Today's Document

The Horses that Never Lived and Would Not Die

riversidearchives:

Today we’re celebrating the National Day of the Horse!  And in celebration, we’d like to share the fabulous story of the Little Horses of the Grand Canyon.  This episode in the history of Grand Canyon National Park is well documented in news clippings, photographs and correspondence compiled in the Park’s records.

The Grand Canyon

In 1938, Jack Tooker began to publicize that he had found small horses, trapped hundreds of years prior, in a narrow gorge of the Grand Canyon.  It was so deep, that he had to descend with a rope around his waist and “shak[ing] hands with the devil every foot of the way” to recover them.

Jack Tooker and one of his little horses on the rim of the Grand Canyon, 1939 ca.

He reported his find to the press, and the public ate his story up, eventually resulting in an exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair in San Francisco, creating more publicity for these unusual creatures.  The National Park was inundated with requests from scientists, the media and children wanting to know more about this remarkable discovery.

The Little Horses exhibition in San Francisco, 1939

As a result, the Park’s naturalist, Eddie McKee, led an expedition into the canyon looking for horses and discovered and measured 27 horses and found them to be “about the same size as horses in other arid parts of the West where food is scarce.”  

Park Naturalist, Eddie McKee, measuring horses during the 1938 expedition into the canyon to verify Tooker’s story 

The Park Service continued to ask Mr. Tooker to desist, telling him that they were receiving letters containing quotes like, “The Little horses from the Grand Canyon are still galloping to the tune of the sucker’s money!”  For his part, Mr. Tooker said he thought that the Park could use the publicity and thought it was a good thing.  

A comic depiction of the evolution history of the little horses, based on Tooker’s story

Eventually, it was discovered that the horses were being specially bred on a ranch in Mexico and that they were Shetland ponies, purposely stunted.  Staff at the Grand Canyon continued to receive inquiries about these horses well into the 1950s – the story just wouldn’t die!

Series: Central Subject Files, 1908-1981. Records of the National Park Service, 1785-1990 (National Archives Identifier 1532654).