BURWELL — Jess Helgoth knows what it feels like when the gates finally open.
After months of planning, long days at the fairgrounds, and all the little problems that come with putting on one of Nebraska’s most historic events, there is a moment when the work stops, and the people start coming in.
For Helgoth, president of Nebraska’s Big Rodeo and the Garfield County Frontier Fair Association, that moment brings one thing first.
A big sigh of relief.
Then he watches the stands fill. He walks through the crowd, talks with people he has never met, and asks what they like, what they would change, and what keeps bringing them back to Burwell.
Some are there for the first time.
Others have been coming for 70 years.
“It’s crazy how 95% of the people are just happy to be in Burwell,” Helgoth said. “They love coming to the Burwell Rodeo. There are some that it’s their first year, and some that have been doing it every year for 70 years.”
That is what 105 years looks like in Burwell.
It is generations of families sitting in the same arena. It is old wooden grandstands and white picket fences remembered long after they are gone. It is more than 100 volunteers doing everything from taking tickets to picking up trash. It is people who moved away, using part of their summer vacation to come home for rodeo week.
And when storms tear things apart, it is people showing up to put them back together.
“And it’s just the pride of Burwell,” Helgoth said. “Burwell has a lot of pride, regardless of what it is, whether it’s the high school, elementary school, the fair, rodeo, lake — anything that kind of has Burwell stamped to it. Burwell takes a lot of pride in it.”
That pride has been tested more than once in recent years.
Powerful windstorms caused extensive damage at the Garfield County Fairgrounds, including damage to barns and the historic grandstands. Now, more than $530,000 in FEMA funding has been approved to help the Garfield County Frontier Fair Association repair damaged barns at the rodeo grounds.
Helgoth did not hide his reaction when he learned the money had been approved.
“Shocked. Not gonna lie,” he said. “It was a blessing and both shocking.”
The association had already worked through a FEMA project involving the north grandstand, and Helgoth said there had been some doubt that more assistance was coming.
For a small community surrounded by farmers and ranchers who have their own bills to pay and challenges to face, the funding takes away some of the enormous burden that comes with rebuilding.
“You can’t go out and ask every farmer for several thousand dollars to help rebuild something,” Helgoth said. “And so it comes as a huge blessing. Very, very thankful, very grateful to FEMA and NEMA for coming through.”
The storms have forced the people behind Nebraska’s Big Rodeo to make difficult decisions about something that cannot simply be replaced with a construction project: history.
Part of the old north grandstand, dated to 1921, the year Nebraska’s Big Rodeo began. Helgoth said another section was completed around 1928.
The old wood had character. So did the cramped seating. Anyone who spent enough time in those stands probably had a sore back to prove it.
The new seating is safer and more comfortable, with more legroom, steel beams, and aluminum seats.
But comfort does not make losing history any easier.
“It’s hard to lose that history because that’s what Burwell was known for — wooden grandstands, picket fences,” Helgoth said.
Those white picket fences became part of the identity of Nebraska’s Big Rodeo.
Helgoth still remembers a story told when the rodeo was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 2022. A man from Kansas recalled how his family described their destination years ago.
“We’re going to the rodeo in Burwell, where the white picket fences are.”
That was Burwell.
No lengthy explanation was needed.
Just the rodeo with the white picket fences.
One part of that history Helgoth is especially determined to protect is the old entrance arches along the highway, which he said remain on Nebraska’s historical registry.
“We’ll keep them arches alive as long as we can and rebuild them if we have to,” Helgoth said, “so we can preserve some of that 1921 feel.”
His own connection to 1921 is personal.
Helgoth has been involved with the organization for 19 years and is in his seventh year as president. His great-great-grandfather, Donner, was one of the founding fathers of Nebraska’s Big Rodeo.
For Helgoth, the rodeo is not something he simply took charge of. It is a family tradition that began more than a century before him.
He is now one of the people responsible for carrying it forward.
That responsibility became particularly clear after straight-line winds damaged the west grandstands. In the aftermath, people came from Burwell and surrounding communities to help clean up and make sure the rodeo could continue.
Some bought bricks to help financially. Some showed up to work. Vendors who had been coming for years arrived to help clean up after the storms.
“The Burwell Rodeo has touched so many people in so many different ways,” Helgoth said.
For many who grew up in Burwell and eventually moved away, rodeo week remains homecoming week.
