Mr. Appaloosa

He's known as "Mr. Appaloosa." For more than 60 years, George Hatley's life and the great spotted horses of Idaho's Palouse country have been inextricably connected.

Hatley was born some 82 years ago in this country of rolling hills, golden wheat fields, and spectacular river canyons. He met his beloved Iola on a blind date after serving in the Navy during World War II; they've been married for nearly 60 years.

Hatley became the Appaloosa Horse Club's first executive secretary in 1947, when the club boasted a modest 200 registered horses with 100 owners. During his energetic 31-year tenure, the ApHC became the third-largest light-breed registry, with more than 300,000 horses.

As executive secretary, Hatley oversaw or instigated a number of firsts: He founded and edited the ApHC's first magazine, Appaloosa News, which later become the Appaloosa Journal; published the first Appaloosa studbook; and managed the first national Appaloosa show and first national sale.

Hatley also helped organize the first Chief Joseph Trail Ride, today the club's premier trail ride, in which riders and their Appaloosa horses retrace, in segments, the 1,300-mile route of the Nez Percé as they fled before the U.S. Cavalry.

Throughout the years, Hatley has bred and raised Appaloosas, using them on his cattle ranch, and riding and packing them into high mountain country. He took two of his Appaloosas to the grueling Western States One Hundred Miles in One Day Endurance Ride (known as the Tevis Cup). He completed the course aboard one, while a friend guided the other across the finish line. At the Tevis, "you have to be mindful not to run out of horse - or out of time," he says with a smile. Obviously, he had an excess of both.

In 2006, the inaugural National Championship Appaloosa Endurance Ride featured the George Hatley Cup, a perpetual trophy awarded to the best-conditioned horse among the first 10 finishers.

The Hatleys continue to be active in the ApHC: George is vice president of the Appaloosa Museum and Heritage Center board, and Iola serves as secretary, helping to oversee yet another brainchild. "Like the Appaloosa Horse Club, the museum had its birth in the basement of the home of George and Iola Hatley in Moscow, Idaho, in the 1940s," notes current museum president King Rockhill.

Read on to meet trailblazer George Hatley, a man with an enduring passion for the spotted horses of the Palouse.

TTR: What was your childhood like?

Hatley: I was born in eastern Washington state, south of Pullman, on a farm that had been homesteaded by my grandfather in 1877. His name was Riley Hatley, and he came to the area by wagon. It's in the Union Flat area, called that because several former Union soldiers settled in that country. My grandfather was a former Union soldier, too. I was born in 1924 and lived there until 1936.

TTR: When did you learn to ride a horse?

Hatley: My father taught me to ride before I started elementary school. It was a necessity, you see. I rode a horse every day to the country school near Union Flat Creek. There were no school busses, and that's what all the children did.

The school was about a mile and a half from where we lived. My horse was a bay mare named Gypsy, and everybody called her Gyp. She was just an ordinary farm horse. When I was old enough to enter high school, my parents moved the family closer to Moscow, Idaho, where there were school busses. Today, the farm we lived on is the site of the Appaloosa Horse Club building, as well as the Appaloosa Museum.