All month long we will be featuring speaker’s abstracts for the upcoming Equine History Conference: Why Equine History Matters.

From Mayor Manning to Mister Ed: Early Arabian Horse Breeders in Arizona, 1920s-1940s
Tobi Lopez Taylor, Independent Scholar

     Arizona has been a center of Arabian horse activities since the 1950s. This decade saw the establishment of the world-famous Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show and the rise of farms such as Lasma Arabian Stud, home of the stallion *Bask, and Tom Chauncey Desert Arabians, owner of the legendary *Naborr. What’s not generally known, however, is that as early as the 1920s Arabian bloodstock was brought to the state, primarily from California. Arabians were used to upgrade the quality of Arizona ranch horses as well as to increase the supply of purebred Arabians at a time when there were fewer than 1,000 Arabians in the entire U.S.

     Among the pioneering breeders discussed are Tucson mayor Levi H. Manning and his son Howell Manning, the owners of Canoa Ranch and the earliest documented Arizona breeders of purebred Arabians; Robert T. and Suzanne C. Wilson, whose Fern Mountain Ranch, in northern Arizona, was home to the influential sire Ribal as well as mares from the Kellogg Ranch; and Rufus Riddlesbarger, of the Lanteen Ranch near the Arizona–Mexico border, whose short-lived breeding program, also incorporating Kellogg-bred horses, had an outsized impact on the breed. In addition, Riddlesbarger’s stallion Antez became the grandsire of arguably the best-known horse on 1960s television: the Palomino gelding known as Mister Ed. In this presentation, I will show that the judicious breeding decisions made so long ago by the Mannings, Wilsons, and Riddlesbarger still figure prominently in the pedigrees of the world’s best Arabians.  

Find Tobi Lopez Taylor here.