The Hubbard Museum of the American West
Near Ruidoso, New Mexico
Right beside the racetrack in Ruidoso Downs is a museum that grew out of one woman's lifelong obsession with the horse. Anne Stradling grew up in New York high society, but she fell for the West as a girl, and as a young woman she performed in the famous One Hundred and One Ranch Wild West Show. Over her lifetime she gathered an astonishing hoard of horse-related treasures from around the globe, bits and spurs and bridles and saddles, thousands of objects in all.
In the late nineteen eighties, a couple named R.D. and Joan Dale Hubbard set up a nonprofit, and when Stradling looked for a permanent home for her collection, the pieces came together.
The collections were formally joined in the early nineteen nineties as the Museum of the Horse, later renamed the Hubbard Museum of the American West. It holds far more than tack and harness now, including stagecoaches, Native American artifacts, art, and photography. And it was later named an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution.
The museum sits on United States Highway Seventy at Ruidoso Downs, beside the track that hosts the All American Futurity, which claims to be the richest race in quarter horse racing. Its exhibits cover Native American, Hispanic, and Pioneer cultures, with saddles, wagons, and Western artifacts.
