Horses in the United States

This is an accepted version of this page Horses have been an important component of American life and culture since before the founding of the nation.

[1][2] There are an estimated 82,000[3] feral horses that roam freely in the wild in certain parts of the country, mostly in the Western United States.

[4][5] Horses remained an integral part of American rural and urban life until the 20th century, when the widespread emergence of mechanization caused their use for industrial, economic, and transportation purposes to decline.

Fossils of the earliest direct ancestor to the modern horse, Eohippus, have been found in the Eocene layers of North American strata, mainly in the Wind River basin in Wyoming.

[7] The genus Equus, which includes all extant equines, was plentiful in North America and spread into the Old World by about 2.5 mya.

[11] Digs in western Canada have unearthed clear evidence horses existed in North America as recently as 12,000 years ago.

For example, in Alaska, beginning approximately 12,500 years ago, the grasses characteristic of a steppe ecosystem gave way to shrub tundra, which was covered with unpalatable plants.

The extinctions were roughly simultaneous with the end of the most recent glacial advance and the appearance of the big game-hunting Clovis culture.

These were Iberian horses first brought to Hispaniola and later to Panama, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, and, in 1538, Florida.

Subsequent explorers, such as Coronado and De Soto brought ever-larger numbers, some from Spain and others from breeding establishments set up by the Spanish in the Caribbean.

They predominated through the southeast and western United States (then New Spain) from 16th century until about 1850, when crossbreeding with larger horse breeds changed the phenotype and diluted the Spanish genetic features.

[25] Formal horse racing in the United States dates back to 1665, when a racecourse was opened on the Hempstead Plains near Salisbury in what is now Nassau County, New York.

[27] The horse became an integral part of the lives and culture of Native Americans, especially the Plains Indians, who viewed them as a source of wealth and used them for hunting, travel, and warfare.