An Endurance Horse Race Gone Awry

By John M. Larsen

My mother stood with her arms crossed, staring in vain up the mountain behind us. Dad and I sat by the crackling campfire but all eyes searched the empty trail that curved down into the camp from the mountainside. Where was Kay? She should have arrived on her mount three hours ago.

My elder sister Katherine, who went by Kay, was competing in a hundred-mile horse race held in 1945 when I was ten years old. It had been organized by the board of the Snake River Stampede Rodeo, an event that had been canceled from 1942–‘44 because of the restrictions and sacrifices made during World War II. The hundred-mile race was part of the freedom all citizens were feeling at the end of the war.

To understand how a hundred-mile horse race could feel like freedom, consider that from the mid-1930s up and until the 1960s, the Hollywood cowboy was king.  Roy Rogers and Gene Autry were only two of almost a dozen cowboy heroes who starred in movie theaters all over the land. These films had a lot of good points and some bad ones. A particular overall problem was that none of them was very realistic. 

For example, in one film, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans pull up to the edge of the western plains driving their 1955 Ford. They unload their horses from the trailer and once they mount up and ride, the time zone suddenly seems to shift from 1955 to 1882. For the rest of the movie, it’s all horses and wagons and mounted cowboys and Indians.