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Our Program - Legacy Ranch

The AMF is working and partnering with local equestrian and recreational organizations (Georgetown Divide Recreation District, El Dorado Equestrian Trails Foundation, Divide Horsemen’s Association, Cool/Pilot Hill Advisory Committee), governmental agencies (i.e., BLM, NRCS, USDA, etc.) and nearby 2- and 4-year educational institutions to create and develop the Legacy Ranch. Legacy Ranch will include a mustang gentling and training facility, regional equestrian facility, a working farm and environmental center, an institute for advanced learning (in training, leadership, equine assisted psychotherapy, and team-building), and overnight lodging and eating facilities.

Through Legacy Ranch, the AMF will support and fund our overall mission by:

Program Elements

In order to meet our primary goals of education and decreasing the numbers of wild horses being held in BLM holding pens, the AMF will develop a number of facilities to achieve these ends.

Mustang Transition and Settling Facility

The American Mustang Foundation (AMF) will work with the BLM to receive wild horses that have not been handled. Trainers will gentle and start these horses under saddle. Horses will be available for purchase at different levels of training. Initially, we hope to train 50 horses per year. Each year, we hope to double the number of horses and donkeys gentled to reach 1,000 per year. As funding and marketing allows, the number of trainer interns and the scale of the training operation will increase to accommodate all unadopted mustangs in holding facilities nationwide.

At the heart of the AMF Program is the American Mustang Transition & Settling Facility (MTSF). The MTSF will be a state-of-the-art, in structure, in method, and in purpose. Adhering to the strict guidelines of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for housing and handling, we will design a facility that allows efficient, low-stress movement of the horses and maximum productivity during the gentling and training process. We will also institute a natural gentling, handling and training procedure to include a combination of both the “tried and true” and the “cutting-edge” new methods. Our goal will be to instill a willing, trusting, confident and respectful spirit into each and every horse.

The AMF will work to place every adoptable horse in humane private care, despite age and will improve the “adoptability” of the wild horse by accentuating and demonstrating his ability to accept, adapt to, and, even, excel in domestic disciplines. We will accomplish this through keeping accurate records for health, feed, and behavior, collecting video proof of the training process, and recording each horse’s progress through specific steps or goals in the “program”, providing as much specific data on each animal as possible. As the horses are always for sale while in the program (at any stage after “gentled”), this will be important to show a potential buyer/adopter exactly where that specific horse is in his training progress, health, and feed consumption needs and to match more accurately for personality, behavior, and experience

Horses will go through different stages of training and can be purchased at any time:

Mustang Training

In our training program, each animal will be “certified” as they accomplish the specific goals at each level of training. These records can then be compiled, tracked and analyzed to ensure that our training program is developing good, solid, trustworthy animals; that each trainer is accomplishing his or her goals on a consistent basis; and that we can provide the proof necessary that this specific program is vital to and a proto-type for creating successful adoptions and long-term function of these wild horses.

We will have full time trainers and assistant trainers. We will also have student interns who will work with these professional trainers over a 3-6 month period. There will be rotations of trainers per quarter/semester. Student trainers must have prior horsemanship abilities to qualify for the program and then must go through our program and be certified to work with the mustangs. This will help ensure consistency in achieving training goals for the horses. Our goal is to work with equine studies programs at local, national and international college level.

(See Appendix C for more detail of what our horses will be expected to perform at each level.)

Sales and Leasing

The AMF would hold major sale campaigns each year. The proceeds of the sale of each horse will go back into the AMF program while the BLM will receive their standard $125 adoption fee per horse.

A horse may be leased from the AMF at any time per month. These horses can be used for arena, trail and endurance riding depending on the rider’s demonstrated capabilities. The leasee would have access to the horse a set number of days per week for riding.

Community members can adopt a wild horse and take each training level as a clinic, thereby starting and gentling their own horse.

Virtual Ownership

Anyone in the world may “virtually own” a mustang by paying for the actual cost to care for, gentle and train it in their chosen discipline. They will build a relationship with the trainer and the horse through weekly or daily communication. At any point, they may visit their horse and can ultimately adopt it from the BLM.

Equestrian Facilities

The AMF’s regional equestrian facility will include covered and outdoor spectator arenas; warm-up and training arenas; offices, classrooms and instructional areas (for clinics, college classes, equine-assisted psychotherapy, training and more); livestock facilities; horse barns; eating establishments; retail venues; and parking for the large events.

The AMF’s equestrian facilities will attract horse owners to recreate and enjoy the facilities in a community fashion. Events such as clinics, shows, competitive trail rides, Future Farmers of America (FFA) competitions and high school rodeo events can be held in this facility.

Our overnight horse accommodations will be very comfortable for both the horses and their owners, encouraging multiple visits per year to our facility. Kiosks will provide detailed trail information about trails available on National Forest, BLM, and State Park lands throughout El Dorado and Placer Counties.

Equestrian Museum

The focus of the museum exhibits is to walk visitors 300 years of settlement in the West demonstrating the tremendous changes and impacts that have occurred, from the Native Americans to the Gold Rush and the industrial revolution to modern times, through the eyes of the horse.

The AMF expects 35,000 (50% of the current number of student visitors to the Coloma area each year) school children and 25% of the 150,000 yearly tourists (37,500 adults). We will have a full time Curator and Assistant Curator.

Round Barn – Landmark of Horse Ranching

Visitors would start their museum visit at the Round Barn for an introduction of the experience to follow. An outline of displays in the Round Barn is included in Appendix B.

Round Barns date back to the 1800’s. They were built for the purpose of breaking horses in the winter. At that time ranchers ran several thousand horses, and so horses had to be broken every day of the year regardless of weather. The framing of the round barn is unique, with the umbrella-type center truss and centrally supported rafters. It may measure one hundred feet in diameter with a sixty-foot round stone corral in the middle and an outer circle paddock twenty feet wide. This type of structure not only makes a nice layout for a still-life museum and visitor center, but also fits the mission.

Living History Museum

“Living History” is taken to mean just that. The efforts of history museums, historical societies, and other educational organizations is to truly engage the public with the impact of history on their lives today. The unique feature of the Living History Museum is the ability to interpret change though time. In short, the goal is to bring history to life. (See Appendix E for the proposed Periods that the Living History Museum would cover.

Following a tour of the Round Barn, visitors will then walk through chronological exhibits of the Living History Museum. Each site will be authentically replicated with the horses and agricultural practices of the period. There will be docents at each site that discuss life as it was during that time.

“Since Yesteryear” Theater

The “trails end” of the museum tour ends in a theatre-style setting where visitors can sit back and watch a video featuring wild horses and burros throughout the West. For most, this is as close to experiencing the thrill of a band of wild horses racing across the desert as they will ever get. The video will discuss where wild horses live today, the structure of wild horse society, why wild horses need to be managed and by whom, the Adopt-a-Horse program, research studies, why the wild horse is so controversial and most of all, why the wild horse is still a valuable resource worth protecting.

Overnight Accommodations

Overnight horse trailer parking and tent sites, including restroom facilities, will be available for equestrians to stage the Western States Trail, Tevis Trails, Cool Trails, and Cronan Ranch. Running water will be provided for horses as well as pipe corrals.

Other various levels of accommodations will include private cabins and a bunkhouse. The bunkhouse will be provided to house school children visiting from greater distances than Sacramento and for corporate retreats. A camp kitchen will be available to cater meals.

We will have a full time coordinator to plan overnight stays and tours, a caterer to prepare meals, and a camp attendant to clean and maintain the camp facilities.