Home - Marcus Daly - Cathy Moser Author and Freelance Writer

“With Thoroughbred horses firmly implanted in the histories and tradtitions in the East and South, little wonder that the revolutionary idea to breed and rear an exquisite breed on vast landscapes of native bunchgrass and under wide skies at high altitude in ‘that nowhere of the West’ was thought to be ‘the verist madness.’ But the foolishness would be theirs.”

– from Catharine Melin-Moser’s book, When Montana Outraced the East: The Reign of Western Thoroughbreds, 1886 to 1900

1895 Suburban Handicap at Sheepshead Bay Racetrack, NY.
Photo courtesy of Keeneland Library Hemment Collection, Lexington, Kentucky.

A man riding on the back of a horse. — Tammany was owned by Montana “Copper King” Marcus Daly and ridden by “the Dutchman” Fred Taral. Keeneland Library Hemment Collection.

While many of Montana’s champion racehorses were in truth sons and daughters of the eastern bluegrass rather than of the western bunchgrass, they were under the ownership of Montanans Noah Armstrong, Samuel Larabie, or Marcus Daly, and, figuratively, “Montana” horses.

When Montana Outraced the East: The Reign of Western Thoroughbreds, 1886 to 1900 released April 1, 2025, by the University of Oklahoma Press.

To order the book, visit the Oklahoma University Press website: https://www.oupress.com/9780806195315/when-montana-outraced-the-east/