What was the National Festival of the West?
Every March for about two decades, Scottsdale held a long weekend for people who loved the cowboy West. Mary Brown founded the National Festival of the West in 1991 at Rawhide, the Western town on north Scottsdale Road. It was a little of everything: a Western film festival with stars of the old TV shows, cowboy poetry, a chuck-wagon cook-off, a Mountain Man rendezvous, gunfight re-enactors, costume contests, more than 200 vendors and three stages of cowboy and country music.
It moved between Rawhide and WestWorld as both changed. Michael Martin Murphey was a regular headliner; Larry Gatlin, Lynn Anderson and Johnny Rodriguez played it; Jack Palance and Buck Taylor took home its Cowboy Spirit Award. By 2004 it expected about 60,000 people.
Brown handed it on in 2011, and it appears to have ended around 2013.
Rawhide and WestWorld
At Rawhide. Encyclopedia.com’s Scottsdale entry describes it as “a three-day celebration of cowboy life at Rawhide each March.” The edition numbers count from 1991, and the East Valley Tribune reported in 2005 that Rawhide had hosted it eleven times.
At WestWorld. From 2001 to 2004 it was at the city’s equestrian center. Phoenix New Times’s listing for the 14th festival, March 18–21, 2004, ran down the program: the film festival and celebrity panel, a Western trade show, the chuck-wagon cook-off, cowboy poetry, a John Wayne tribute, three stages with Murphey on top, and Cowboy Spirit Awards for Jack Palance, Robert Fuller and the Westerns Channel. Adults paid $12.
Back to Rawhide, and away. In 2005 the festival returned to Rawhide for the Western town’s last season on Scottsdale Road. Brown told the Tribune that year she meant to follow Rawhide to its new site at Wild Horse Pass, south of Phoenix, calling it “just such a natural home for us,” even though the city had offered to keep her at WestWorld; she also blamed north Scottsdale’s growing “urbanization.”
WestWorld again. By 2010 the festival was back at WestWorld for its 20th edition. For the 21st, March 17–20, 2011, a release listed Gatlin, Anderson, Rodriguez, Murphey, Clint Walker, Robert Fuller, Peter Brown and Cheryl Rogers-Barnett, and announced that Brown had passed the festival to Rollie Stevens, a Phoenix Western entertainer, and Gene Butts of the New Pioneers.
The sources, and what they leave open
Main sources: the East Valley Tribune’s September 2005 story on the move; Phoenix New Times’s 2004 listing; the 2011 release carried by Nashville Music Guide; a Gunsmoke fan site’s record of Buck Taylor’s 1998 award; Encyclopedia.com; and True West magazine, which we’ve read only in search excerpts.
What’s unsettled:
- 2006 to 2009. We haven’t confirmed whether the festival went to Wild Horse Pass in 2006, or when it came back to WestWorld.
- The end. A b-westerns.com directory lists 2013 as the last festival; we couldn’t open it, and nobody we’ve found explains why it stopped.
- The crowd. About 60,000 projected in 2004; Brown claimed “over 65,000” for one year to True West. The festival’s claim to have been named “America’s Best Western Festival” five years running, and its $10 million economic impact, are its own.
- Mounted shooting is mentioned in one summary of a True West piece but not confirmed.
A correction elsewhere on this site. Our note on lost Scottsdale events listed this festival with nothing known but the name. It now points here.
Why it matters
Scottsdale has sold the West since the 1940s, and the National Festival of the West was that idea at its biggest: the music, the food, the movie cowboys and the gear, all in one place each March. Its moves tracked the city’s own changes. It started at Rawhide when north Scottsdale Road was still open desert, moved when Rawhide moved, and settled at WestWorld, the city’s horse arena, as the surrounding land filled with houses.