Turkic people from southern Russia traveled north to Siberia in the 13th century, bringing herds of horses with them. These horses interbred with wild white tundra horses which had survived the last Ice Age, producing a new breed of horse called the Yakutian Horse. These horses survive without shelter in winter temperatures that plunge to -70 C. and can forage for vegetation buried deeply beneath snow. About 100,000 Yakutian horses survive. They are short and stocky and their double coat of hair — a short, thick coat with a longer overcoat — is key to their survival. On the right: a Yakutian pony.
Left: First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy holds John, Jr., atop Caroline’s pony on the White House grounds, February 22, 1962. Right: Mrs. Kennedy admires Sardar, a ten-year-old gelding, while standing alongside the president of Pakistan, March 22, 1962. She had ridden Sardar the day before while on a visit to Pakistan and the president presented the horse to Mrs. Kennedy as a gift. The horse was flown to the US and kept at the Kennedy weekend home in Virginia.
The author Clarence E. Mulford wrote a series of short stories and novels early in the 20th century about a rough-cut fictional cowboy named ‘Hopalong Cassidy,’ who was shot in the leg during a gun fight, causing him to walk with a little ‘hop.’ In the 1930s and ‘40s, the actor William Boyd portrayed a clean-cut Hopalong in 66 films, and in radio and television. Hopalong’s peak popularity occurred in the 1950s, with extensive merchandising and a comic strip. Left: the rough-cut Hopalong depicted on the cover of a Mulford novel. Right: William Boyd as the TV Hopalong.
The last battle of the Civil War took place in Texas on May 12-13, 1865, on a flat piece of scrub prairie along the banks of the Rio Grande called Palmito Ranch. News of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox five weeks before had reached both Union and Confederate forces encamped at Palmito Ranch, but an unofficial truce had already been in place there for a while. Speculation on why this pointless battle was fought centers on a young Union colonel who had never been involved in combat and ‘wanted to see some action’ before the war ended. Others claim that the colonel merely wanted to capture some Confederate horses and things got out of hand. The first day of fighting at Palmito Ranch was inconclusive; but on the second day, French soldiers in the nearby Mexican town of Matamoros gave some artillery pieces to the Confederate forces which enabled them to achieve their meaningless victory. Thirty of the eight hundred men engaged in the Battle of Palmito Ranch are believed to have been killed. Among them was twenty-one-year-old John J. Williams, from Indiana, pictured above, who has the dubious distinction of being the last man to die in the Civil War.
Left: President Reagan riding horses with Queen Elizabeth II during a visit to Windsor Castle in 1982. Right: In November 2001, Putin visited President G.W. Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he is told there are no horses. Bush was unapologetic, calling himself a ‘windshield rancher.’ “I get in my pickup and drive all over the place.” For Putin’s visit, Bush said, "We're going to be riding John Deere Gators [a modified golf cart]. They're a little more compassionate than some horses.” It was on this US trip that Putin mentioned an interest in having Russia join NATO to partner with the West in combating terrorism.
Left: Gen. U.S. Grant and “Cincinnati,” who carried Grant through the battles against Lee’s forces in Northern Virginia in the Civil War’s last year. Grant didn’t allow others to ride Cincinnati, but made an exception for President Lincoln when he visited Grant at his City Point headquarters in March 1865. Right: Mounted French infantry on patrol in the earliest days of World War I, August 1914. About 6 million horses were used in the war. Britain and France sent purchasing agents to the US who shipped about 600,000 US horses and mules to Europe to resupply their dwindling stocks.
In May 1925, First Lady Grace Coolidge attempted to draw attention to the unmet healthcare needs of veterans injured in World War I by inviting 1,000 veterans from Washington, D.C., area hospitals to the White House for the season’s first garden party. Mrs. Coolidge’s special guest was Tom Mix, the nation’s first cowboy movie star. Mix was then at the peak of his 26-year film career in which he would appear in almost 300 movies, almost all of them silent films. Tom Mix films followed a proven recipe for success: lots of action among good guys and bad guys, with Mix, a clean-cut do-gooder, riding to the rescue on “Tony, the Wonder Boy,” while performing grueling stunts and displaying admirable horsemanship. The public, and these veterans, loved it.
Wells, Fargo & Co. was established in 1852 to handle the purchase, sale, and transport of gold dust, bullion, money and other goods that moved from the West to the East Coast. Initially, the company used ships, with overland crossings at the Isthmus of Panama. In the late 1850s, the company developed overland stagecoach routes and grew to become the largest stagecoach operator in the world. Left: a Wells Fargo stagecoach with armed guard. Right: the first Wells Fargo Bank, San Francisco, 1852.
Left: President Theodore Roosevelt, ever the Rough-Rider, jumps a fence, 1902. Right: President Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt ride horses in Warm Springs, GA, 1938. FDR continued to ride despite his paralysis.
