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John Leavitt: For more than three decades, John Leavitt has done more than his part to keep the Western spirit alive in Sisters. His Western wear store, Leavitt’s, is a destination for travelers through Central Oregon, offering high-end style with a Western flair for real cowboys and cowgirls and dudes alike. For all those years, Leavitt has also been a pillar of the Sisters Rodeo, serving on the board of directors of “The Biggest Little Show in the World” and competing in the arena as a tie-down roper and team roper. John Leavitt comes by his cowboy credentials honestly. He’s the real deal and he’s taken America’s Western Heritage literally across the world. The Roman coliseums are no strangers to dust, blood and thundering hoof beats. But 38 years ago, they hadn’t seen many entertainments of the sort that Sisters rodeo competitor John Leavitt helped provide. As part of the Rodeo Far West Tour, Leavitt and a team of 60 cowboys, barrel racers and Sioux Indian dancers stirred up the dust of arenas across three European countries. They put on rodeos and during the intermission they vividly depicted the saga of the Old West — complete with stagecoach holdups, Indian wars and herds of longhorn cattle. They brought the entire entourage, including the cattle herd, with them from America and for five months enthralled audiences across Italy, Switzerland and France. The livestock and seven of the cowboys traveled across the Atlantic ocean on a ship. A trip that was supposed to take 11 days stretched into 27 tedious days as one engine broke down early in the journey. “You read everything you brought with you in the first few days,” said Leavitt. The animals ran out of hay and a stop in the Canary Islands found the cowboys purchasing locally grown alfalfa hay. Tied in shocks with banana leaves, the hay cost a whopping $400 per ton. Leavitt saw Europe from the back of a pickup horse and through the loop of a rope as he worked his part of the rodeo, plucking bronc riders off their horses, roping calves and steer wrestling. Leavitt grew up on the family ranch his father and uncles bought more than half-a-century ago. They operated Leavitt’s Freight out of Springfield, but always hankered after ranch life. The purchase of the Lakeview property saw that dream begin. Leavitt began competing in rodeos during his youth and continued his chosen sport throughout his adult life. He has primarily worked a rope, but also did time in the dust as a steer wrestler. He spent many years as a pickup man, too. “When I first started riding broncs, around 16 or 17 years old, there was no one to pickup for us. So I’d pickup for my buddies and they’d do the same for me,” he said. A few years after returning from his European adventure, Leavitt saw an opportunity in Sisters and purchased a building on the corner of Cascade Avenue and Elm Street from Sisters pioneers Harold and Dorothy Barclay. He’d left the home ranch at Lakeview to attend business school in Reno and was ready to apply what he’d learned — in the business of selling Western wear. Leavitt’s has changed along with Sisters. The store now stocks high-end clothing and home décor and is an outlet for Pendleton Woolen Mills products. Leavitt’s supplies the clothing for the Sisters Rodeo queen and rhinestones and silver glitter among the denim and flannel and wool. Doing business in Sisters has its challenges and Leavitt has ridden out more than one economic downturn in creating one of Sisters’ most successful and longest-lived businesses. “The biggest challenge is just trying to have the things people are looking for,” he says. These days, the store is too demanding for Leavitt to get to many rodeos. Open seven days a week, it caters to the tourists who fill the sidewalks of Sisters on any given weekend and all summer long. “People love the atmosphere,” he says of his town. “Rather than being in a mall, they like to be out and walking around. Even when there’s a foot of snow on the ground at Christmas, they like that, too.” Even after all these years, working the store is still fun for Leavitt, especially on the big event weekends when folks from all around the world visit Leavitt’s for at bit of high Western style. “The biggest fun of the year for the store is the Sisters Rodeo — and after that it’s the Quilt Show,” he says. Leavitt moves through the store with the stiff gait of someone who’s spent a lifetime on horses, doing rough sports with them. He wears a white straw hat in summer, a black felt from fall through spring and keeps his jeans pressed and creased. The wall behind the cash register tells the tale of his other life, full of photographs of rodeos, rodeo queens and famous rodeo folks. The store bustles on many a Sisters weekend as dudes and the genuine article rub shoulders among the merchandise. Those who look closely can tell that the proprietor himself is the genuine article — a Central Oregon cowboy. Return to Extraordinary Sisters.
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