Rangerbred Horse

The background on the horses The horses are registered with the Colorado Ranger Horse Association and are called Rangerbreds. They are often confused with Appaloosas because they tend to have spots and historically there has been a lot of cross over between the two breeds, but there are some distinct differences
The particular bloodline is known for throwing leopards and few-spot leopards, i.e. predominately white horses. The bloodline comes from a fairly well known foundation stallion, Granite Canyon.

The breed actually was started when Sultan Abdul Hamid of Turkey presented General U.S. Grant, during his visit to Turkey, with two desert stallions. The stallions came to the United States in 1878. One was an Arabian named Leopard, the other a Barb named Linden Tree (Both of these stallions are listed in the studbooks of two American breed registries, The Arabian Horse Club and the American Jockey Club. Their impact on the horse world touches almost every breed in the United States today.).

These stallions reached Virginia early in 1879 where they attracted the attention of one of America's greatest horsemen, Randolph Huntington. Mr. Huntington, already an old man who had spent the better part of fifty years breeding trotters and roadsters, saw in the two great desert stallions the opportunity to perfect his new breed of light harness horses, which he proposed to name the Americo Arab. General Grant gave his friend full permission to use the stallions as he thought best.

In 1894, General L.W. Colby, an old retired Army friend of General Grant, who had extensive ranch holdings in Beatrice, Nebraska, persuaded Grant to let him bring Leopard and LindenTree (now aged stallions) West for a single breeding season. Here for only one short summer the two desert stallions left an indelible impression upon the native mares there on the Colby holdings. Here was cradled the new breed of cow horses later to be named the Colorado Rangers.

Colorado horsemen were destined to write the next chapter of the Colorado Ranger story. By the late 1890's many good reports had drifted across the cow country concerning the excellent horses being bred on the Colby ranch back in Nebraska. Several of the big outfits on the eastern Colorado plains decided to give the Colby horses a try. They sent one of the plains' most respected ranchers, A.C. Whipple of Kit Carson County, Colorado to the Colby ranch in Nebraska to buy a band of mares and a stud. Mr. Whipple returned with an outstanding group of young mares, all of which were sired by the Arabian stallion, Leopard, or the Barb stallion, Linden Tree. The stallion he selected, named Tony, was a snow white, black eared, double-bred grandson to the desert stallion, Leopard(AHR #233). This line-bred stallion was crossed on the Colby mares with remarkable success in the years that followed. These early breeders were not interested in creating color. They were cattlemen whose primary objective was to raise working cow horses to meet their ranching needs. A wealth of odd, barbaric color patterns did, however, evolve from their intensive line-breeding program. Horsemen on the plains had never seen such leopard-spotted, raindropped horses before.

The next person of note in the history of the Rangerbred horse was a man by the name of Mike Ruby.He was born in Tavastock, Ontario, in 1886, and emigrated with his parents to the eastern Colorado plains at the age of three. It was the era of the cattle barons and good using horses were in great demand. The Rubys were noted horsemen, and Mike took an early interest in the superior horses being bred on the Whipple ranch. The Whipples were carrying on an intensive line-breeding program with Barb-Arab seed stock which they had obtained from the General Colby ranch in Beatrice, Nebraska. These horses had a reputation of working ability, good dispositions, and plenty of stamina.

In the early 1930's, Mike Ruby, acquired Patches,a son of the stallion from the Colby Ranch (Tony), and Max, a halo-spotted son of the Waldron Leopard out of an Arabian mare, as his herd sires. By this time he had amassed a herd of more than 300 mares! With these two foundation sires, Mike began to build the breed. Both stallions left outstanding sons who went into the Ruby herd as sires. Of prime importance among these were Patches II, Leopard and Ranger who, as well as their own sires, figure in the pedigrees of most present day Rangerbreds.

Mr. Ruby was different in many ways than many of the ranchers of his day...before most of the prominent registries were founded...., as he maintained accurate written records of his mares, stallions, and their offspring. At this time, these records including foaling dates, colors, and their complete pedigrees was indeed an 'unusual' practice. These handwritten records have been preserved as a part of the CRHA Corporate records.

