The American Quarter Horse: Fastest Animal on a Quarter Mile

Off Interstate Forty on the east side of Amarillo sits a museum dedicated to an animal that built the American West as completely as any tool or institution. The American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame and Museum tells the story of a breed that emerged from the colonial period, reached its defining form on the southern plains, and became, by registration count, the most numerous horse breed on earth.

The American Quarter Horse takes its name from its defining skill: covering a quarter mile of straight track faster than any other horse. In the colonial period, quarter-mile races were run on village streets and open roads. The breed that excelled at those bursts was compact, heavily muscled through the hindquarters, and capable of explosive acceleration in a way that thoroughbreds, built for longer distances, could not match.

On the working cattle ranch the same qualities translated directly. A horse that could accelerate to full speed in two strides could cut a calf from a herd, respond to a roping horse's pivot, and work all day in heat that would exhaust a longer-legged animal. The Quarter Horse became the working horse of the Panhandle ranches, the XIT, the JA, the LX, the LS, all of them stocked their remudas with the breed.

The American Quarter Horse Association was founded in Fort Worth in March of nineteen forty on a platform of registering, preserving, and promoting the breed. The organization moved its headquarters to Amarillo in nineteen forty-seven, and in nineteen eighty-nine broke ground on the Hall of Fame and Museum off Interstate Forty. The museum's archives collect documentation on every inductee, the horses and the humans, and the breed's role in the settlement of the continent.

The AQHA registry holds more entries than any other horse breed registry in the world. The number currently exceeds six million registered animals.