What Miles City is known for

Miles City is a Montana town of 8,354 people at the 2020 census, known for the World Famous Bucking Horse Sale. The sale now runs four days over the third weekend of May, with a stock auction, a rodeo, wild horse races, concerts and a Main Street parade, and draws about 20,000 visitors a year.

A fort built after the Little Bighorn

The Lakota were pushing the Crow west, and the Crow often allied with the US Army and served as its scouts. On June 25, 1876, the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho defeated Custer’s 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn. That August, Colonel Nelson A. Miles and the 5th Infantry established Fort Keogh, a base for patrols to stop the Lakota and Cheyenne who fought there from escaping to Canada and to help force the region’s remaining Native nations onto reservations. In 1877 traders evicted from the fort’s grounds resettled east of the Tongue River Cantonment, and Miles City began.

Cattle, a hard winter, then horses

Through the 1880s Texas cattle were driven to the Miles City area to fatten on free grass before shipping by rail to Chicago. The winter of 1886 to 1887 killed tens of thousands of cattle and pushed ranchers toward horses, which survived prairie winters better. In World War One Fort Keogh became a major Army remount station, and Miles City billed itself as the world’s largest horse market.

"Let's buck them"

The Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame dates the start to 1950, when Les Boe and his son-in-law Bob Pauley bought steers and unbroken horses from Harvey Lester of Ekalaka; the sale’s own history places the whole origin in 1951. By the sale’s account, Boe asked Pauley what to do with the horses, and Pauley answered, “Let’s buck them.” The impromptu sale ran about three days and proved popular enough to become an annual event, official from 1951. Pauley became its driving force, once trailing around 300 horses into town, and by 1952 stock contractors such as Alice Greenough and Leo Cremer were buying there.

A show with costs

The sale has been fragile. Horse numbers fell from about 400 head to about 80 by 2012, after 2006 federal legislation cut funding for horse slaughter plant inspections, and the board lost about $50,000 on the 2011 event. The event is nicknamed Cowboy Mardi Gras, and the city closes downtown blocks for street celebration; in 2011 National Geographic filmed police handling bar fights, drunken behavior and arrests. The sale joined the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2024. Its own history starts with Boe and Pauley; the town’s starts with a fort built to help force the region’s remaining Native nations onto reservations.