Seven Realtors Ride the Horsiest Parade, Ellensburg

The Ellensburg Rodeo has run every Labor Day weekend since 1923, when ranchers, farmers, and civic boosters scraped together $10,000 to buy 18 acres of fairground land and build an arena in a single volunteer workday. By the mid-1970s it had grown into one of the premier events on the professional circuit. This brochure appears to date from 1976: the interior fact sheet quotes 1975 population figures (13,806 for Ellensburg) and the 1976 tax levy as current data points, and it still refers to Central Washington State College — renamed Central Washington University in 1977. The Saturday parade still opens the rodeo weekend and draws hundreds of horses through downtown.

The back panel — "Some Facts About Ellensburg" — is a relocation pitch in disguise. It covers county geography, the tax rate, retail sales growth (roughly $35 million in 1971 to nearly $66 million in 1975), and the Kittitas Irrigation Project (begun 1870, delivering water since 1933 across 60,000 acres). The audience was presumably prospective buyers and investors, persuaded that a fast-growing college town with deep agricultural roots was a sound bet.

The town's compressed history occupies one interior column. John Alden Shoudy and his wife Mary Ellen bought the "Robber's Roost" trading post in 1871 and platted an 80-acre townsite in 1875, naming it for Mary Ellen — "Ellen's Burg" contracted over time into Ellensburg (the final -h dropped in 1894 under U.S. Postal Service standardization). The 1889 fire destroyed the new business district and around 200 homes; the town rebuilt and eventually drew the Northern Pacific Railroad through to Puget Sound.

The seven sponsoring firms — Larry Brown Realty, Charlton Realty, Heartland Realtors, Mundy Real Estate, Stockdale-Young-Wight, Thayer Realty, and Webster Real Estate — are listed in two neat columns on the front panel, each with a P.O. box and a 509 area-code phone number. None of the seven appears to survive under the same name today.