Shovel race competitor Kelly Phillips is pulled along Lincoln Avenue by rider Shane Yeager during the Street Events on the final day of the 2020 Steamboat Springs Winter Carnival. (File photo by John F. Russell)
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS Doug Wheeler has been pulling kids down Lincoln Avenue at Winter Carnival for 52 years. He says he can trace his family doing it all the way back to 1933.
“Never missed a year since,” Wheeler said. “It’s a big family tradition, and this town was built on the Western heritage.”
The Street Events are always one of, if not the, most popular attraction of Winter Carnival. But it is also a connection to the roots that helped build this town that some ranchers who pull at the Street Events say is being lost over time.