“A lot of them, their vacation, part of their summer vacation, is coming back to the Burwell Rodeo,” Helgoth said.
That sense of ownership extends well beyond Burwell.
The Garfield County Frontier Fair Association has 15 board members, but Helgoth estimates it takes more than 100 volunteers to put on the fair and rodeo. They come from Burwell, Ord, Ericson, Comstock, Sargent, Taylor, and other surrounding communities.
Some jobs are more glamorous than others.
The local wrestling club, for example, helps pick up trash in exchange for a donation that can help send wrestlers to camps.
“There’s hardly anybody who gets paid,” Helgoth said. “We have some volunteers who do a lot of the dirty jobs.”
It takes all of them.
“It’s just what makes Burwell,” Helgoth said. “It’s what makes Burwell. Volunteerism, the community members who care about Burwell.”
Helgoth speaks about that community from experience.
He left Burwell for a few years. Eventually, he came back.
“My wife and I are so glad we chose to come back and raise our kids here just because of the community and the people in the community,” Helgoth said. “It’s just a loving community, and people care about the fair and the rodeo. It’s what makes this thing go.”
For all the history surrounding Nebraska’s Big Rodeo, nobody involved appears interested in turning the place into a museum.
There are still bulls to ride.
And this year, some very good ones.
A new Wednesday night event will bring the Larry the Cable Guy Git-R-Done PRCA Xtreme Bulls to Burwell. The event is being presented with the involvement of Larry the Cable Guy, Warren White, and the Burwell Livestock Market, with bull riders competing for a $30,000 purse.
Helgoth wants to make one thing clear: These are not just a few guys climbing onto bulls behind the local sale barn.
“We’re talking these guys you see on TV,” he said. “These just aren’t your little bull ridings around these small towns. We’re talking PRCA event.”
Wednesday night will also feature chuckwagon races, wild horse races, the Dinner Bell Derby, rodeo entertainment, and motorcycle performers.
And Larry the Cable Guy himself is expected to be there.
Helgoth, an admitted bull-riding fan, is looking forward to seeing him again.
“You get a celebrity like him involved in Nebraska’s Big Rodeo, it’s just huge,” Helgoth said.
His advice for anyone concerned about the event falling on a weeknight was equally straightforward.
“Maybe call in sick on Thursday and take a vacation day or whatever,” Helgoth joked. “But you’re going to have a good time in Burwell, Nebraska, on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday night. Regardless of which night you come, you’re going to have a good night.”
And with Larry the Cable Guy involved?
“You never know what’s going to happen with him,” Helgoth said.
The star power will continue later in the week. Nebraska volleyball legend and Olympic gold medalist Jordan Larson will serve as grand marshal and is expected to be in Burwell on Friday and Saturday.
Helgoth proudly called Larson the “best female athlete to ever live in the state of Nebraska” and credited former Nebraska volleyball coach John Cook with a little help in making it happen.
The names are big. So is the history.
Nebraska’s Big Rodeo was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 2022, just over a century after its beginning in 1921.
For Helgoth, that recognition belonged to more than the board members who happened to be serving at the time.
It belonged to the community. It belonged to generations of volunteers. It belonged to the people who built the grandstands, put up the fences, brought in livestock, worked behind the scenes, and kept the event alive long enough to see its name placed among rodeo’s most honored.
“It meant a ton to all of us board members at the time, to the community,” Helgoth said. “The community was recognized just as much.”
He believes there is a reason Burwell earned that honor.
“There is no other show like Burwell,” he said.
That is a bold thing to say.
It is also difficult to argue with when thousands of people descend on a small Nebraska community each summer to watch cowboys compete in an arena that has been doing this since Warren G. Harding was president.
There have been storms along the way.
Wooden grandstands have been lost. Buildings have been damaged. The cost of keeping a century-old tradition alive has continued to climb.
But the arches still stand.
The volunteers still show up.
People still plan their vacations around coming home.
And soon, Helgoth will once again stand inside the fairgrounds as the gates open and people begin filing into the historic arena.
Some will be there for the first time.
Some may have memories of the white picket fences.
Some have been coming for most of their lives.
Helgoth will walk through the crowd, introduce himself to strangers, and enjoy the sight of full grandstands.
Then, once again, Burwell will put on a show.
“As long as we can keep getting big crowds and entertainers and cowboys to come to Burwell,” Helgoth said, “then we’re going to keep this thing going another 105 years.”
