ABOUT THE BAR U BAR

In 2009, when the Bar U Bar Ranch received AQHA’s coveted 50-Year Breeder award, a colt foaled on the Skull Valley, Arizona, spread that year was christened accordingly.

“We registered him as Fine N Fifty,” says Laurel Denton, who with husband Barry now owns and operates the ranch. “He’s by Light N Fine, the stallion Bob Avila won the NRCHA’s World’s Greatest Horseman title with in 2007.”

As for the ranch’s earlier years producing stock, friend and fellow horseman Al Dunning remembers them well.

“Laurel’s folks, Sonny and Sissie Walker, raised running horses that also haltered and performed,” he says. “I was just a kid then, but when Sonny came to the show with a stud horse, you could be sure it was a good one.”

Sonny Walker, a former world-class heavyweight boxer and World War II Marine Corp major, purchased the ranch in 1946 with his wife, Sissie Minotto Walker. Daughter of an Italian count and a member of the famous Swift meat-packing family, Sissie could ride with the best, once performing as part of a girl-team-roping act during the 1938 Prescott Frontier Days Rodeo.

At the time the Walkers acquired the Bar U Bar, it ranged over more than 50,000 acres in west-central Arizona from Yava to Skull Valley. Sonny and Sissie bred Hereford cattle as well as Quarter Horses, plus raised two horse-crazy daughters, Laurel and older sister Carol.

Today Barry and Laurel Denton carry on the Bar U Bar’s heritage in Quarter Horse breeding, focusing on champion cow horse lines. They also breed cattle to work their horses on, as well as a few Texas Longhorns.