As the sun rises Wednesday morning, Army and Air Force cooks will fire up their grills and ovens in preparation for a beloved Colorado Springs tradition.

The Western Street Breakfast will return this week, lining downtown Tejon Street with hay bales and the fragrance of pancakes and eggs. Local service members will serve breakfast at $5 a plate offering eggs, sausage, pancakes, coffee, juice and milk. This annual fundraising event benefits local military families and is held in anticipation of the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo.

The local tradition has grown quite a bit since its start in 1936 when 35 cowhands and cow belles gathered ‘round an old chuck wagon downtown and were served breakfast by Joe Reich’s Swiss Chalet. After a short break during World War II, Reich would pick back up hosting the breakfast until the ’50s.

Over the next several decades, the event passed through a few hands, said Ted Severn, president of the Pikes Peak Range Riders Foundation, which has hosted the breakfast since 2016. The rangers ride out about 8 a.m. the day of the breakfast, parading through town on horseback.

“Having been a Range Rider now for I guess 19 years, I really enjoy the heck out of climbing on horse and riding out to town and waving to people, and that’s all part of the deal,” Severn said.

More than 10,000 people are expected to attend the event, Severn said. That means volunteers need to prep 1,100 pounds of pancake batter, 80 gallons of syrup and 1,500 pounds of eggs (not to mention 1,100 bales of straw for seating).

The event is more than a breakfast, though, with celebrations of Western heritage, including dance performances by Sweetwater Native American Dancers, live music, a petting zoo and Western wear costume contests.

“It is really a unique event, because, take 2021 for example, the first year after COVID, and people were really anxious to get out. It was a beautiful, sunny morning, much like it is today, and as far as the eye could see, if you were down on the corner of Pikes Peak and Tejon, of course, it was just packed with people. Everybody’s happy. Everybody smiling,” Severn said.

As a retired Army veteran, Severn also appreciates how much the community enjoys coming out to support local military members and their families, too.

“The most exciting thing for me, and it began when I was assigned here at Fort Carson in 1988, was the community effort,” he said. “This civilian community welcomes more closely and more affirmatively the military than any other community that I’ve been (in). And I think that the street breakfast and the rodeo is a perfect example (of) the community effort, where the military joins the community and vice versa. You can see readily at the street breakfast.”