MONUMENTS TO LEGENDARY HORSES
By Diane DeBlois

Equestrian monuments have been proudly erected all over the United States -- King Jagiello and Simon Bolivar, for instance, ride their bronze steeds in New Yor''s Central Park. And some of these monuments focus on the horses themselves, like the fine new statue honoring the Pony Express in Marysville, Kansas.
But I've been intrigued by the roadside attraction of monuments that are actual equine graves.

One is in my own town of Sand Lake, New York. The tombstone was placed in 2001, but the grave of Moscow, the Civil War horse, had been a local attraction for generations. (This Moscow should not be confused with the white horse of the same name owned by General Philip Kearny, who retired him in favor of a steed of less conspicuous appearance.) While he was alive, Moscow acquired the status of a legend. He was given to James Gill Averill by a local veteran, who knew that Averill was a Civil War buff. Averill paraded Moscow at Decoration Day events and, when he purchased a plot in the Union Cemetery, made sure that there was enough room for the horse to be buried near him. But Averill died first, in 1881, and his son, James Knox Averill, took over the care of Moscow. The horse's wartime owner is not known (the best guess is Sergeant James E. Clark of the Griswold Cavalry who enlisted in 1863, the only cavalry officer from the town

Sign to the cemetery, in the hamlet of Sand Lake, Town of Sand Lake

and who is recorded as living in the nearby city of Troy in the 1870s) but legend made Moscow a hero -- rescuing his soldier from a battlefield. Moscow's death also became legendary - deemed too old to parade one Decoration Day, he responded to the marching music by jumping over his stable fence, but died of a heart attack before he could join the procession. James K. Averill had him buried on the Averill mound, at the foot of his father's grave and near where he, himself, would be interred in 1900.

The idea of retiring a hero-horse to the town of Sand Lake was appropriate. A small stream runs by the Union Cemetery, called Horse Heaven Brook -- after the meadow area upstream called Horse Heaven where Erie Canal horses spent the winters.

An even more legendary horse was Trigger -- known to millions by Roy Rogers' radio and television appearances. Indeed, of the 200,000 visitors who yearly visit the Roy Rogers/Dale Evans Museum in Branson, Missouri, most come to see the deceased Trigger. Roy Rogers, Jr., who manages the museum, says: "We close at five and stop selling tickets at 4:30. But people come after that and beg to get in for a few minutes. They drove 3,000 miles just to see Trigger. We let them in -- and they go away, happy."
Trigger died in 1965 at the age of 33. And he is not stuffed - his hide was stretched over a plaster likeness and exhibited in his trademark stance reared on his hind legs. The pose even appeared on the cover of a Finnish youth magazine in 1951 - the inside article featuring the life of "Triggerillään."

Cover of Joka Poika, a periodical published in Helsinki, October 1951

The illustration in color of a very similar pose is from the Official Souvenir Program sent to fans of the Roy Rogers television show in the late 1950s. The booklet included snapshots of Trigger on the 1954 tour to England, and a "Pledge for Parents" that "Roy's Double R Bar" brand toys and clothing would never be "carnival merchandise." Sears, Roebuck and Co. were the official purveyors of such finery - as the page from their Fall and Winter 1956 catalog shows. A rearing Trigger appeared on a cowboy's chaps or a cowgirl's skirt, and all who wore it wished they could be raised on Roy and Dale's Chatsworth, California, ranch.

When the 230 acres became too much, the Rogers (and Trigger) moved to the Apple Valley where their first museum was opened in Victorville and where Trigger was posed for eternity …until the move to Missouri in 2003.

But California does celebrate a dearly-beloved horse who died in 1966. Blackie, born 1926 in Kansas, had been a rodeo cutting horse brought to California and then sold to the cavalry at San Francisco's Presidio who used him to patrol Yosemite in summers. In 1938, just before retirement, Blackie won a bet for his owner by swimming from the Marin

County side of the Bay to San Francisco's Crissy Field in 23 minutes and 15 seconds. His new owner, Anthony Cornell, retired him to a meadow on the corner of Tiburon Boulevard and Trestle Glen Road on Richardson Bay, across from the city. For twenty-eight years, Blackie was a fixture of the landscape for commuters by rail (the passenger line ran until 1967) or by ferry (a service that lapsed in 1941 but resumed in the 1960s).

When Blackie died at the ripe old age of forty, "Blackie's Pasture" was acquired by the town, and the Marin County Health Department gave permission for him to be buried there - with a grave marker that incorporates a photograph of the small black horse with the alarmingly extreme swayback. A bronze full size statue of a slightly-less-swayed Blackie was commissioned from artist Albert Guibara by the children of Tiburon's first mayor, Gordon Strawbridge.

Kids adore the statue of Blackie and enthusiastically climb onto his comfortable back, slide off and play on his seaside meadow. In life he became mascot for a whole community; in commemoration he continues to be.

(This article first appeared in the Journal of Commercial Archeology.)

Certificate for a cemetery plot in Sand Lake Union Cemetery purchased by Joseph Crape in 1863, for his son, Joseph, who had been injured while serving with the 10th New York Regiment and who had just died at home. The 16 x 20 plot was large enough to accommodate Mrs. Crape in 1890 and Joseph senior in 1892.	Announcement of a trustees meeting for the Sand Lake Union Cemetery - in the decade after the Civil War, when James Gill Averill purchased his double plot, planning to have Moscow buried with him.	Interior page of the Finnish magazine	Blackie's statue near his grave
Interior page of the program	Page 461 of Sears, Roebuck & Company's Fall and Winter 1956 catalog.	Blackie's grave, Tiburon	Cover of Roy Rogers television program souvenir

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