LET 'ER BUCK 



the county seal, but the county officers themselves, in a 

 commandeered wagon and under heavy mounted es- 

 cort departed quickly, and deposited their official 

 booty in the ''courthouse' ' in Pendleton. 



"Why didn't they recapture it?" Well, they say 

 because it was Sunday. 



In brief, they stole the county seat and have been 

 sitting on it ever since. 



This happened in 1869. So when in 1910 a half 

 dozen young men of Pendleton sat down over an im- 

 promptu luncheon in Portland during the Rose Festi- 

 val and originating the plan for the Round-Up, agreed 

 to "Go get 'em", it was also a safe bet that they would 

 put it over. 



The year before at the Pendleton Fourth of July ball 

 game a saddle had been put up for the bucking event, 

 and Lee Caldwell won it. The enthusiasm over this 

 phase of the celebration left no doubt as to the eternal 

 human interest in riding and horsemanship, and in the 

 fight for supremacy between horse and rider. Roy 

 Raley laid before the others a plan to stage a big fron- 

 tier exhibition in which rough-riding for the cham- 

 pionship of the Northwest should form the main 

 feature, and the idea was then and there roped and 

 hog-tied. 



Besides Roy Raley, Mark Moorhouse, Lawrence 

 Frazier, Tilman Taylor, James Gwinn, Harry D. Gray, 

 Lee Drake, Sperry and some others were the prime 

 movers and organizers, but to the two former men 

 should be credited the building of the framework of the 

 show. Of those outside of Pendleton perhaps no sin- 

 gle individual achieved more for the Round-Up than 

 Samuel Jackson of the Oregon Journal, a former 

 Pendleton boy. 



16 



