CHANGES IN THE HORSES

The Armstrong Ranch is surrounded by King Ranch properties and the Armstrong and Kleberg families were good friends. The Armstrong and King archives provide an excellent idea of the types of horses that were being used before the King Ranch decided to breed Quarter Horses.

Guests at the Armstrong

Ranch about to head out for a pleasurable trail ride in

1904. The gentleman at left is mounted on a Morgan or Morgan-Standardbred cross, the sort of horse who might also have been employed to pull wagons on the ranch. The lady bestrides a more elegant Thoroughbred or MorganThoroughbred cross.

A teenaged girl mounted on a Billy, with her six-foot-tall father for scale. Note the lightning marks running up the gelding’s hind legs, the long sloping hindquarters, the wedge-shaped head and the horse’s sweet expression.

This photo and the one at right are both of Tom East,

Sr.’s wife Alice Kleberg East. Taken together these photos demonstrate the change in King Ranch horseflesh that occurred over the first half of the 20th century. Above we see Alice as a girl of 18 years in about 1910, and her mount is nothing at all like a Quarter Horse—rather, it is either a Thoroughbred or American Saddlebred, both of which were considered elite ranch mounts at the time. Note the King Ranch Running-W brand woven into the saddle blanket, the mild bit, the manzana saddle horn, tapaderos and saddle set up with two functional cinches.

Rancher Tom Armstrong in the

1930s mounted on a Billy set up for polo. Readers who have followed this series will be struck by the similarity of this horse to Dan Casement’s contemporary stallion Balleymooney, a decade later considered a foundation Quarter Horse (see “Hard Times Bring Big Changes,” EQUUS 496).

Alice Kleberg East in about

1938. There are still tapaderos, a mild bit and double cinches, but the horse has changed to a type clearly suitable for registration as an American Quarter Horse.

The American Quarter Horse Association was founded only a few years later and stallions and mares of this type were registered initially by the hundreds and then by the thousands.