INTERVIEW OF FRED SCHUNEMAN
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My father homesteaded, then bought 900 acres of railroad land. Our holdings were two miles long and a mile wide, right along the Columbia. We raised cattle and horses, shipping them out in great numbers. I have broken hundreds of horses all over Yakima and the Columbia valleys.
Out of a band of 2,000 horses I picked one hundred and forty and drove them to Escondido, thirty miles from San Diego, California. We had four riders and a four-horse covered wagon, wherein we slept, cooking our meals along the way.
In those days we had a better rodeo than any staged now. The men who rode the range often had as many as thirty saddle horses which each man broke to his own use. They roped for a living, not to show off, and roping and breaking horses was all in the day’s work.
