, Nevada were well represented. Ranchers and cowboys, former rodeo cowboys, horsemen, breeders and trainers and many repeat visitors.

Stetson hats, Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots in mass quantities. What surprised us most, was 1. the diversity of the program, 2. the top-class performers, and, 3. the perfect organisation of the program. The motto of this 34th Gathering was „Basques & Buckaroos“, to pay homage to the large group of Basques which immigrated mostly in the 1950ies as sheep herders. „The Star“ – a famous Basque hotel and restaurant, which opened in 1910 –, and other buildings and traditions are still vivid in town. We had the pleasure to enjoy a great meal, family-style, in The Star.


We experienced four full days of cowboy culture, including themed events, open mics, dance and poems and music of all kinds. Monday through Wednesday different workshops took place, like hat-making, rawhide braiding, dutch-oven cooking, cinch-making, singing and dance workshops as well as a ranch tour. We got a chance to take part at the full-day ranch tour, which was highly instructive. In a group of about 50 participants, we visited two different ranches (see pics of pastures) and during lunch we listened to presentations of two „boutique ranchers“, Sue Kennedy raising cows and chicken animal-friendly and organically, and Josh Bottari owning a sheep herd and producing Peccorino cheese.

The other days, Thursday to Saturday were packed: From about 9 am to late evening there were daytime shows & events, ticketed evening shows, concerts, readings, speeches (pic), midnight dances, craft demos, conversations about ranch life today, videos and film screenings, panel discussions, youth education programs, exhibitions and much more in different venues around town. Most took place in the large Convention/Conference Center and in the Western Folklife Center (WFC), the host of the event, about 5 min. driving time away from each other.



Cowboy poetry lies at the heart of the Gathering and some of its biggest names and rising stars, including the likes of Waddie Mitchell, Paul Zarzyski (both on pics above), Shadd Piehl (on pic below, standing), Terry Nash or the „grand old lady“ Yvonne Hollenbeck (pic below), converge in Elko each winter to recite their work. Though, there were not too many young (female) poets, there are a couple of really promising, good ones, one of them being 20+ years old Annie Mackenzie (on pic with Rodney Nelson from ND), who performed side by side with 88 years old Cal Lewis.

Cowboy poetry and music go hand in hand and the musicians who perform in Elko represent Country and Western Music in all its varieties. Legends like Ramblin' Jack Elliott or Mike Beck (left side pic), younger Andy Hedges or Adrian Buckaroogirl (first pic below), The Caleb Klauder Band, Wylie and the Old West (our favorite, on pic!), Celtic tunes from Canada (Cowboy Celtic) with a harp player (pic), old-time folk and black cowboy music heavily influenced by afroamerican blues (Dom Flemons, pic), Western swing, and, last, but not least, „Oldies but Goodies“ impersonated e.g. by Riders in the Sky (last pic below) or Pipp Gillette (TX), on the pic above with Waddie Mitchell (left) and Western singer/songwriter Michael M. Murphey (center). Especially the music scene was much more diverse than we assumed.

Same for the ethnicities: there were black and Native American performers, e.g. Henry Real Bird, a poet from the Crow Nation, and French-trained White Mountain Apache/Navajo executive chef Nephi Craig from Café Gozhóó in Arizona. He was promoting healthy native american cooking with a „back to the roots“ approach and not only gave a keynote speech but also a cooking demonstration:

To secure the future of cowboy poetry and music, cowboy culture is taught to highschool students in workshops. Also, they get a chance to perform on stage at Open Mic, in talent shows and with other projects. It was impressive, how good and enthusiastic some of them were!

Especially in the Pioneer Saloon at the WFC there were regularly improvised jam sessions taking place, plus dances at night in the G Thre Bar Theater there and in the Convention Center. Attendees dressed to the nines in Western wear also gathered at Western Mercantile to buy new "accessoires", books, CDs or jewelry. What a great and eye-opening event! We surely will be back ...