A front-end loader plucked metal gates from thick muck of mud, snow, ice, hay and manure in the National Western stockyards on a dreary Sunday afternoon, as the crowd receded and the show began to fold.
Jim Angell, the manager of yards, was upbeat as he fiddled with his pocketknife to unstick a frozen lock on the Livestock Exchange Building’s outside door.
“It’s been a good show, good crowd, good number of animals,” he said of the 101st National Western Stock Show, Rodeo & Horse Show, which started Jan. 6 and ended Sunday.
The show saw as many animals as any other year, he said.
“It’s the National Western, so people are going to be here,” Angell said.
This year’s show had 649,637 visitors, second only to last year’s 100th anniversary event, which drew 726,972.
Last year, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce estimated the 16-day show’s economic impact at about $84 million.
Lee Elliott of Newcastle, Wyo., hasn’t missed an opportunity to show cattle in the stockyards in decades. Few who are serious about the cattle business do, he said.
“This is the big one,” he said. “Everybody and their puppy come to Denver.”
For many, January in Colorado means a day at the stockyards – where 375 vendors and 15,000 head of livestock are on display.
“My mother buys us tickets for the final day every year; it’s a tradition,” said Lisa Kervitsky of Golden, a 25-year veteran of the show, along with her siblings. “This is Colorado. It snows.”
Kervitsky brought her own children Sunday.
“I’ve been here 11 years,” said 11-year-old Cole, who was joined by his 14-year-old sister, Morgan, another annual attendee.
Jim Lynch, a volunteer with Cheyenne Frontier Days, worked a booth pitching the summer event inside the Expo Hall on Sunday afternoon, as snow fell steadily just beyond the doors.
He reminisced about Frontier Days last July, when temperatures topped 100 degrees.
“These are hardened rodeo people,” he said of attendees of both shows. “They’ll come. But me, I’ll take this over the kind of heat we had last summer.”
Karon Rodriguez of Denver wasn’t as faithful to the show as she was to her 4-year-old son, Antonio, who had been talking about the show since Christmas, she said.
“Shhhhhhhh,” she said, nodding toward her son, preoccupied with the sight of a longhorn. “He thinks it’s just one day.”
The end of the show was just the beginning for Dominic Perry, building and grounds maintenance supervisor for the National Western.
Once the doors closed Sunday, his entire staff of 138 mobilized to clean up. They had no time to waste this year.
Snow and cold was a burden but manageable, he said. Heating bills will be 15 percent to 20 percent higher than normal, he said.
Five front-end loaders and eight dump trucks, as well as contractors called in to help, had moved roughly 60,000 cubic yards of snow and ice – or the equivalent of 60,000 pickup loads.
By comparison, the show produced 20,000 cubic yards of manure.
Over the weekend Perry was already making plans to clear the coliseum of 1,000 cubic yards of dirt used for the rodeo, because by Tuesday organizers of the Toyota Arenacross will start moving in fresh dirt for their motorcycle event next weekend.
“Every show has challenges; the snow and ice put a bite on this one,” Perry said behind the rodeo chutes. “But overall, I think we’ve put on another good show.”
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-964-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
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