Last month we paused the Anne Stradling saga as she and new husband, Floyd, were settling into their ranch on Harshaw Road. With her daughter now grown and two marriages and trick riding days behind her, the time had finally arrived for Anne to transform her long-held dream of creating a Museum of the Horse into reality.

She seized the opportunity and set about searching for a suitable home for the enterprise. Not surprisingly, no such facility existed in Patagonia at the time, so she came up with an alternate plan—purchase prime property on the main commercial avenue and modify it to meet her ends. With plan and purpose firmly fixed, and ample access to the Schley family fortune, she acquired a row of buildings on McKeown Avenue and ingeniously unified them by erecting a large aircraft-type hangar overhead. After remodeling them for museum operations, she proudly opened her Museum of the Horse in 1960 in the space now occupied by Global Arts, Creative Spirits, Bowden’s Fitness and Vivapura Superfoods. Some of the features of the original buildings Anne bought and remodeled can still be seen in the Vivapura headquarters.

As one would expect, the museum featured all manner of things equine—everything from full-scale horse models, to saddles, blankets, bridles, bits, and artworks including Frederick Remington sculptures. Artifacts of the horse world were augmented by displays of her extensive collection of high quality American Indian jewelry and pottery. The gift shop, billed as the Indian Pony Trading Post, was well stocked with fine merchandise (much of it Native American) as well as souvenirs appropriate to the museum. The centerpiece of the museum, however, was the wagon display—so numerous were they that she had special elevated platforms built to create a double decker viewing arrangement that both enhanced the viewing experience and made maximum use of floor space.

In 1964, the draw of the museum, or perhaps Anne’s persona alone, was sufficient to merit a visit from none other than Senator Barry Goldwater as he campaigned for the U.S. presidency. Unfortunately, the visit was marred (but also made more memorable) when the horse drawn surrey he and Anne were riding in through town overturned, ejecting its passengers. Neither Anne nor Goldwater was injured, but it did not portend a good year for the Arizona statesman.

After operating the museum for over a decade, Anne recruited Doug Thaemert from New Mexico to establish a blacksmith shop within the museum, primarily to restore the dozens of wagons she wished to display. This decision turned out to be a stroke of genius as Thaemert’s team of restoration craftsmen brought wider recognition and higher regard to the museum.

Given the size of the town and its somewhat remote location, the museum never attracted the numbers Anne had hoped for, but it was nonetheless an economic shot in the arm for the region at a time when the local mining industry had already gone bust and the railroad was about to do its disappearing act. Business was brisk enough for Anne to be convinced that building an adjacent hotel would be worth the investment, so with the encouragement of John Wayne and other actors who filmed many movies nearby, she bought the mercantile building on the southwest corner of Third and McKeown, tore it down and built the 43-room Stage Stop Inn in the late 1960s at a cost of some $700,000—the equivalent of about $5 million in 2017 dollars.

Anne Stradling and her museum are now gone but not forgotten by longtime residents of this community and next month I will share some of their remembrances of life in Patagonia as shaped by this extraordinary woman.