The Bucky Stops Here: Denver Broncos Aren't Horsing Around With Their Stadium Upgrade

Update: Bucky the Bronco returned to his home atop Empower Field at Mile High on May 18. The Denver Broncos shared a video of the stallion being hoisted on a crane. Here's our original story from April 2023:

Just weeks after the Denver Broncos trotted to the end of a disappointing season in early January, the beloved horse gracing their stadium, Bucky the Bronco, was removed from his longtime post above the South Stands of Empower Field at Mile High.

The shining white stallion had stood above the scoreboard at that end of the stadium, which is now undergoing $100 million in upgrades pushed by the team’s new owners, a group made up of Walmart heir Robson Walton; his daughter, Carrie Walton Penner; Carrie's husband, Greg Penner; former secretary of state Condoleeza Rice; Starbucks executive Mellody Hobson; and Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton.

But while those owners — not to mention die-hard Broncos fans — had to weather a season in which the team won just five games behind major acquisition Russell Wilson, they won't have to deal with the loss of Bucky. He’ll be back once the renovations are complete.

“He'll be up essentially in the same place,” says Matt Sugar, director of stadium affairs for the Metropolitan Football Stadium District, a political subdivision of the State of Colorado that oversees the stadium. “He still has a prominent spot in the South Stands, where he's been forever.”

That spot will be higher, though, since the scoreboard is growing by 70 percent, according to a Broncos press release announcing the stadium improvements.

“The new scoreboard will measure 72 feet tall by 225 feet wide, and it will be 31 feet taller than it currently stands,” the announcement noted. “The board will be better equipped to display statistics, high-definition replays, improved in-game entertainment and more.”

All of that will make it the fourth-largest scoreboard in the National Football League...and still the only one where a famous horse makes his home.

Empower Field (formerly INVESCO Field) at Mile High has been Bucky’s home since the 2001 completion of this stadium, paid for by a one-tenth of 1 percent sales tax in Denver and the five counties surrounding the city. For 26 years before that, Bucky had lived right next door, at the original Mile High Stadium.

Weighing 1,600 pounds, Bucky is 27 feet tall and made of fiberglass from a cast of Trigger, Roy Rogers's horse. Trigger was a Palomino that the Western singer/actor credited with much of his success. When Trigger died in 1965, Rogers had him taxidermied and preserved; he also commissioned a fiberglass replica of Trigger. The original owners of the Broncos, Gerald and Alan Phipps, asked Rogers if they could make another replica of the horse for their team, and Bucky was born. Fabricated in Alpine, California, he was the last replica of Trigger.

When he was originally installed at Mile High, there were plans to swap him out with a bear statue during baseball season when the Denver Bears, a Minor League Baseball team that no longer exists, played at that stadium.

"When we first installed the horse, they told us to keep the bolts loose so we could change from Bucko to a Bear during baseball season,” Doug Arp, who installed the statue at both the old and new stadiums, tells local students in Sunday Best: The Making of a Stadium: INVESCO Field at Mile High, a book compiled in 2001 to catalogue how the new stadium was built. “But the football and the baseball seasons overlapped, so we never got around to it."

Although people sometimes called him “Bucko,” as Arp did in the book, the horse formally became known as Bucky shortly after the new stadium was up and running. A common misconception is that the horse was named after Broncos punter Bucky Dilts, who was part of the team that went to the Super Bowl in January 1978 — but from the start, the horse symbolized the concept of a bucking bronco.

But Bucky almost got bucked right out of there. In advance of the new stadium's opening, the Denver Post surveyed fans to see if the horse should have a new name. Thousands wanted to honor John Elway, the quarterback who'd led the team to two Super Bowl victories, including one in 1999.

While Elway the Horse didn't sound quite right, fans were adamant that the horse deserved a place at the new stadium. “We went through the process of saying, ‘Yes, we're going to keep this thing because the fans want it,’” Sugar recalls. “We did, and we put it on the new building, and he will continue to grace the south end of the stadium.”
As the stadium undergoes the largest capital improvement in its history, Bucky is undergoing his own upgrade.

He doesn’t need much, Sugar notes, just a paint job. The paint used on Bucky is the same kind that's used on the exterior of airplanes to promote durability.

The rest of the stadium is getting much more than a paint job. In addition to the enlargement of the south scoreboard, other video boards, premium hospitality areas, concession spots, the Broncos Team Store and elevators in the stadium will all get overhauls.

The Metropolitan Football Stadium District is pitching in $12 million for the job, and the rest of the cost will be covered by the Broncos through G-4 funding from the NFL. That program allows teams to get what essentially amounts to a loan for stadium-related projects. The team must put up matching dollars against those the league invests, then pay back the league, usually through fees on certain seats.

How much of the $100 million is going to Bucky?

"I don't know if we have a line item that small that deals with cleaning up Bucky," Sugar jokes. “We're not re-creating him. We're just cleaning him up.”

Bucky last got a facelift in the summer of 2001, after he was taken down from the old Mile High that May and before he was officially installed in the new stadium in August. In the interim, he was stored in a mysterious third location.

Despite the pricey improvements being made at Empower Field, there’s still talk of constructing a new football stadium. In fact, last month the Broncos sent a survey to season ticket holders asking what their preferences would be for a new stadium, should one come to pass. The survey asked about location, amenities and funding for the hypothetical project.

What it did not ask — at least in the portions that were made public — was specifically whether Bucky should be part of a new stadium. But the survey did leave the door open to fans who wanted to rally for Bucky, as they had in 2001.

”If a new stadium is built, the Broncos would wish to highlight Denver and the state's unique culture,” one line read. “What would an ‘authentically Denver or Colorado’ stadium look like to you: (Fill in the Blank).”

The Broncos declined to be interviewed, but they did send a statement through Megan Boyle, strategic communications manager.

“Bucky is an iconic piece of our stadium history,” the team said.

The renovations are set to be completed before the 2023 NFL season starts — but the exact date has not yet been revealed. And if Sugar knows, he's not telling.

Will Bucky get to oversee Taylor Swift’s two nights at Mile High Stadium July 14 and15? If the singer performs "White Horse," one of her early hits, Bucky would certainly provide a winning backdrop.