Life on the Midway
Montana’s Only Female Carnival Owner and the Family Dream That Keeps Spinning
Bright lights illuminate the twilight sky along the midway as kids run past with sticky fingers and cotton candy in hand. The air is thick with the smells of fresh corndogs and funnel cakes doused in powdered sugar. There’s a constant hum of music—from the latest hits blaring from the ride that spins you up and down to the din of the calliope music drifting from the carousel.
From May through September, this is Vickie Cooke’s world. As the only Montana woman heading up a traveling carnival, it’s a life she’s known off and on for more than 40 years.
“It’s not really a job. It’s a way of life,” Vickie says. “You have the same neighbors every week. It’s like a small town on wheels.” In addition to the rides, she explains the crew hauls bunkhouses where they all live while on the road.
A Wild Start
Back in 1983, Vickie’s husband, Riley, had a wild idea to use some of his family’s vintage motorcycles as a carnival midway display. The head of The Mighty Thomas Carnival told him it wouldn’t make money, but the couple gave it a shot anyway.
“Before that year was over, they sold us two carnival rides and that was the beginning,” Vickie says with a laugh.
They became independent ride owners, traveling with The Mighty Thomas Carnival wherever it went. “We just bought one ride until we figured it out, and then we’d buy another,” Riley says. That’s no small feat—rides range from $20,000 for kiddie ones up to $1 million for a Gondola Wheel. “At that point, we didn’t have kids, so we figured why not?” Vickie adds.
Today, the couple operates Dreamland Carnival Company, with around 50 rides ready to rock any midway.
If the Dreamland Carnival had a crown jewel, it would most likely be the ride known as The Frenzy. It is a big tower with 12 seats—six on each side—and it swings more than 90 degrees in each direction.
“It’s the only one in the state,” Vickie says. “In fact, there were only two built. One is in Canada, and we have the other one.” Vickie chuckles as she tells the story about how they bought this showstopper of a ride.
“The gentleman who runs the manufacturing company is 81 and still runs a carnival besides building rides. He and Riley get on the ride and say, ‘Come on!’ I say, ‘Not on your life!’ When the hair-raising ride ended, Vickie says Riley got off and said, ‘I’ll take it!’” It’s been wowing thrill seekers ever since.
In the Blood
You could say Riley’s entrepreneurial spirit is inherited. His father, Oscar Cooke, was the creator of Oscar’s Dreamland, a refurbished pioneer town once home to more than 5,000 antiques — tractors, steam engines, and artifacts—all lovingly collected before Oscar’s death in 1995.
“It’s in Riley’s blood,” Vickie says.
While Riley launched the carnival dream, he insists the operation would fold without Vickie.
“She does it all,” Riley says. She lines up semi drivers for “jump day” when the crew breaks down the rides to head to the next town, manages daily safety inspections, orders generator fuel, and hires the entire 30-plus-member crew. “Forty-five years later, here we are,” Riley says.
Since the pandemic, Vickie has relied on H-2B workers from Mexico and Honduras to keep the show on the road.
“If we didn’t have that help,” she says, “we couldn’t go on the road.” She goes on to say, “A lot of the people who work for us don’t really fit in anywhere else. This is a place where they fit in—and are like family.”
One worker told Vickie at the end of the 2021 season that he couldn’t go home.
“He said, ‘If I go back, I will die. I came out here and I am clean.’ He’s been with us year-round since then,” Vickie says.
Heart of the Midway
Vickie tears up when she talks about how many crew members call her ‘Mom.’ “It’s special,” she says, “that this is how they think of me.”
Her 32-year-old daughter, Jenny Devitt, is now following in her footsteps, running two (soon to be three) food wagons on the midway. Jenny’s three-year-old daughter, Allis—named after the Allis-Chalmers tractors Riley’s dad collected—often rides shotgun in Vickie’s semi as they travel to the next town.
Walking in her mother’s path has given Jenny a deep respect for Vickie’s grit.
“She looks at life and says, ‘Okay, what’s up next?’ And then she just goes after it,” Jenny says. “Nothing seems to scare her. She just keeps moving forward.”
That tenacity has powered Vickie through long days, tough weather, and decades on the road.
“You have to be willing to be out there seven days a week for as long as it takes in the rain and the heat,” Vickie says.
A Special Kind of Family
Vickie reminisces about the early days to share the spirit of why, at 69-years-old, she wakes up every day to do it all over again.
“When Jenny was born, we were setting up at West Park Plaza,” Vickie shares. Her labor turned into a five-day hospital stay after an emergency C-section.
“It almost killed me. They lost my blood pressure after she was born, and it took them three hours to bring me back,” she says. When she was discharged, the entire crew lined the street. “They all drove through the drive-through at the hospital and honked and waved,” she says, tears welling.
“The nurse asked, ‘Do you know all these people?’ I said, ‘I do. They all work for us.’ I have a photo of me in a rocking chair holding five-day-old Jenny with the whole crew behind me. Those are the special things.”
Vickie also shares the story of a longtime ticket seller who always seems to know when the arthritis in her hands flares up.
“She’ll grab my hand and start massaging it,” Vickie says, smiling. “She told me, ‘Mom, don’t look at me like that. I can’t do both hands tonight, but I can feel the stress.’”
Her grandmother was the medicine woman for her tribe, Vickie explains, and the healing touch runs in the family. “My hands won’t hurt for a week after she works on them,” she says.
Growth and the Next Big Dream
For all the long hours and behind-the-scenes work, it’s the joy that keeps Vickie going.
“It’s the smiles on the kids’ faces,” she says. “For some of these kids, this is the only Disneyland they’ll ever get to go to.”
And the carnival isn’t the Cookes’ only business. They also run a mobile home moving service and a vinyl wrap company, which they’ve used to give their rides fresh looks every few years.
Next on Riley’s list? Rebuilding the Amusement Park Drive-In, which burned in 2022. He’s already bought a new screen and hopes to bring movies back soon. Vickie laughs as she says it’s a good thing you can remotely start the digital projectors.
“You can turn it on from your couch,” Vickie says, wondering how the drive-in would run with her on the road. “Thankfully, you set the start time and it will just turn on.”
Every now and then, Vickie gives herself permission to slow down—just for a few minutes—and soak in the magic she’s helped create.
“I don’t get to do it very often,” she says. “But sometimes, I’ll walk down the midway and say, ‘Wow. We built this. All these people are enjoying what we’ve built.’”
