How Gillette landed the rodeo

Diane Shober hadn’t been on the job long as Cam-plex marketing director when the chairman of the Campbell County Public Land Board began to push the group to think beyond the run-of-the-mill events that so far had defined Cam-plex. “We were getting nowhere and the public didn’t think Cam-plex was worth a damn,” said Jim Anderson, who was chairman of the land board, which governs Cam-plex. “At one board meeting I said, ‘Look, let’s get this straight. You’ve got to get a national event that is going to get this place on the map.’” Some different ideas were tossed around, from RV rallies, to the National College Finals Rodeo. And somehow — neither Anderson nor Shober remember whose idea it was — the idea of the National High School Finals Rodeo came up. t wasn’t long before Shober and Rex Brown, then assistant marketing director at Cam-plex, were in Denver, dropping by the NHSFR office and asking for the specifications to be a host site. They headed back to Gillette with five long pages of criteria. Brown drove home and Shober read the specifications to her, noting those things that already existed at Cam-plex — like the rodeo arena and grandstands at Morningside Park — and circling those things they did not — like stalls for 1,400 horses. Despite the number of circles, the two began to have a glimmer of hope. This was possible. This could be done...more