Year of the Horse 

All over the world, people will be celebrating the Lunar New Year on February 17, and welcoming the Year of the Fire Horse. One of the twelve Asian zodiac animals, the horse is a powerful presence that is said to bring luck and good fortune. It carries our hopes and dreams on its back as it gallops to meet the future with strength, stamina, and determination. 

There was a time, not very long ago, when horses were an important part of life throughout the Santa Monica Mountains. Even after the automobile arrived on the scene, horses remained a key form of transportation. Later, they became an essential part of recreation and home life. Today, Topanga and Old Agoura remain bastions of horse culture, but down in Malibu, and over in Calabasas, the horse is almost entirely a thing of the past.

Horses and mules were an important part of  life in Topanga in the homesteading years. They provided transportation for people and goods, helped clear the land for agriculture and plow the fields. Children rode horses to Topanga’s one-room school house or were conveyed by horse carts and wagons. Horses and mule teams provided the muscle to build the roads, including the coast route and the “new” canyon road that was completed in 1915, and that would ultimately eliminate the need for work horses in Topanga.

Topanga’s close proximity to Los Angeles and its rugged and beautiful landscape made it an early destination first for stage coaches carrying tourists to the scenic canyon and then by the first generation of automobile enthusiasts. Its popularity as a scenic destination resulted in a concerted push for better roads. 

The residents of the Yerba Buena District at the far western end of the Santa Monica Mountains remained dependent on horses for longer than the Topangans. This small community of homesteaders was more remote than Topanga. Horses and mules were the only way to get supplies. Until the indomitable May Knight Rindge, the owner of the entire Topanga, Malibu, Sequit Rancho and nearly thirty miles of coastline, was forced to give up the right of way to the coast route in 1923, travelers had two choices for the trip from Santa Monica to Oxnard along the coast: walk or ride on the beach sand at low tide. 

May Rindge herself was an accomplished rider who loved horses. So did her daughter, Rhoda Agatha Rindge Adamson. These two women continued to keep horses long after the automobile replaced them as a necessity.

When the Malibu Rancho was subdivided and sold in the 1940s and 50s, much of the land was designated RRII—rural residential—a zoning that permits horses and other livestock. In many neighborhoods bridle paths were designated on the parcel maps. 

Horses were so much a part of life in Malibu during the middle of the 20th century that the community came together in 1947 to hold the first—and apparently last—Malibu Remuda. The cars were parked in an empty field—now the  Ralphs shopping center. The horses were ridden down the middle of what is now Pacific Coast Highway, which in those days ran along Malibu Road. The event, sponsored by the American Legion, featured nearly a thousand riders and included a circus and an air show. Frank Morgan—the Wizard of Oz—opened the event by rowing to shore from his private yacht dressed in 16th century-style armor to reenact Cabrillo’s alleged 1542 arrival in Malibu. 

Many of the people involved in the Remuda went on to start Trancas Riders and Ropers a few years later. This group was a cornerstone of the horse community for decades. Young riders gathered for gymkhanas and “shrimp shows.”

There were still people who rode horses for work in those days, but in the decade following WWII even the few remaining ranchers in the back country traded most of their horses for tractors. Horses quickly became a hobby not a necessity.

In the post-WWII years, horse ranches began offering aspiring riders of all backgrounds a chance to learn to ride and the Santa Monica Mountains had plenty of space for them. Longtime Topanga resident Marsha Maus recalls being taught to ride by Del Gonzales at Rancho Maria Louisa in Latigo Canyon. She says Gonzales was a true horse whisperer who could guide his horses seemingly with telepathy.

Egon Mertz taught Ronald Reagan and Elizabeth Taylor how to ride at Rancho Sea Air in Malibu. He also taught generations of local children. His daughter, Gina McCloskey, continues the tradition, although the old ranch is now surrounded not by miles of open land but by mansions.

When a shopping center was built on Point Dume in the late 1960s, it had a hitching post outside, and it wasn’t unusual to see horses tied up while their riders shopped. Those riders also took their horses onto the beach and rode for miles at low tide, but the horse, so much a part of life in this seaside community, was on its way out. 

I know, because I was one of the children who grew up in the tail end of the Malibu horse era. I learned to ride bareback on friends’ horses. My friends and I hoarded our nickels and dimes and bought toy Breyer horses at garage sales from the older girls who had outgrown their horse phase and moved on to cars and boys and college. When I was a little older, I took “proper” riding lessons at Pepperdine University, In the days when the Malibu campus was much smaller and maintained an equestrian program. Lessons were offered to the public during the summer. 

James Wylie, the instructor and a life-long equestrian, chose each horse for its patience and its ability to teach foolish humans to ride. We learned our basic skills—including falling off—in the ring, but the best part of any lesson for me was the chance to go out on the trails that surrounded the school.

We rode past rock formations that sheltered enigmatic Chumash rock art; past wells, windmills, and water tanks—remnants of Malibu’s ranching era—and up along the ridgelines through unspoiled chaparral with the ocean far below, breathing dust and the hot, spicy scent of sage and sumac.

Those rides gave us a glorious feeling of freedom, but we also learned responsibility, for ourselves and for our large, stubborn, sensitive, kind, gentle and sometimes irascible horses. We learned to clean their hooves and groom them, check for bruises and scrapes, feed and muck out, avoid hooves and teeth and tails, and develop empathy for another species.

Even for those who didn’t ride, horses were part of the daily Malibu landscape: there were horses waiting for their humans at the market hitching posts, or poking inquisitive ears over the fence at the end of the road. There were children riding bareback on fat, grumpy Shetland ponies down the middle of the street, and beautiful, sleek horses dancing through the surf at the beach or flying across the sand at low tide on a winter evening.

Somewhere between then and now that horse culture slipped away. Point Dume without all of those horses is somehow less than it was before. We traded that world for one full of mansions and fences and golf carts.

There isn’t much room anywhere in Malibu for horses these days, except up some of the canyons, but in other parts of the Santa Monica Mountains horse culture still endures. One encounters riders on the trails in Topanga State Park, Paramount Ranch, and Rancho Sierra Vista. There are still horse ranches in Topanga, Old Agoura, Lobo Canyon, up Decker, and Yerba Buena, and Hidden Valley, in the Ventura County side of the mountains, is home to professional horse ranches. There are still plans to add equestrian camping facilities along the Backbone Trail through the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, although budget cuts have pushed that project out of reach for the moment, and many equestrians trailer their horses to the NRA to take advantage of hundreds of miles of trails. 

The horse symbolizes stamina and endurance. It has been an enduring presence in the history of our mountains, and remains a symbol of this area’s wild beauty and wild west history. Seeing the grace and strength of horses on the trail or in a neighbor’s corral never fails to raise one’s spirits. 

Happy Year of the Horse.