Anne Stradling and the Museum of the Horse

“Hell, I was damned near born on a horse,” Anne Stradling once told a reporter. “They barely got Mother off the saddle in time to make it to the maternity ward.”

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_{1986 Star files}

_{Anne C. Stradling in her Patagonia museum.}

From that beginning, Stradling went on to develop her passionate love of horses, while riding with her father on fox hunts in New Jersey.

She developed her interest in the Southwest from her grandfather who traveled in extensively in the frontier selling locomotives.

She always wanted to move West and marry a cowboy. In fact, she married three. Following two divorces, she married Floyd Stradling and they moved to Patagonia, in southern Arizona.

It was there, in 1960, that her two passions were united when she founded the Stradling Museum of the Horse. A place that was devoted to exhibits on horses and that also expressed her love of the Southwest. The Museum of the Horse traced the history of the horse from Greek to modern times.

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_{1984 Star files}

_{An ancient Roman horse comb and and ancient Greek chariot bit were part of the collection.}

Housed in one-room, on State Highway 82 in Patagonia, the displays included wagons, coaches and all kinds of horse artifacts that Stradling had collected over the years. Many family treasures were also on display.

There was a large collection of Indian and Southwestern art and relics. Works by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell were part of the museum.

The Stradlings, whose nearby ranch had the W-Lazy-A brand, built a motel in Patagonia, to provide for the expected tourists to the area. In 1972, the 43 unit Stage Stop Motel opened for business. The couple hoped to hold horse-oriented seminars and study sessions there.

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_{1984 Star files}

_{A mannequin in a horse-drawn sleigh.}

By 1984, the collection had grown to six-rooms and had an estimated value of over $4 million. Admission of $2 was charged for entrance. But, the museum could not support itself. Stradling said it was costing her at least $10,000 a year to operate. They had already sold the motel several years earlier after losing too much money.

The situation did not improve and, in 1986, Stradling announced she was looking to relocate the museum. She expressed her displeasure with the support she had received from Patagonia and its residents. “I don’t think I owe a (bleep-bleep) thing to Patagonia,” she said.

In 1991, Stradling donated her collection of over 10,000 pieces to the Hubbard Museum in Ruidoso, N.M. It was appraised at appraised at $10 million. The following year, the Anne C. Stradling Museum of the Horse opened.

Stradling died a few months before the gala grand opening. She was 78.