The town of Wilsall, Montana was founded around 1887 when the principals of the Jordan-Robertson Company, Frank Corwin Robertson and W.B. Jordan, donated the plot of land on which the town now sits. The new town was named after W.B. Jordan’s son Willy and his wife Sally. In 1905, Jordan and Robertson gave the right-of way to the Northern Pacific Railroad and lots were sold by the Wilsall Town-Site Company to settlers. When the railroad came in 1909, the town with its new businesses and buildings began to grow. The first church was built in 1912 and the first schoolhouse in 1914.
By 1916, the railroad and the Homestead Act began to bring in new settlers in greater numbers. The population of Wilsall in the late teens and early twenties was nearly six times the present population of about 250. It’s hard to believe that in its heyday Wilsall was a teeming community with two banks, three grain elevators, three stores, two hotels, a Chinese restaurant, a bakery, three garages, two butchers, two hospitals, a flour mill, three lumber yards, three churches, and perhaps most incredible of all – a paid baseball team. But the depression hit Wilsall early and hard, and by the mid 1920’s, the town had already experienced its first bank failure (now the site of the Bank Bar).
Since that time, electricity and better roads made their way to the Upper Shields River Valley but the area is still waiting to experience its second economic boom. In the meantime, Wilsall is a quiet community with much to offer – awesome scenery, great people, and two great rodeos: the Wilsall Rodeo, and the Wilsall Ranch Rodeo.
There are only a few places left in America where ranching as a way of life is more than a distant memory of times gone by. The Wilsall Ranch Rodeo celebrates the culture of the Upper Shields River Valley – of men and women making a life from the land, skillful stewards of the land, respectful of nature and its fruits but never complacent. The Ranch Rodeo celebrates the special bonds built in a community that has shared droughts, floods, lightning, scours, larkspur, snow in July, 50-below temperatures, and calf prices below 60 cents, but for whom the pride that comes from living shoulder-to-shoulder with nature and beating the odds, keeps them in the game.