Dean Oliver attended his first rodeo when he was 15 years old. It may have been the heady feeling of stealing into the Snake River Stampede without a ticket, but as Dean watched a tie-down roper win $300 in a single run, he decided that rodeo was the life for him. Little did he know that he would become a record holder at that very rodeo, winning the tie-down roping ten times, and that a drawing of him would be featured on the Snake River Stampede’s rodeo poster 70 years later, heralding him an 11 time world champion.
Born in 1929 to Verne and Vesper Oliver in Dodge City, Kan., Dean was the fifth of seven children. Each child was born in a different state, but all of Dean’s childhood memories reside in Idaho. His family moved to the Gem State in the late 1930s. Dean’s father was a private pilot, and he sold automobile and airplane parts and accessories, while also managing the Nampa (Idaho) Airport. In February of 1940, Verne and his friend Guy Givens were contracted by a farmer to hunt coyotes. The men did so from Verne’s airplane, with Guy shooting the predators from an open door. During one of their close passes to the ground, Verne’s plane crashed into the side of a snow-covered mountain, killing both men.
Following the tragic accident, the Oliver family worked even harder to survive in a country just recovering from the Great Depression. Dean began working at dairy farms by his early teens. Sitting in a classroom didn’t suit the restless boy, and he dropped out of ninth grade, never to darken a school doorway again. That same year, he and his older brother snuck into the Snake River Stampede rodeo in Nampa. “When the rodeo came around, I really liked the cowboys’ western gear, and their horses and cars and trailers,” says Dean. “It looked like a fun way of life!”
Inspired, Dean began his rodeo quest that same year, purchasing his first horse for $50 dollars and riding it bareback with just a rope around its nose to guide it. He began roping fence posts and hay bales, and even the calves at the dairy farm in the cover of night. While Dean was persistent about his roping, he was equally persistent in pursuing Martha Reisenstein, the daughter of one of the farmers he worked for. They were married in 1950, the year that would mark the beginning of Dean’s rodeo competition. He purchased another horse – this one green – for $400, and spent another $10 on a roping calf, which Martha would hold until Dean gave a nod.
The self-taught cowboy made his debut at several local amateur rodeos in Idaho and soon won his first tie-down roping at the rodeo in Kuna. The taste of success was so satisfying that Dean told his boss at the dairy farm he might quit and rodeo instead. “What makes you think you’re a star? You couldn’t win anything!” The man replied hotly. Dean quit his job that summer and rodeoed until he ran out of money, returning to work in the fields until he could pay his entry fees.
In December of 1950, Dean and Martha’s first child, Sheryl, was born. Her birth kept Dean from being drafted into the Korean War, changing him from a I-A (available for service) to a III-A (deferred because of dependents). After running into questionable rules at some amateur rodeos, Dean decided to join the Rodeo Cowboys Association in 1952. He went to his first professional rodeo in Jerome, Idaho, then leaped to Albuquerque, N.M., where the top professional ropers were competing. He was afoot, no longer trying to train a rope horse, but instead borrowing horses and paying the owners a percentage of his winnings. “There were 80 ropers, and not one of them would mount me, until finally a guy put me on a great, big tall horse,” Dean recalls. He won second in Albuquerque, then went to Denver’s new coliseum the following week, where he placed second in the average. He felt so optimistic with $1,700 in winnings that he purchased a gelding named Buck. He spent $1,750 on the buckskin with a knot on its knee, anxious to find a good rope horse. Dean made a makeshift trailer in the bed of his pickup for Buck and went home with an empty wallet.
After working through the winter feeding cattle, Dean had enough money to rodeo again in May. He and Buck won several rodeos that summer, yet Dean still lacked an edge in his competition that could only come with practice. The winter of 1953-1954, Dean lived with tie-down roper Dan Taylor in Doole, Texas, and the Idaho cowboy finished third in the RCA standings at the end of 1954 with roughly $11,000. Dean stayed with another roper in Oklahoma the following winter, and despite dismounting on the left to tie calves, he still had the fastest time, finishing the 1955 rodeo season with $19,963 and a glistening gold buckle reading World Champion Calf Roper.
His professional rodeo career soared out of the chutes, and Dean was rodeoing 11 months out of the year, often putting 80,000 miles on his station wagon each season. He competed in 70 to 80 rodeos a year, winning every professional rodeo he went to over the course of his career. Dean competed in the first National Finals Rodeo in 1959 on a horse named Mickey, whom he’d searched long and hard for after retiring Buck. Mickey and Dean won five world championships in a row from 1960-1964, and Dean also won three all-around world championships from 1963-1965. He had started steer wrestling and was just as talented in the event as tie-down roping with his 6’3″, 200 pound frame. But after breaking his leg at Madison Square Garden during the event, Dean feared further injuries and kept tie-down roping as his main focus, eventually dismounting on the right when he was in his 40s for faster time.
Not only did Dean’s achievements catch the eyes of rodeo fans nationwide, but also magazines and other publications. Time magazine, People magazine, Sports Illustrated, Saturday Evening Post, and western publications all wanted an interview with the rags-to-riches cowboy. Dean even modeled jeans for Wrangler. He and Martha purchased a ranch in Boise, Idaho, with 80 acres and calves aplenty for roping. While he traveled the length and width of the United States, one of Dean’s favorite rodeos remained the Snake River Stampede. He won his hometown rodeo ten times in the tie-down roping, a record yet to be broken, while also winning the local Caldwell Night Rodeo eight times. He secured his eighth and final world title at the NFR in 1969 at the age of 38, with record earnings of $38,118 for the most money won in a single event in one year. That record has since been broken, but Dean’s eight world tie-down roping championships still sets the bar.
Dean continued to rodeo into his 40s, but sorely missed his growing family of five daughters, Sheryl, DeAnn, Nikki, and twins Kelli and Karla. Martha had travelled with him as often as she could, but that didn’t make up for life at home. Yet Dean’s involvement in rodeo was hardly over. He served on the PRCA’s board of directors in 1979 and was inducted into seven halls of fame, including the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and the ProRodeo Hall of Fame. Texas sculptor Edd Hayes even included a bronze statue of Dean tie-down roping in a series of bronzes he called “Legends of Rodeo.”Dean also pursued his hobby of golfing, which he’d started in the 1950s, setting course records around the Treasure Valley and winning several tournaments.
Today, Dean and Martha’s home sits just off a farm road in Greenleaf, Idaho. Dean raises calves for beef cattle, but finds himself busiest during the Snake River Stampede rodeo in July, where he grooms the arena, and contracts the sheep and calves for the mutton bustin’ and the calf scramble. He has been serving on the rodeo’s board of directors since 1990, and dons his media credentials every December to work as a grip for a television crew covering the WNFR.
Dean’s story is marked with extraordinary grit and perseverance, but the rodeo legend says humbly, “I never did want to quit rodeo. When I started, I didn’t know I’d be any good. I was lucky enough that I had the ability, and I stuck with it.”
Story also available in our February 2015 issue.
