Rural Heritage December 2025/January 2026

by Dick Courteau T he reader of Rural Heritage has already decided that work horses are a good thing, and that he or she would like to learn the skill of handling them. No argument is needed, therefore, to justify the worthwhileness of this activity. But I would like to offer some general comments on the uses of horse power and its place in our lives, along with a few particular observations on where live horsepower can be used to greater or lesser advantage, and how much you can expect to get done. The first big horses (Percherons) were not imported into the U.S. until 1839, at about the same time that new machines, sophisticated but still relatively simple, were being developed to take advantage of the horse’s reliable power and speed (as compared to hand labor or even the ox). As the 20th century dawned, then, an agriculture powered almost entirely by horses was still a relatively new thing on the American scene, but now the horse was going to have to compete with an even newer development. During the first two decades of the 1900s, the newly invented gasoline tractor began to rumble into American fields. As the tractors grew more powerful and efficient during the twenties and thirties, the horsemen countered by devising big What Can Horses Do?

The first big horses (Percherons) were not imported into the U.S. until 1839.

Photo by Daniel J. Kasztelan

Rural Heritage

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