Working Lines
One-Eyed Waggoner
Waggoner or One Eyed Waggoner was a flea bitten gray stallion that made a great contribution to the American Quarter Horse. Photo courtesy The AQHA Hall of Fame and Museum. By Larry Thornton Peter McCue is the famous quarter horse foundation sire that has had a phenomenal influence on the modern pedigree. This great stallion was able to make a widespread contribution because he stood in different regions of the country–Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado–spreading his blood throughout the quarter horse industry. One of Peter McCue’s descendants was Waggoner P-2691. Waggoner is one of those horses that just seems to keep showing up in the pedigree history of our horses today. He seems to have gotten around as a sire. Thus Waggoner was like Peter McCue in that he made a contribution everywhere he went. Here is his story and some of his
contributions to the breed. Waggoner was also known as One Eyed Waggoner and you may see this name in reference to one of his unregistered foals. Waggoner was born in 1930 on the famed W. T. Waggoner Ranch of Vernon, TX. The Waggoner Ranch, “the largest ranch under one fence” with 535,000 continuous acres, was established in 1849 by Dan Waggoner and passed to his son, W. T. “Tom” Waggoner. Tom Waggoner was the father of three children, E. Paul, Electra and Guy. E. Paul is the most familiar to us as the owner of the AQHA Hall of Fame stallion Poco Bueno. (See sidebar.) Tom Waggoner once made the statement, "I want to run the most cattle, breed the best horses and
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work harder than anyone." The part about “breed the best horses” has been the goal of the Waggoner Ranch since its inception. The horses that made significant contributions to the Waggoner Ranch include Yellow Wolf, Yellow Jacket, Midnight, Cotton Eyed Joe, Blackburn, Pretty Boy, Waggoner’s Rainy Day P-13, Pep Up, Poco Bueno and Beaver Creek. Some others not as famous that came through the Waggoner Ranch are Doctor Mack, Cloverleaf, Folsom and Comet. One of the more interesting summaries of the horses on the Waggoner Ranch came from Franklyn Reynolds in his piece, “The Waggoner Horses,” in the October 1956 issue of The American Quarter Horse Journal. This article will draw on material from that book. Tom Waggoner was always on the lookout for good horses. He was an avid horseman that would buy a horse and send that horse to the ranch with specific instructions on how to use that animal in the breeding program. Lige Reed, a Waggoner Ranch manager, told Franklin Reynolds, “Mr. Waggoner knew the breeding on all his stallions, but he never bothered to tell me what it was and I never asked him. Whenever he heard of a good horse some place, he’d buy him and notify us he was coming and we’d try him out. If he proved to be a good sire, we kept him. If he wasn’t a good sire, we got rid of him.” So there was a steady stream of horses coming to the Waggoner Ranch. Midnight, a grandson of Peter McCue, was one of them, arriving at the ranch in about 1923. Midnight was the sire of Waggoner, the one-eyed horse. Midnight was used for a number of years on the
WORKING HORSE MAGAZINE • Sept./Oct. 2013