In 1934, Mr. Ruby was invited to display two of his stallions at the Denver Stock Show. The two leopard patterned stallions (Leopard #3 and Fox #10) were seen by thousands of visitors. Encouraged by the faculty of what is now Colorado State University, the new breed of horse was officially named Colorado Rangers, horses originating in Colorado and bred and raised under range conditions. Verbal references to those "range bred" horses eventually led to their being more commonly known as Rangerbreds, although the official name remains.With the naming of the breed came a breed registry. Mike Ruby founded the Colorado Ranger Horse Association in 1934. Two years later he applied to the State of Colorado for corporate charter which was granted on January 4th, 1938. Due to registration only being available to CRHA members and a fifty member limit imposed, many horses with Rangerbred heritage were not able to be registered with CRHA at that time. Those horses with color patterns, however, were gladly accepted by another breed registry that came into being several months later, The Appaloosa Horse Club. Mr. Ruby dedicated his life to the building of a new American breed, and served as president of the Colorado Ranger Horse Association until his death in 1942.
, I think in the early 50's, Lorne & Vera Knisely, who raised spotted horses in Fort Collins, Colorado and later in Alberta, Canada, in Lebanon, Jordan and finally in Arizona, began searching across the country for leopard spotted horses and discovered that many of the pedigrees of the horses they liked descended from Mike Ruby's horses and traced back to Grant's Leopard. They had many many fine horses and made their living selling horses. They culled and sold 300 head when they moved the horses to Canada. They had several bloodlines, but the one which they were most famous for was from a horse named Granite Canyon. During the 1960s , they were well known breeders in both the Rangerbred and Appaloosa assocations and were very involved in the CRHA.

Granite Canyon was a compact white stallion (few spot leopard). Granite was a line bred descendant of one of Grant's stallions (Leopard) and produced many colorful and well known performance, stock and endurance horses. The Appaloosa stud books list Granite Canyon's sire as Rainy Moon, another very well known, respected foundation Appaloosa sire. They believed that Granite is not a Rainy Moon colt because Granite was born in a pasture with more than one stallion and the genetic traits of Rainy Moon foals did not match the genetic traits Granite possessed and passed onto his offspring. However Granite did not descend from the Grant leopard on the sire side, but on the damn side through his mother, a mare named Palomir.

Lorne and Vera were obsessed with pedigrees and that is how or why they lived in Jordan, leaving a couple of their horses at King Hussein's royal stable. They were tracing the pedigrees back beyond General Grant's original stallions. They believe that Granite Canyon's bloodline can be traced back to the time of King Solomon and she and Lorne went to Jordan to try to do just that. Lorne's last stallion, is a line bred stud with Granite Canyon on both the top and bottom side of his pedigree that traces six generations beyond or before Granite Canyon. His pedigree has the original Leopard that Ulysses S. Grant imported to America in 1878 on both the top and the bottom lines.

I received the last stallion of the Granite Canyon bloodline from my Aunt when she was in her 80's. We shipped him from New Mexico to Nebraska when the stallion was three. Aunt Vera is now 100 and the stallion, My Dauntless Dandy, is still alive, but no longer siring any foals.
sired his first foal this year, the pure white colt in the attached photo. I have searched across the country for horses with Granite Canyon in their bloodline, but it seems that I am the only breeder in America with any Granite Canyon genes in my horses. My desire was to keep this great bloodline alive. However, Jim is ready to get out of the horse business and I have decided to offer the last Granite Canyon stallion for sale for the next 30 days. If we do not find a buyer, we plan to geld him and that will be the end of the Granite Canyon bloodline. The foal in the photo will not be of breeding age for two years and when he reaches breeding age, he will be gelded. He is out of the our young Granite Canyon stallion and an Appaloosa mare. Because he is completely white with pink skin pigmentation, we will not ever use him as a sire.

The one thing I will say about all of the Granite Canyon bloodline: the horses are extremely smart and extremely good at endurance. They all have very sturdy legs and high withers that help hold a saddle. They are generally very sure footed and can trot all day. The trot is as fast as most other breeds of horses cantor, or gallop, but not at all uncomfortable to ride. The horses in the bloodline are all very docile and easy to work with. They bond easily with humans and are the easiest going horses I have ever raised. Some of the things that spook or shake up horses of any other breed, these horses seems to take in stride ... things like tractors backfiring, parades, carrying flags, etc.

The horses have all been excellent climbers and work well in rough mountain or hilly terrain. I've never had one spook when a pheasant or turkey flushes up underneath the horse, which again, is rare among horses.

It is almost like the "Granite" horses are always thinking and you can almost read their expressions and guess what they are thinking. They are so different from other bloodlines and breeds, that I sometimes wonder if my aunt's theory is right and they really did orginate in King Solomon's stable. Who knows, maybe this is the bloodline of the white horses mentioned in Revelation 19: 11-15.

I guess I don't know, but I do know they are a beautiful and magnificant animal and I have felt honored to be able to raise them. They are indeed a horse fit for a king.

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