Pretty Prairie Rodeo
PRETTY PRAIRIE, Kan. — Pretty Prairie and the Beutler family both have a long tradition of bringing top-notch rodeo performances to fans.
2024 marks the 87th year for Kansas Largest Night Rodeo, and the 95th year for the Beutler’s involvement in the rodeo industry. It also marks the 50th year the two entities have worked together to produce the legendary rodeo – even though there were differing variations of the Beutler business.
The Beutlers got their start in the rodeo business in 1929, when brothers Elra, Jake and Lynn Beutler trailed 10 horses to the Custer County Fair Rodeo in Clinton, Okla.
From there, they decided that they had a good thing going, and a longstanding career for family members was born.
While the Pretty Prairie rodeo was still in its relatively early years, the Pretty Prairie Booster Club contracted with the Beutler Brothers in 1940, and the two would continue to work together through 1946, with the exception of one year when the rodeo went on hiatus because of World War II.
Pretty Prairie and Beutler Brothers resumed their working relationship in 1952 until 1957. By that time, Elra had sold his shares in the company and partnered with Buster Morgan to form Beutler and Morgan Rodeo Producers.
Pretty Prairie worked with both Beutler Brothers and Beutler and Morgan in 1957, and would work solely with Beutler and Morgan for the following two years. Morgan would eventually sell out of the business and Elra’s son Jiggs would join and the company would reform as Beutler and Son – which would continue to provide livestock for Pretty Prairie
through 1965.
For the next three decades, Pretty Prairie would work with other livestock contractors, including Hoss Inman, Bernis Johnson and Fred Dorenkamp, before the Beutlers re-entered the picture.
The Booster Club entered a contract with what was then Beutler and Gaylord, a partnership between Jiggs’ son Bennie Beutler and E.K. Galyord II. Gaylord would leave the rodeo business in 2001, and Bennie’s son, Rhett became the partner, and the two remain familiar faces in Pretty Prairie to this day.
The rodeo wraps up Saturday night in Pretty Prairie. Rodeo tickets are sold out.
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