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Every Horse Deserves a Great Home!
| Broken Spoke Stables is family owned & operated. We started the stable in 1998 on Christy's family farm which originally was a Relay Station for the US Mail. The mail carriers would change out there horses here and continue on to there postal destination. Horse Relays Horses are extremely fast—but they can't run at top speed for very long or they overheat. The only way to ride at a full gallop over long distances is to regularly switch to a fresh horse. For most of human history, this was the fastest way to transport people and parcels over land. Relay Race Of course, no single horse could carry mail day and night without rest. So a series of relay stations was spaced 16 kilometers (10 miles) apart, and riders passed a small bag of mail from horse to horse, like sprinters passing a baton. Some riders supposedly blew a horn before reaching each station, so a fresh horse would be waiting for them to jump onto the moment they arrived. The Legend Grows The Pony Express opened in April 1860—and closed in October 1861, a few days after cross-country telegraph became available. Though the Pony Express went out of business just 18 months after it began, its fame only continued to grow. In the late 1800s, traveling shows such as "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" included demonstrations of Pony Express riders leaping from one horse to another. The image of brave riders racing across the open range became a symbol of the American West. Today the U.S. Postal Service uses the Pony Express as its symbol. Blazing Saddles Within two minutes of arriving at a station, a Pony Express rider left on a fresh horse. To speed up the transfer, mail was carried on top of the saddle in a removable leather overlay, or mochila. At each station, the mochila was slapped onto the saddle of a waiting horse. Like many ranching terms, including lariat, lasso, chaps and ranch, the term mochila comes from the Spanish language. "EVERY HORSE DESERVES A GREAT HOME" |
About Us
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| Call 607-538-9651 or Cell 607-435-1738 |