Running with Wyoming’s wild mustangs
Sanctuary on native reserve opens it gates for visitors to learn about problem horses
NEAR LANDER, WYO.— It’s one thing to take on 130 wild horses and another to open your working cattle ranch to tourists.
But that’s exactly what Dwayne and Denise Oldham have happily done.
The Wind River Wild Horse Sanctuary is America’s third wild horse sanctuary and its first on a working cattle ranch on an Indian reserve.
The government pays the Oldhams enough to feed the horses, but also makes them offer public tours as part of the public-private partnership.
The Oldhams have set up a small visitor centre with interpretive displays and have a Polaris side-by-side utility vehicle ready to take people out to the fields to see the horses.
“I think, mostly, we’re just trying to be part of the solution,” Dwayne says.
The horses are descendants of the Iberian ones the Spanish brought to North America in the 1500s.
Soon, they were in the United States, embraced by Native Americans and ranchers, but also running wild and often abandoned. They became known as mustangs from the word mestango, “an animal that strays.”
Today, many ranchers hate wild horses for grazing on their land and eroding their soil with their hooves.
Without natural predators, wild horse herd sizes can double every four years. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management protects and manages wild horses and burros and spends millions rounding them up each year, but only has holding corrals for so many.
Wild horses, Dwayne says, are usually put in “break and train” programs at prisons and then sold at auction and through online adoptions.
Some never get adopted, however, and the U.S. no longer slaughters horses.
There are about 45,000 wild horses and burros in captivity and another 67,000 running wild. The Oldhams run Double D Ranch on the Wind River Indian Reserve.
Denise is from New Mexico originally and has Navajo heritage. Dwayne met her when he went down there to work as a veterinarian.
They have four grown children, raise cattle and sheep and breed quarter horses.
The Oldhams are easing into the tourism side of their partnership with the government.
They have created a Facebook page, taken out a few school groups and are talking with local casinos and a Japanese tour operator about trip packages.
Tours, which cost $35 (U.S.) but are free for kids, are by appointment only from June to September.
“The truth of the matter is I’m busy enough,” Dwayne says.
The horses are classified as mustangs, but most look fairly ordinary — so, who knows how much Spanish blood is still in them.
What’s really surprising is how these once wild horses gather around close enough for photos. A few even let us pat them.
“These guys are pretty calm,” Dwayne says.
“One reason is because we got them in November and fed them all winter and since June, we’re doing all these tours.” Jennifer Bain’s trip was partially supported by the Wyoming Office of Tourism, which did not review or approve this story.