A week after the Great Flood of 1921, a life-sized papier-mache horse was discovered in a tree in Avondale, 15 miles east of Pueblo. Miraculously, only the horse’s ears were damaged despite its delicate construction.
It was the dappled gray display horse with real horsehair and painted eyes from R.T. Frazier’s saddle shop on Second Street in Downtown Pueblo. He was a display horse for saddles, harnesses, regalia everything, said Mohammad Curtis, the outreach coordinator at the Pueblo Heritage Museum, where the horse is currently on display.
Even though the Fraziers put the horse inside when the rain started on June 3, it was still washed away with the fierce floodwaters. A hollow barrel makes up the horse’s core, perhaps adding to its buoyancy.