Riders Saddle Up for 14th Annual Santa Fe Trail Ride

SAN ANGELO, TX - Once again, it's almost time for the annual San Angelo Stock and Rodeo and participants are saddling up for the countless festivities. Whether you're a Texan or not, there is an allure to the old west and cowboy lifestyle, and if you've never experienced the "life," now is the chance.

Lynn Donaho is the chairman for the Santa Fe Trail Ride. He said, "I used to be on the rodeo committee and always wanted to do a trail ride. Years ago, I approached then rodeo chairman Mark Duncan, who was on the board, and he helped me get it started. Our event will start on Saturday, and this will be our 14th year."

Donaho added, "Registration starts [today], January 27, and our first ride will start off at the Glass Ranch in Sterling City on Saturday morning, January 28. From there, we will work our way back to San Angelo."

Originally, the group started with three wagons and around 15 riders in Coleman, Texas and worked their way to San Angelo, but now have gotten off the main highway for safety reasons.

This type of ride takes quite a bit of planning and coordinating, and, even Thursday morning, Donaho was busy loading hay.

"We've learned a lot over the years, and now we have 20-25 wagons and about 100 riders," he said. To participate, "it cost them $125 but that includes 24 meals. We feed 'em and we feed 'em good; anything from fish, barbecue chickens and baby back ribs, spaghetti, and even chicken and dumplings."  

It's pretty much like what one would see in old western shows, except the riders don't camp out in tents much anymore. Donaho said, "Everybody brings their travel trailers and horse trailers with sleeping quarters, but sometimes we sleep on the ground because we're so far back in ranches they can't get back to their vehicles."

He continued, "About five or six years ago, it got pretty dangerous out here, so I decided to see if I could get permission from the ranchers to ride through their property. I started with the Spade Ranch, which is almost 200,000 acres up by Mitchell County, close to Colorado City. Steve White is the ranch manger, and the ranch itself has a lot of history to it, having been established before 1886. The two brothers who started the Spade Ranch actually invented barbed wire. There were six cousins who owned and ran the ranch, and it's been in the same family for generations."

As for riding through the ranches versus the highway, Donaho said, "The thing about it is, when you get off the road in this part of the country, it can be pretty rough; and I wasn't sure how receptive people would be, [for a] few years back, we had lost a couple of wagons. I was shooting for how our forefathers did this. Sometimes, we have ranch roads and sometimes we have two track roads where only pickups have gone. But then there are times when we don't have any roads at all. Most people realize at this time of year everything is brown and ugly, but it all has thorns. We have people coming from Missouri, Minnesota, Washington, Wyoming, and all over the country where they don't have this rough-brushy-thorny terrain, so I tell them to come prepared with flaps on their wagons, and have precautions if they're pulling a rubber tire wagon."

Some of the wagons the riders use are from way back when, but there are still people who build their own nowadays.

"We have to get up and down some pretty steep hills, so some bring smaller wagons," added Donaho. "They're all equipped with heaters; most of them have built porta-potties in their wagons, which isn't really 'roughing it.'"

Jokingly he added, "We even get off into areas where there's no cell phone reception, but I don't mind that."

As for supplies and added necessities, Donaho said, "Once I get from point a to point b, I shuttle people back and forth in an old school bus; it's a lot of shuffling around. We have a load of donated firewood for cooking, and carry at least 1,000 gallons of water, but try to position ourselves to where we can get water every day, or at least every other day. We also try to stay in places close to the ranches water troughs. I try to take it back 150 years, and it's just a good old-fashioned trail ride we enjoy doing every year."

For more information, click here or contact Lynn Donaho at (325) 277-0304, or Tabitha Barker at (325) 812-4208.