After four years in Craig, I finally saw the annual horse drive in Maybell.
Maybell is a small community (150 residents??) 30 miles west of Craig, and every May, for the last 40 years, Sombrero Ranch has moved its horse herd from Greystone through Sunbeam and Maybell, then east on SH 40 to their summer ranch in Big Gulch.
About 700 horses stream through Maybell; several hundred people come to see the horses. City folks pay money to do the ride with the cowboys and many have been coming to the event for years.
At the Big Gulch ranch, the horses are sorted, branded, inoculated and ridden enough to go to work on dude ranches and outdoor programs throughout Colorado.
The owners are very nice, gracious people. Queeda Mantle Walker, with her husband Rex Walker, have been in the business over 50 years. Queeda has written two lovely memoirs--"The Mantle Ranch" and "Last Ranch in Hell's Canyon", both are about Moffat County and Dinosaur National Monument and horses and sagebrush and growing up in Northwest Colorado.
It is extremely difficult for me to take pictures of horses, so this is my best effort. There are some extremely talented photographers in Moffat County that do a great job of capturing the grace and power of a big herd of multi-colored horses moving down the highway.
Finally, this is one of the buildings in Maybell that just strikes my fancy. It is across the street from the Maybell Park where lots of folks come to watch the horse drive.
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