Fans beat hooves to Grover rodeo

By Darin McGregor, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 27, 2008 at 3 p.m.

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Darin McGregor / The Rocky

Professional team roper T.J. Fox pulls fiancee Amy Marick close and kisses her during a slow dance.

Darin McGregor / The Rocky

Whoops, hollers and the sounds of country music fill the air at the Saturday-night dance on a rodeo weekend in Grover. The tradition of the dance nearly matches that of the rodeo for young and old.

Darin McGregor / The Rocky

Longmont resident Brent Johnson enjoys a cold beer by the fire after the first day of the Earl Anderson Memorial Rodeo. The Weld County town of Grover quadruples in size during its rodeo weekends.

Darin McGregor / The Rocky

The band is long gone when cowboys pull out a guitar to make their own music after the Saturday-night dance during rodeo weekend.

Darin McGregor / The Rocky

A makeshift sign points the way to the Weld County town of Grover, home of a two-day Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association rodeo in one of the PRCA's smallest venues.

Photo by Darin McGregor

Barrel racer Kalena Parker charges toward the finish line after rounding the third barrel during Grover's Earl Anderson Memorial Rodeo. The rodeo started in 1923 with a bucking-horse contest.

"End of the world 9 miles. Grover 12 miles."

So reads a T-shirt hanging in the Grover Market Basket and Country Deli, the Weld County town's only business.

Located at the bend of County Road 120, in the shadow of the Pawnee Buttes, the small town of Grover, population 140, is not easy to find. But every Father's Day weekend for the past 85 years enough cowboys and rodeo fans have flocked there for the Earl Anderson Memorial Rodeo to more than quadruple the town's population.

The rodeo, one of the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association's smallest officially sanctioned events, was known as "Spud Rodeo" or simply as the "Grover Rodeo" when it started in 1923.

Back then it was just a gathering of neighbors who would bring the horses they thought no one could ride into Grover for a bucking contest under the town's water tower. Over the years the rodeo matured, and in 1929 a local stock contractor and cowboy named Earl Anderson began supplying the rough stock for the riding events.

For more than three decades he bankrolled the event. The rodeo was later named for Anderson when he died in 1960. After his death, his son Jack Anderson, now 77, took over and found new ways of funding the event. Today, Jack's son, Steve Anderson, 45, also plays a central role.

Father's Day weekend in Grover is about more than just a rodeo. It's about tradition. Families from throughout the region come every year for two days of old-fashioned fun that includes a parade, two PRCA rodeos, a barbecue, a pancake feed, a rodeo dance, kids' calf riding and a cowboy church service.

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