by Monica Hayde
In the mid-1870s, Leland Stanford was struck with what he was sure was a downright brilliant idea for boosting the economy of the United States. It was beautifully simple, declared the distinguished governor and soon-to-be senator and university founder, a man known for his vision and foresight.
Horses, carefully bred horses, he said, were the future of America, the country's hope for economic vitality and strong productivity.
He envisioned a time when every family could own a strong, yet light driving horse, a physically sound beast that was easy to keep and could pull a light carriage at a trot for hours without tiring.
Driven by this vision, and a love of horses, Stanford began in 1876 to purchase 8,800 acres of land on the Midpeninsula for his Palo Alto Stock Farm. He crowned his massive farm with a gorgeous Victorian red barn. Of course it was this Stock Farm that would eventually become Stanford University.
This Saturday's Red Barn Festival, a benefit to raise funds for upkeep on and preservation of the historic, always-in-need-of-repair Red Barn, celebrates "horses through the centuries" with a day of riding, jumping and racing demonstrations. The Red Barn and a small shed are the only remnants of the farm that became the Farm.
According to Bill Lane, founder and former publisher of Sunset Magazine publisher, alumnus, horse lover and honorary festival chairman, the Red Barn Festival actually celebrates much more than a building that still houses 30-some-odd horses (private boarders and the Stanford Equestrian Team).
"I've always seen the Palo Alto Stock Farm as the seed for the whole synergism of the university and the City of Palo Alto," Lane says. "And it goes beyond that: our love of open space, the intellectual environment and the whole research thrust of Stanford, which even carries over to all of Silicon Valley--all had its roots, so to speak, in the Palo Alto Stock Farm and the scientific research Stanford did there."
In the late 1800s, when Darwinian thought was still a novelty, Stanford proposed the theory that better horses could be fostered by selective breeding. It was an intriguing notion in the world of horse racing, where many still believed that speed was more the result of training, or even pure luck, than genes.
But Stanford went even further: well-bred horses could be a boon to the American economy, he declared.
"There is a great difference in the capacity of horses to perform labor, some horses lasting three or four times as long in laborious service as the average," Stanford told a newspaper. "It seems to me that the majority might be bred up to the standard of the best, thus increasing the average value $100 per horse. The increased value would represent a gain of 13 hundred millions of dollars to the United States."
Of course, as the term "horsepower" would soon come to be applied to a mode of transportation other than the horse, Stanford's economic theory would prove to be about as sound as an old nag. But in his endeavor to boost the gross national product and provide American families with an equine version of an economy car, Stanford helped refine a new breed of horse that would come to be known as the American Standardbred, also called a trotter, horses bred and trained to pull sulkies, small, chariot-like carts, in races.
The highlight of Saturday's festival will be a trotter demonstration, marking the first time this small, swift breed has been back to the Red Barn since the turn of the century, when Stanford's first president, David Starr Jordan, sold off all the horses in order to help the financially ailing university.
"David Starr Jordan called them 'the horses that saved the university,'" says Lane, the former ambassador to Australia who used to play at the Red Barn as a child in the '30s.
The Palo Alto Stock Farm never earned a profit, but was as opulent as it was well-run. Stanford had a 115-million gallon reservoir built (Lake Lagunita), and erected two large barns, a carriage house, a blacksmith shop, a feed mill, 50 paddocks, eight tracks and a wheelwright shop. At its apex--between 1880 and 1891--the Stock Farm was home to about 600 horses, the king of all being Electioneer, the greatest of all trotters.
Today, in a bucolic corner of Stanford campus, adjacent to the golf course, there remains just a tiny portion of this once-great breeding farm, the site of the photographic experiments that would give rise to motion pictures. (Photographs taken by Eadweard Muybridge of a galloping horse proved that a horse at full gallop has all four feet off the ground at one point.)
In 1982, at the urging of Lane, the Stanford Board of Trustees approved a restoration project for the historic Red Barn, which has been a home to horses off and on since Stanford's day. Before the trustees stepped in, though, "the building was about to fall down," says Leota Gonzalez, who boards three horses at the now-restored, but always-deteriorating Red Barn. Gonzalez is the chairwoman of this Saturday's Red Barn Festival.
In addition to raising money to repaint the bright red structure (Gonzalez says the project will cost $25,000), organizers hope to devote a portion of the funds to begin refurbishing a bronze statue of an Arabian horse and maintain the cemetery where some of Stanford's prized horses are buried.
This year's Red Barn Festival (not a horse show, but more of an equine demonstration, stresses Gonzalez) will begin at 11 a.m. with a parade by the San Mateo Mounted Patrol. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children.
"This year, we are offering a look at horses in a historical context," Gonzalez says. "The horses that came through this area, what they were used for and why."
Representing "Early California," for example, are Andalusian Spanish horses and the Mexican sidesaddle drill team.
While the focus on Saturday will be on the horses, especially the trotters, visitors shouldn't forget the significance of the barn itself, Lane says. The Red Barn offers a reminder of the rich history of this relatively young university, he says. "Stanford really needs this historical building. It goes far beyond a facility for horses. It's a symbol for everything that we are now, the university and the City of Palo Alto."
Red Barn Festival
When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday Aug. 20 (For those with pre-purchased tickets to the evening dinner, equine entertainment begins at 5 p.m.)
Where: Stanford Red Barn, off of Campus Drive West, adjacent to the golf course
Cost: $10 adults, $5 children (under 5 free)
Information: 322-5713
Back up to the Table of Contents Page