For obvious reasons, the arrival of “the horseless carriage” was quite welcomed by many city-dwellers in the early 1900’s. The coming of the automobile dealt another large blow to the horse. A number of articles in popular periodicals repeated the argument by a writer in Munsey’s Magazine that "the horse has become unprofitable. He is too costly to buy and too costly to keep."

Despite their incomparable dependability, it was society as a whole that was now saying “neigh” to the working class horse. But the horse did not disappear from the city scene overnight. It was more of a function-by-function phase-out. While horse-powered machines remained a manufacturing necessity until about 1850, they were largely replaced by other energy sources within a decade. The next duty of the urban horse to disappear was that of pulling streetcars. Their demise was very rapid, as between 1888 and 1892 almost every street railway in the U.S. was electrified.

In 1906, city buses replaced horse-drawn buses on Fifth Avenue, New York City. In 1912, New York, London, and Paris traffic counts all showed more cars than horses for the first time. By 1907, many professionals, including urban doctors, were doing business by way of the horseless carriage. Motorized cabs became commonplace around the same time. The drop in Model T prices that followed after Henry Ford opened the first assembly line plant in 1913, led to the massive adoption of cars by commuters.

Ford had introduced the $600 Model N in 1906. Deluged with orders, afterward, Ford was able to make deliveries of a hundred cars a day. Encouraged by the success of the Model N, Ford was determined to build an even better "car for the great multitude." In 1908, the Model T sold for $825. The Model T Runabout sold for $575. By the time the Model T was withdrawn from production in 1927, its price had been reduced to $290 for the coupe, 15 million units had been sold, mass personal "automobility" had become a reality and the era of the horse was, for all intents and purposes, gone.

Although the industrialized world has dispensed with horses for daily work and transport, our nation’s history and culture are more bound to the horse than to any other animal. Today, for many, the horse lives only on the margins of human society.

Not so in Erath County, Texas. Though horses seemingly have no more room to roam, what animal standing alone in a field has the unique ability to rekindle such age-old affections that lie deep within the breast of most city-dwellers?

Only a horse, of course.

As Joe Pope said about owning horses, with a knowing smile on his face, “It’s romantic. Purely romantic.”