Golden Afternoon

by Marty Fancy

Title

Golden Afternoon

Artist

Marty Fancy

Medium

Photograph

Description

One of the wild horses of the Rachel Carson Estuarine Reserve, Beaufort, NC

Like the wild Shackleford mustangs, Beaufort's wild horses can only be reached by boat, where they have free run of the main area of Rachel Carson Estuarine Reserve, made up of Town Marsh, Carrot Island, Bird Shoal and Horse Island. Another part of the reserve called Middle Marshes is not accessible to the horses. The reserve acreage is not suitable for human habitation and has extremely little fresh water, which is mostly ground water the horses find by digging.

Unlike North Carolina's other three groups of wild horses, the Beaufort horses' lineage is not isolated to the bloodlines of the Colonial Spanish Mustangs, though they surely carry some of that historic heritage. These horses are descended from stock kept on these islands in the 1940s by the Beaufort doctor who then owned the land. The original herd consisted of "Banker Ponies", like those on Ocracoke, along with some domestic breeds - mainly Quarter Horses. Though they are today considered "feral" horses, many of them plainly exhibit the characteristics of the wild Outer Banks horses descended from the spanish mustang stock that first arrived on these barrier islands as far back as the early 1500's. In fact, some of these horses carry the primitive markings of the most ancient of wild horse breeds and types.

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November 19th, 2014

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