Saddle up: Free public horse facility planned for southeast valley

Jeffrey Libby

Monday, Aug. 27, 2001 | 10:53 a.m.

For several horse owners, the news had an almost physical impact.

A municipal horse park in Henderson.

Instead of skirting four-lane streets in new developments or dodging target shooters and wild dogs in open desert, the estimated 11,000 horse owners in the Las Vegas Valley will soon be able to trailer their steeds to a park in the foothills and ride at ease, for free.

"You have no idea. We need this so badly," Gail Weichlein, owner of Sunset Saddlery and Feed, said. "The city of Henderson has grown so much in the past 10 years. They're zoning the horses out. Let's face it, most these people now don't know what it used to be. But we just don't want to lose the old-time Western town we used to live in."

The Henderson Parks and Recreation Department last week published advertisements for bids on a 129-acre municipal horse park in southeast Henderson, off Magic Way and Equestrian Drive.

The public horse park will be the only one in the valley, offering a place to train and ride in a safe environment without fees or membership requirements.

Unincorporated Clark County has a similar park off Boulder Highway near Nellis Boulevard, but as of this week, its main arenas are booked for paid shows every weekend through the end of the year. Even during the week, riders need to call ahead. They can't just show up, as is planned in Henderson.

In its first phase, planned for completion next spring, the $450,000 park would have two one-acre arenas, two 60-foot rings and two 40-foot rings for practice exercises. It would also have a horse trail and about three miles of paved trails for walking and biking. The park would eventually serve as a trailhead to 10 miles of trails already built as part of a planned River Mountain Loop Trail to Hoover Dam.

Located in part in a flood detention basin, the horse park will be another example of big thinking in Henderson recreation uses.

It would join the 142-acre bird preserve, one of only three in the nation, opened in 1998 at the sewage treatment plant. And work on the park would begin about a month after ground is broken in October for a 22,000-square-foot skate park in Anthem, which will be the largest in the valley.

"We try to fill the recreational needs of all our citizens," Bill Rowe, a city park planner, said.

Filling this particular need has been a long time coming. Residents approved the money as part of a park bond issue in 1997. But in recent months, with no horse park in sight, rural residents in Mission and Paradise hills have been grumbling about broken promises.

Instead of the park, they've fought against and lost to a state college planned for the foothills behind their homes, a nearby 396-unit recreational vehicle park for snowbirds and a giant trash bag manufacturing plant. Many have said they feel ill-used, like a dumping ground for city projects that don't fit elsewhere.

But the project first planned on Councilwoman Amanda Cyphers' living room floor has been advertised, and the City Council could approve bids as soon as Oct. 2. It looks like the park will become a reality.

Janet Kennedy, a Paradise Hills resident who owns four horses, says when it's done, she'll take up barrel racing, something she has wanted to do since she was a teen in Arizona herding cattle.

"It'd be like having a ballpark, only for the horse enthusiasts," Kennedy said. "It'd be so neat. They'd all come out of the woodwork."

The new park will also mean fewer crosstown trips to northwest Las Vegas or through Railroad Pass to Boulder City for her 14-year-old daughter to go riding, she said. The 4-H Club could pick up activities, and riders could practice reining, jumping and Western Pleasure, a slow-motion art of riding ability, she said.

With more to do, horse enthusiasts will also buy more tack, more feed, more trailers and more trucks, longtime Henderson resident Rick Davis, said, plugging the economic boon the park should provide.

But more than the money, Davis, like many others, says it's about the horses. Davis, a contractor, owns seven. Getting up every morning at 4:30 a.m. to feed and water them and hear them nicker is his therapy, he said. Same goes for his afternoons.

"We all have to go somewhere and unwind at the end of the day," he said. "My granddaddy told me a long time ago, there's nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse."