The little Invention That Changed Horseback Riding
August 16 2010
If you have ever climbed aboard a western saddle you know it isn’t too complicated to adjust your stirrups you just slide the leathers up and match the buckle with the four holes, ah but it wasn’t always that way and it took a bull dogger from Wyoming to make things easier for all of us. I’m Susan Allen stay tuned for OpenRange. Nearly every western saddle today has a quick and easy buckle type system to help riders adjust the length of their stirrups. What we take for granted is a relatively new invention that revolutionized western riding. In fact prior to World War II western stirrups were fastened with leather laces, that is until Earl Blevins a steer wrestler from Wyoming was drafted into the Coast Guard’s horse patrol. While leather laced stirrups were great if you rode the same horse in the same saddle they were a big pain for Earl each night when he had to ride a different horse for each patrol. Then he would have to stop and take fifteen to twenty minutes to rethread the stirrups to fit his leg length. So in his down time with the military the bulldogger devised a blunt buckle with flat pins and a cover that worked, literally like a snap. After the war, he began to use the Blevins Quick Change Buckles at rodeos and peddle them to saddle shops making them all by hand. By 1949 he had a company in Wheatland Texas and was mass producing what is now a standard for all western saddles. The Quick change Stirrup . I’m Susan Allen
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