Horsestory Volume II: Longhorns to Lady Wonder

Although our past is intertwined with horses, the stories of those strong and loyal helpers have mostly been forgotten. The Horsestory series highlights the diverse roles horses played over the years, and, when available, relates the stories of specific animals.A recurring theme in this second volume is change. At that time, equines were relied upon to power nearly everything that required power. But automobiles and other machines encroached on horses’ territory until in the 1920s, automobiles outnumbered equines.Test your Horsestory IQ. Did you know?A president was once arrested for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage.A blind horse helped build the Transcontinental Railroad.Horses helped save hundreds of lives by carrying warnings of a dam collapse in 1874.Fifteen of the first twenty-eight winning jockeys in the Kentucky Derby were black.A Thoroughbred mare’s photos were used in one of the earliest versions of a motion picture.Twenty mule teams, usually consisting of eighteen mules, hauled 20,000,000 tons of borax.Horses moved an entire village of fifty-five houses a half mile to its new location in 1897.Most of the Rough Riders walked.Horses played a vital role in the lifeboat system that saved people from shipwrecks.Horses were instrumental in developing the antitoxin for diphtheria.Seven and eleven-year-old brothers rode alone from New York to California in 62 days.A “psychic” mare helped searchers locate two missing boys in 1952 and 1955.In Horsestory Volume II: Longhorns to Lady Wonder, you’ll not only find the stories listed above but many more—sixty-two chapters of incredible ways horses collaborated with humans to achieve amazing things. Read more