Despite orders to limit crowds, the stands remained full or nearly full for the three days of the 65th annual North Star Stampede Rodeo in Effie in northern Minnesota.
Thousands showed up to what is known as the state's largest outdoor rodeo even though the Minnesota Department of Health and the state Attorney General's Office imposed a spectator limit at the event.
The most recent phase of Gov. Tim Walz's Stay Safe Minnesota Plan limits outdoor events and entertainment to 250 people who are social distanced.
The rodeo's attendees were spurred on by a Facebook post last week from the event's organizer.
Cimarron Pitzen, whose family has hosted the rodeo since 1955, wrote that the stampede would take place without official spectators. "If people would like to come and protest against this ridiculous Government Over Reach, feel free to do so, I will not stand in the way of peoples 'Right to Assemble.' "
Pitzen and the Itasca County Sheriff's Office did not return messages from the Star Tribune on Sunday.
Pitzen didn't collect the normal admission fees to watch the rodeo's events, said Billy Hampton, a saddle bronc rider from White Bear Lake. Hampton has participated in the Effie rodeo for five years and said this one felt much the same, though he thinks the weekend brought in even more people than usual. Pitzen had restrictions about how many people could gather behind the chutes, and some of the protesters were practicing social distancing, Hampton said, but he didn't see many face masks.
"It felt like normal for once," he said. "It really didn't feel like other places in the state."
