When Montana Outraced the East: The Reign of Western Thoroughbreds, 1886-1900

In Gilded Age Montana, three former frontiersmen turned from speculation in minerals to speculation in Thoroughbred horses. The rest is horse racing history . . . or would be if the story had ever been written. When Montana Outraced the East retrieves the largely forgotten late nineteenth-century golden age of the Montana Thoroughbred industry, when Montana horses won some of the biggest prizes in American horse racing, confounding national sportswriters and threatening to reshape the balance of power within America's oldest sport. This book introduces readers to larger-than-life characters like silver baron Noah Armstrong, pioneer banker Samuel Larabie, and "Copper King" Marcus Daly, each pursuing his passion for horses by studying pedigrees, importing blue-blooded stock, and turning them loose on native grasses under Montana's big sky.

Where one observer saw "verist madness" in the enterprise, another sports journalist foresaw a not-too-distant day when Montana would "rival the worlds of old Yorkshire and the Blue-Grass region of Kentucky in the fame and celebrity of its racehorses." And indeed, in due time the Montana horsemen were fielding equine stars like Spokane, winner of the 1889 Kentucky Derby; Scottish Chieftain, winner in the 1897 Belmont Stakes; and Ogden, the "Horse of Mystery" that rocked the eastern racing establishment by taking the 1896 Futurity at prerace odds of 150 to 1. Catharine Melin-Moser recreates the thrilling era when, through the shrewd foresight, hustle, and luck that had made them millionaires, Montana entrepreneurs made a lasting mark on American horse racing. In telling their story, her book restores a significant and thoroughly captivating chapter to American Thoroughbred racing history.