Home - Marcus Daly - Cathy Moser Author and Freelance Writer

2026 HIGH PLAINS INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS WINNER: BIG SKY AWARD

2026 DR. TONY RYAN BOOK AWARD SEMI-FINALIST

“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.

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