Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range

The Pryor Mountain mustangs trace their line back to the Spanish Barb and other Spanish colonial horses that reached the Americas five centuries ago. Over generations, horses spread north through Native nations and across the West, and the isolated Pryor herd held onto a distinctive Spanish inheritance. Many of the horses carry old-world markings: dun coloring, a dark stripe down the spine, faint zebra striping on the legs. Genetic study by researchers has confirmed a higher-than-average Spanish component in the herd, one reason it is considered so important.

It is worth being honest about the science: the testing shows a herd of mixed ancestry with a strong, DNA-confirmed Spanish influence, not a perfectly pure Spanish bloodline. That does not make it any less remarkable. Of all the wild herds scattered across the West, few carry as much of that original Spanish heritage as the horses running these mountains, which is exactly why so much effort has gone into protecting them.

By the mid-1960s the future of the Pryor herd was in real doubt, and the fight to save it came largely from Lovell itself. Local citizens, the chamber of commerce, and a newly formed wild horse association pressed the government to protect the horses. A local Lutheran minister, the Reverend Floyd Schwieger, became a tireless advocate, choosing patient cooperation with the federal land managers over conflict. Their campaign led to the 1968 designation of the range, well ahead of the rest of the country.

That local effort fed into a national movement. The advocate Velma Johnston, known across the country as Wild Horse Annie, helped push Congress toward the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, which protected wild horses and burros nationwide as living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West. Lovell's horses, and the people who fought for them, were part of the story that made that law happen.

If the Pryor herd is famous beyond Wyoming, it is largely because of one horse. A pale palomino stallion named Cloud was followed from the day of his birth by the filmmaker Ginger Kathrens, whose nature documentaries brought this range and its horses to a national audience over the course of years. Watching Cloud grow from a wobbly foal into a band stallion put a face on the whole idea of wild horses, and visitors still come hoping to spot his descendants on the ridges.

The films did something the range itself does in person: they made the horses individuals rather than a distant symbol. That is the spirit of a good visit here. The animals are not props in a paddock. They are wild families with histories, and the more you learn before you go, the more a chance sighting on a canyon rim means when it finally happens.

The right first stop is the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center in Lovell, a small nonprofit run by people who know this herd intimately. They keep maps, recent sightings, and a roster of the named horses, and they can tell you where the bands have been seen lately and which roads are passable. Hours are seasonal and limited, so it helps to check before you build a day around it, but the knowledge you pick up there is what turns a hopeful drive into a real chance of finding horses.

From Lovell, the drive north on Highway 37 into Bighorn Canyon is a spectacular trip in its own right, and the lower part of the range is reachable by any car. The high meadows where the herd spends the warm months, though, lie up genuinely rough mountain roads that call for a high-clearance or four-wheel-drive vehicle, along with water, fuel, and a close eye on the weather. Whatever you find, keep well back and let the horses be. The whole point of this place, the first range America ever set aside for them, is that they get to stay wild.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.