A woman is holding a pen and looking at papers.

 

A horse standing in the dirt with its head down.
Hamburg, owned by copper baron Marcus Daly. Photo courtesy of Marcus Daly Mansion, Hamilton, MT

Grandpa Melin Takes Me to the Racetrack

 

The path to writing When Montana Outraced the East: The Rise of Western Thoroughbreds, 1886-1900, started early. I have loved horses ever since I can remember. My grandfather Axel Melin loved the sport of horse racing, especially the harness races with its Standardbreds. I wish I could see the full scene beyond the snippets of memory, my big Swede of a grandfather at the track rail holding the hand of his little granddaughter. The races stretched into evening. I remember bright lights overhead illuminating him, the people around us, the white rail, and brown track. Every time the trotters thundered past, the air swished and I heard thudding hooves over the dirt.

 

As an adult, I’m a freelance writer whose favorite thing is horses and history. I’d skim through musty nineteenth century newspapers and, periodically, spot two or three sentences that told of a Thoroughbred horse from Montana winning a big prize in eastern racing. Sometimes I wanted to know more. I’d searched out an article summarizing the race, and usually it had answers to my questions. Was the Montana horse a longshot or a favorite? Did he win by an eyelash, or did he rout his eastern rivals? Did his jockey give him a good ride?

The day I realized that a lot of Montana horses won a lot of big races, the epiphany struck: I’ll write a story about these archival racehorses. Would magazines be interested in stories about the Montana Thoroughbreds? They were. Would a publisher? The University of Oklahoma Press was.

 

I began the business of research and writing a historical nonfiction book. In the mornings we had coffee together, the horses, owners, jockeys, trainers, and me, and a glass of wine at night. One story I pieced together was that of the pioneer banker, Samuel Larabie.

Eighteen years old in 1863, the gold rushes in the West sounded a lot more adventurous to Larabie than his job as store clerk in a little grocery in Ormo, Wisconsin. Larabie prospected for gold in the Blackfoot City mining camp in the Montana Territory but was quick to figure out he could make more money selling dry goods to his fellow fortune hunters. Success came quickly, and he learned how to assay gold dust. With two partners, he built banks in the towns of Deer Lodge and Butte. Becoming a rich man, Larabie began to import highly bred Standardbred and Thoroughbred horses to the Deer Lodge Valley.

The circumstances that brought John Augustine “Gus” Eastin of Lexington, Kentucky, to Deer Lodge in 1882 are unclear, but it brought a fortuitous meeting with Larabie. Eastin, too, admired blooded horses. Larabie had a favorite Thoroughbred broodmare, Christine, who he had bred to a local Thoroughbred stallion named Regent. Larabie said to Eastin, “That mare is too good for the country out here. I want you to take her to Kentucky and keep her for me.” If Christine were in Kentucky, Larabie reasoned, she’d have access to America’s best Thoroughbred sires. On the train trip back to Lexington, Eastin found himself rocking in a stockcar with pregnant Christine.

When she foaled her colt in 1883, Larabie, wanting to thank his friend of all that he had done, offered Eastin half interest in the chestnut-colored colt. “If you do not think well of him,” Larabie wrote, “I will send you a jack-knife instead.” Eastin wisely chose half interest in Montana Regent.

That hot-wired colt would go on to become Montana’s first turf star.

The book is available for preorder through Oklahoma University Press: https://www.oupress.com/9780806195315/when-montana-outraced-the-east/