Area woman shares her passion for Paints

Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Laurie Wharton Wolzen of rural Palisade, Nebraska, walks among her American Paint Horses. Laurie raised paint horses and Quarter horses during a life-time career in Colorado and Kansas, and she and her husband, Glen, still have eight horses on a ranch between Culbertson and Palisade. She has donated a nearly-complete 35-year collection of "Paint Horse Journal" magazines to the Museum of the High Plains in McCook. (Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette)

CULBERTSON, Neb. -- A 35-year collection of "Paint Horse Journal" magazines is evidence of Laurie Wharton Wolzen's passion for American Paint Horses.

The magazines are the latest donation to the Museum of the High Plains in downtown McCook, Nebraska, and Laurie is excited about being able to share her love of horses with museum visitors.

Laurie said, her eyes alight with the memory, that as a teenager she fell in love with spotted horses the first time she saw the legendary paint stud horse "Ratchett" and she swore she'd have horses like Ratchett. (Ratchett is a son of the stud horse "Mardelle Dixon," named after rancher Mardelle Dixon of rural Benkelman (now deceased), the father of Starla Dixon Ott of rural Palisade.)

Laurie's dream came true, and she raised and bred her mare "Pretty Sunshine" to a black-and-white, blue-eyed paint stallion named "Emphasis," and she got a black-and-white stud horse that she named "Tarren."

Laurie had Tarren for 25 years, and throughout his 23-year breeding career, Laurie raised more than 100 of his foals.

Laurie still owns two sons of Tarren, 25-year-old "Storm King," who was among the first foal crop of Tarren, and five-year-old blue-eyed "Domingo," the very last foal out of Tarren.

Throughout Laurie's paint horse breeding career, she became known as "the pedigree person," closely following and studying the industry in the monthly "Paint Horse Journal" magazine. "When the 'Paint Horse Journal' came, life stopped," Laurie laughed. "The Paint Horse Journal was our bible."

Laurie said that when the magazine arrived each month, she looked quickly at the pictures and cutlines, and then studied the whole magazine closely, page by page.

Now, downsizing, Laurie has donated her 35-year collection of "Paint Horse Journals" to the High Plains Museum in McCook.

"I'd love for people to be able to come in and read these magazines," Laurie said of her donation.

The museum, located in the 400 block of Norris Avenue in downtown McCook, is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.

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