"Fifty-one years ago, Rex Walker started Sombrero Ranches with 16 rented horses and an old broken down pickup truck. From that inauspicious beginning in Boulder, Colo., Sombrero Ranches has grown to be the country's largest provider of saddle horses. The main operation is in Colorado, but the extended Walker family provides saddle horses in Wyoming and Montana. All together, Rex Walker estimates that the Walker family runs over 5,000 head of horses.



Guest Riders and wranglers drive the 600 Sombrero Ranch horses across their first of three crossings of the Yampa River on the way to the Big Gulch Ranch near Craig, Colorado.

Cowboy tradition runs deep at Sombrero Ranches and 26 years ago Rex Walker decided to share the experience of gathering and moving a large herd of horses from their wintering pasture on BLM lands, 62 miles to the Sombrero “Big Gulch” Ranch located just west of Craig, Colo. The Great American Horse Drive was started and each year Sombrero has to turn away some of the eager guest riders that want to share Rex Walker's vision of “trying to keep the West alive.”



Although guest riders pay for the experience ($1790 each), they are not coddled and, to the best of their ability, are expected to be participating members of the horse drive. Experience is not required, but it does make the time spent in the saddle a little easier. The real requirement to making it through to the end and receiving the coveted, custom made “Gate to Gate” buckle is determination. If a guest rider shows desire and grit, the trained Sombrero wranglers will go all out to make a success finish happen.



The Sombrero Ranches Great American Horse Drive is not a dude ranch, and involves some long and serious riding. Most guest riders end up sore but happy when it is over. Experienced rider Kathy Sabine said, “My horse is a naturally gaited Missouri Foxtrotter, which made the 62 miles a lot easier and more comfortable. I'm a little sore in the shoulders from holding him in because he really wants to run.”

Phill Goodman, whose experience amounted to some casual riding when he was a boy, had a different reaction. “I don't think I have ever been this sore. It's well worth it, though — the people, the scenery, and everything that you get to do on this drive that you don't get to do anywhere else. It's been amazing — well worth the time, the effort, and the soreness.”

The horse drive is held yearly during the first week of May — rain or shine, or even snow in the unsettled weather of spring in Colorado. Book early because the Great American Horse Drive is fully booked every year. If this sounds like your kind of adventure, call Lee Peters at (720) 684-6424."



Six hundred horses pass through Maybell, Colo., during the Sombrero Ranches Great American Horse Drive. During the Drive, there are more horses than people in Maybell.

-- The Fence Post, May 31, 2010

Yes, I know it's like that movie.