True West Towns
Pendleton, Oregon

This “Real West” town kicks up its bootheels for rowdy rodeo.

 

Pendleton, Oregon, has come a long way since it was a dusty outpost on the Oregon Trail in the 1850s, but it holds tight to the reins of its Western heritage.

The eastern Oregon town 200 miles from Portland claims the title of “the Real West.” And why not? Pendleton Woolen Mills has been weaving its colorful, virgin wool blankets in town since 1909. The company’s distinctive blanket designs honor Nez Perce Chief Joseph, President Harding and a series of national parks. Pendleton is a sixth-generation, privately held company founded in 1863 by Thomas Kay, an English master weaver. 

 

 

In the early 20th century, the town of Pendleton put itself on the map when it launched the Pendleton Round-Up, a rodeo with the slogan “Let’ er Buck.”

The first Round-Up was described in 1910 by the Eastern Oregonian newspaper as a “frontier exhibition of picturesque pastimes, Indian and military spectacles and cowboy racing and bronco busting for the championship of the Northwest.” The rodeo and pageant are still going strong 115 years later.

 

 

 

During the Round-Up, the Confed-erated Tribes of the Umatilla Indians come to Pendleton to camp in hundreds of teepees. They also perform in the Happy Canyon Pageant, depicting their way of life, the journey of Lewis and Clark and the arrival of pioneers on the Oregon Trail.  “Everyone just knows the second week of September it’s Round-Up season,” said Justin Waldron, Travel Pendleton director. “The town grows from about 17,000 to over 70,000 for the week. It’s massive. There’s just a spirit here and it’s so much fun.” Waldron is partial to the Round-Up since his parents met in Pendleton during the annual rodeo.

 

 

The Pendleton Round-Up, he says, highlights “the heritage of Western culture, design and life. That’s what Pendleton is. It’s the lifestyle like the 1860s, 1880s and 1890s.” Other vestiges of the old West in Pendleton have included the Severe Brothers Saddlery, Hamley & Co., Rainbow Cafe and Pendleton Underground tours.

The Severe Brothers, saddlemakers Duff and Bill, hosted rodeo cowboys for a half century during the Round-Up in a bunkhouse above their now closed shop. It was called Hotel de Cowpunch. The only rule was cowboys had to leave behind a signed photograph of themselves pinned on the wall. Hamley & Co., established in 1883, promotes its business as “Purveyors of Fine Saddles, Fine Food and Fine Whiskey.” It includes a Western store with clothing, hats, boots, saddles, blankets and tack. The Hamley Cafe and Wine Bar is next door, adjacent to the Hamley Steakhouse and Saloon. 

 

 

Pendleton’s Rainbow Cafe has been operating in the same brick building since 1883 and is arguably the oldest tavern in Oregon.

“You cannot not go to the Rainbow,” Waldron said of the cowboy bar.

The back bar features rainbow neon, and the place is full of Round-Up memorabilia and Pendleton ephemera going back a century. The ‘Bow, as it’s known, serves breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Pendleton’s Underground Tours lead visitors through the tunnels and basement rooms built below its historic downtown buildings. It includes the Shamrock Card Room, Hop Sing’s Laundry, Empire Meat Market, a Duck Pin Bowling Alley, a jail and opium den. Visitors climb 31 stairs to view the “Cozy Rooms” in one of Pendleton’s 18 bordellos. There they learn the story of the town’s foremost madam — Stella Darby (1902-77). She was known as an astute businesswoman who took good care of her working girls and provided bookkeeping and financial advice to her love-starved patrons. Darby is memorialized with a life-sized bronze statue on South Main Street between Dorion and Emigrant avenues. If all that isn’t enough, Pendleton also is home to the Pendleton Center for the Arts in a 1916 Carnegie Library building. Plus, the Wildhorse Resort and Casino and Ta’mastslikt Cultural Institute are on the nearby reservation of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indians.