Bozeman’s Main Street horse
down but not out
By KARIN RONNOW, Chronicle Staff Writer | May 21, 2010
Bozeman’s beloved rearing Palomino has been temporarily stabled.
The yellow-and-white fiberglass horse, a landmark in downtown Bozeman for more than 40 years, was removed from its perch above Bangtail Bicycle Shop Thursday.
But don’t despair.
“The Masons, our landlords, are just pulling it down so they can regrout the front of the building,” said Mike Bly, a mechanic at the store on the northwest corner of Bozeman Avenue and Main Street. “They’re redoing the outside of the building, trying to freshen it up a little bit.”
The three-story brick building at 137 E. Main St. has been the home of the Masons’ Gallatin Lodge No. 6 since the 1800s. The Masons use the upper stories and rent out the first-floor retail space.
The horse is not as old as the building, but has a colorful history.
Nicknamed “Old Yeller” years ago, its body bears at least five entry wounds from arrows shot at it. At one point, someone scaled the horse and dressed it in an Montana State University Bobcat basketball jersey and shorts. Another time, pranksters unloaded a pile of manure beneath the fiberglass animal.
In 1997, the Masons were at risk of losing the horse they had adopted as their unofficial mascot when long-time retail tenant Country West Western Wear went out of business.
The owner of the Crystal Bar, several doors west of the lodge, expressed interest in acquiring the horse and moving it down the street. But the horse’s owner, Bill Nyman, opted instead to sell it to the lodge for about $1,000.
Then a decade ago, in 2000, drunken revelers celebrating the end of final exams at MSU climbed up on the horse and brought it crashing to the pavement 20 feet below, in front of what was then Big Bair’s Western Wear.
Chad Groth, a secretary of Masonic Lodge No. 6, told the Chronicle the next day that he had arrived to do some paperwork and found the damaged horse wrapped in yellow crime tape in the alley behind the lodge. The horse’s neck was badly cracked. Chunks of the horse’s ear and mane were missing.
Repairs after that incident cost an estimated $10,000.
But Old Yeller has survived it all.
And after a short retreat into storage, Bly said he suspected the horse would be back up on Main Street before too long. “Maybe in a week,” he said.
From the Bozeman Daily Chronicle