Crooked Creek Horse Races keep Tillett heritage alive

Horse races, music, worship and family history turn a weekend along Crooked Creek into a trip back in time

For a guy who grew up more comfortable with salmon fishing, redwood forests and Saturday evening bonfires on the beach than cowboys and cowgirls racing horses across a hot, dusty Wyoming field, the Crooked Creek Heritage Horse Races and Rendezvous was something of an education.

It was also a little like stepping back in time.

For three days last weekend, horses, riders, families and spectators gathered near Crooked Creek for an event built around things that would have seemed perfectly ordinary in this part of Wyoming 50 or even 100 years ago.

There were horse races and plenty of dust. There was a barbecue, a songwriting competition and a Sunday morning church service beneath a tree.

More importantly, there were generations of a family celebrating a connection to the land that stretches back to the earliest days of Lovell.

At the center of it all was Randi Tillett Weaver.

The ninth annual horse races have grown from a fairly simple idea Weaver had 10 years ago. 

“I thought, you know, I want to race one more time while I still can,” Weaver recalled.

Horse racing was something Weaver and her family had done growing up. She, her older sister Nikki and cousin Latahna spent considerable time together in the Dryhead, where children sometimes had to invent their own entertainment.

So they raced horses.

“We would race periodically,” Weaver said. “That’s where the walking race came from because we did a walking race. That’s where the trotting race came from.”

And according to Weaver, there wasn’t much suspense over who was going to win.

“I had a horse that really wasn’t much of a horse, per se, but he was fast, and I beat everybody all the time.”

That childhood experience eventually became the foundation for what is now the Crooked Creek Heritage Horse Races and Rendezvous. The races have expanded into a weekend celebrating family, horses, ranching and the heritage of the Crooked Creek country.

The event also honors Weaver’s grandmother, Bessie Frances Strong Tillett, whose life reads a little like an old Wyoming novel.

Bessie was born in 1889, the daughter of Frank and Ellen Strong, early residents of the Lovell area. Frank Strong operated the Strong Hotel near the railroad in Lovell.

As a young woman, Bessie carried mail on horseback into the Dryhead. She taught school at Kane and eventually homesteaded as a single woman near the head of Crooked Creek, a rare thing for a woman in the early 1900s.

“She did that by herself,” Weaver emphasized of her grandmother’s homestead.

Bessie married Billy Tillett, who had come west from Indiana as a railroad surveyor. The couple established their family on Crooked Creek, beginning generations of Tilletts tied to the area.

Their oldest son, Royce, Weaver’s father, was born in 1918. Ranching was part of his life, but education was important, too. Royce attended college before being called into military service during World War II, just nine weeks short of earning his geology degree.

That emphasis on education continued into the next generation.

“All seven of us kids, every one of us graduated from college,” Weaver said. “That was very important to Dad.”

Her mother came from a much different background. She was musical and artistic and met Royce while attending college in Oregon. She eventually traded that life for a Wyoming ranch.

“She adapted,” Weaver said. “She loved the solitude, and she loved the ranch.”

That history is why one of the weekend’s signature events carries Bessie’s name, the Bessie F. Tillett Tuff Enuff Race.

The heritage represented by the weekend isn’t something the family had to research and recreate. Much of it was simply how they grew up.

Weaver reminisced about memories of moving cattle out of the Dryhead before the family had horse trailers. They rode their horses in, rounded up the cattle and brought them back out the old-fashioned way.

“This is just a reflection of the background of a lot of people around Lovell,” Weaver said. “It’s an extension of the ranching community.”

What started with Weaver wanting one more race didn’t stay small for long. Five family members and friends participated in that first race.

Weaver figured that might be enough.

Then Heidi Brightly asked her a simple question: “So what are we going to do next year?”

“I was like, no, I have to do it again,” Weaver recalled. “So I just kept doing it.”

This year’s gathering expanded that idea.

For the first time, the weekend included a longer-distance horse race on Friday, the overland Tuff Enuff race. Saturday brought the traditional races and barbecue, followed by a songwriting competition with an unusual challenge. Contestants received their song titles Friday night and had just 24 hours to write something to perform Saturday.

The songwriting itself has family roots. Weaver said organizer T.J. Casey, whose name is Tim Canton, spent part of his childhood on Crooked Creek because his father worked for Weaver’s father.

“He’s kind of like my brother,” Weaver said.

Sunday morning, after two days of racing, dust, food and music, the weekend slowed down for a church service held outside beneath a tree.

In a way, that might be the best description of the entire rendezvous. It isn’t an attempt to recreate the Old West for tourists. It is a family sharing pieces of a life that never completely disappeared.

And Weaver isn’t ready to simply sit along the fence and watch it happen.

The woman who started the races because she wanted to climb onto a horse and race one more time already has plans for next year.

“I’m going to be in the Tuff Enuff Race next year,” Weaver said. “I’ll be 73.”

Ten years after deciding she wanted one more race, apparently one more still isn’t enough.