Monday, December 13, 2010

Horses have played a significant role in Idaho history

Horses were as important in the everyday lives of Americans in the 19th century as the automobile is today. Farmers and ranchers relied on horses for the power to do the heavy work that they couldn’t manage with their own muscles. City dwellers needed horses to pull their carriages and sleighs. Merchants needed horses to pull delivery wagons, and most of the goods on their shelves arrived by horse-drawn freight wagons or stage coaches. The mail also came by stagecoach, pulled by fast, six-horse teams, or was delivered by men on horseback. Horses were in such demand everywhere across America in the 19th and early 20th centuries that supplying them to the eastern states and Europe became a significant Idaho industry. Even as late as May 1915, when most families had replaced the horse and buggy with the automobile, the Idaho Statesman reported that Caldwell’s Union stockyards were “the greatest horse market west of the Rockies.” Calling it “a splendid institution,” the paper noted that “thousands of horses, not needed in this section of the northwest, have been exchanged for good hard coin of the realm” which usually ended up in “money centers of the east.”
The large demand for Idaho horses in 1915 was almost entirely because of the First World War in Europe, where horses provided the power to haul weapons and supplies to frontline battlefields. Horses could pull artillery pieces through muddy terrain where motor trucks just spun their wheels...more

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