Kip Gates and the Australian Stock Horse Society
It’s a warm June afternoon at the Gates Ranch, a remote cattle outfit located high in the
Rocky Mountains of Colorado; a one-hour drive northwest of the resort town of Vail. Jagged, snowcapped peaks pierce the horizon, jutting into an azure sky. The white noise of the rushing Colorado River emanates from a nearby canyon.
A dull staccato – the hoofbeats of dozens of horses – builds steadily from a faint suggestion of a whisper, rising in volume until it competes with, then overwhelms, the distant sound of whitewater
rapids. At last, a herd of dark-colored horses tops a crest and spills onto an impossibly green mountain
pasture. The herd is trailed by a fast-moving group of riders led by the ranch’s owner, Kip Gates, his bright red shirt standing out against the landscape. It’s a ‘Marlboro Man Moment’, with the requisite
elements – horseback cowboys at work against the backdrop of an unmistakably Western panorama –
with one wild card: the lineage of the running herd and the saddle horses in pursuit. Rather than the nearly ubiquitous Quarter Horses (or any of their many derivatives) one might expect to find on a North
American ranch, these horses are sons and daughters of the United States’ first Australian Stock Horse
breeding stallion, the animal Kip believes might just change the shape of the U.S. horse market.
