Name/Title
Print, PhotographicEntry/Object ID
2025.0.200Description
Copy of what looks like a photo album page containing a newspaper article with two photos.
"Snowshoes for horses! And here's photographic proof. They were used over a quarter century ago in the High Sierra above Bishop where Sabrina Dam was built at 9,000 feet elevation. Of heavy wood strongly reinforced they were 14 inches long, 11 1/2 wide, and attached with clamps over the hoofs. Horseshoe-shaped angleirons on the bottom made footing sure. Animals were also kept well shod in the regular manner and the sharp calks of their shoes fitted slits in the other contrivances, making them more secure. Dobbin could negotiate a load over deep snow and stay on top. The two spans of blacks illustrated here, owned and driven by John Henderson of Bishop, learned to trot at a good clip with the strange equipment. One night in March 1911, the shed in which they were kept at Sabrina collapsed under its terrible white burden and they were crushed to death. Mr. Henderson had the shoes made by Blacksmiths Bedford & Halliday. Origin of the idea is credited to the late Philip Perry Keough, pioneer stage driver and mail contractor, whose home was for years in Bishop near the Club's present Inyo-Mono district.In her delightful autobiography, "A Child Went Forth," Dr. Helen M. Doyle of Berkeley, long a noted Owens Valley physician, tells of having seen snowshoes on Bodie stage-coach horses in her girlhood days."