Spring Creek Basin HMA

To date, NMA/CO has invested more than $175,000 of private funds
into the Spring Creek Basin HMA and untold amounts of fuel and labor.

To date, NMA/CO has invested more than $175,000 of private funds into the Spring Creek Basin HMA and untold amounts of fuel and labor.

traveler-claude-steelman-home

The Spring Creek Basin Herd

The National Mustang Association-Colorado (NMACO) has been instrumental in the successful management of the Spring Creek Basin Herd of the Disappointment Valley in Colorado for more than twenty years.  NMACO has also played an important role in rescuing mustangs and other wild horses around the Southwest.   To date, NMACO has invested more than $175,000 in the Spring Creek Basin and countless hours of volunteer time and labor.

The Spring Creek Basin herd includes bays, blacks, duns, sorrels, grays and pintos.  Legend says that in the early 1900s, a Montana rancher came to Disappointment Valley with a herd of stolen horses that he raised to sell to the U.S. Cavalry and other groups. When the law began to close in on him, he gathered some of his horses and quickly left the area. A nineteenth century Colorado resident purchased a well-known race horse named Jim Douglas, and won races with Jim Douglas in several venues around the country, setting a new world record in Chicago in 1886.  Since Jim Douglas was turned out to stud on the Johnson ranch, speculation has it that some of the wild horses in the Disappointment carried his genes.  According to BLM literature, local ranchers managed the remaining horses by culling undesirable horses and adding their own stock, and now the BLM manages the herd under the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971.

The Spring Creek Basin Herd

The National Mustang Association-Colorado (NMACO) has been instrumental in the successful management of the Spring Creek Basin Herd of the Disappointment Valley in Colorado for more than twenty years.  NMACO has also played an important role in rescuing mustangs and other wild horses around the Southwest.   To date, NMACO has invested more than $175,000 in the Spring Creek Basin and countless hours of volunteer time and labor.

The Spring Creek Basin herd includes bays, blacks, duns, sorrels, grays and pintos.  Legend says that in the early 1900s, a Montana rancher came to Disappointment Valley with a herd of stolen horses that he raised to sell to the U.S. Cavalry and other groups. When the law began to close in on him, he gathered some of his horses and quickly left the area. A nineteenth century Colorado resident purchased a well-known race horse named Jim Douglas, and won races with Jim Douglas in several venues around the country, setting a new world record in Chicago in 1886.  Since Jim Douglas was turned out to stud on the Johnson ranch, speculation has it that some of the wild horses in the Disappointment carried his genes.  According to BLM literature, local ranchers managed the remaining horses by culling undesirable horses and adding their own stock, and now the BLM manages the herd under the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971.