The crowds trickled in as the doors opened for the 101st National Western Stock Show & Rodeo on Saturday.
By early afternoon, it had turned into a flood of fans on the 100-acre complex.
Before the show closes on Jan. 21, an expected crowd of more than 700,000 will file past 375 vendors, enjoy some of the 700 rodeo competitors or look upon at least some of more than 15,000 head of livestock, as well as displays of antique tractors, performing dogs and sheep-shearing contests.
In a white cowboy hat, Bill Lafreniere of Milliken was one of the first in the door. He made it 50 feet from the gate before flipping open his phone to make a call to boast at 9:02 a.m.
“We were here when the doors opened,” he told his daughter on the other end, giddiness in his manly voice.
Milliken hadn’t planned such a grand entrance. He and his wife came with another couple, transplants to Loveland from New Hampshire who had never experienced the show.
“She’s the leader of the group,” Lafreniere said, smiling and nodding to friend Sharon Steinman. “If it’d been left up to me, we wouldn’t have made it until 11 or 12.”
Cash registers were ringing up sales almost as soon as David Knowling pulled down the white curtain on the stock show souvenir booth full of countless goods, from T-shirts to shot glasses.
The rest of the year Knowling is the buyer for the Colorado History Museum gift shop, and the state’s cowboy heritage is big business, he said.
“It’s huge,” he said. “People take a lot of pride in Colorado’s history, and a lot of those people take a lot of pride in the National Western Stock Show.”
The stand’s manager, Marlina Roybal, wouldn’t quote a sales figure, but said last year’s sales were double those of the year before, so her 15 employees were bracing for banner business again this year.
“Merchandise will just fly out of here for the next two weeks,” she said.
Casey Calloway, 16, of Colorado Springs talked briefly over the whir of a massive blow dryer she used to groom her heifer. The animal had been hers since it was a newborn calf, and now her hard work was about to be judged.
“I can’t talk about it,” she said. “I’m too nervous.”
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-523-7786 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
