In May 1975, Sports Illustrated published the following about Velma Bronn Johnston:

Looking out the living-room window of her hilltop house near Reno, Velma Johnston says, "I'm 5'6", 104 pounds, a 62-year-old widow and I'm tired and overworked, but I'm unbelievably tough." Velma Johnston is the heroine of what may well be the final epic Wild West drama. As Wild Horse Annie, she is commander in chief of a crusade to save the last of America's wild mustangs, a saga complete with shotgun blasts, screaming planes, heavy politics, spies and the blood of men and horses.

When Wild Horse Annie answers the door at home it is with a .38 in hand. Anonymous callers phone to tell her, "You'd better lay off, sister." And there are threats that "a tree limb is waiting here for you." In large measure, her battle is foolhardy, for she is greatly outnumbered, woefully underfinanced and totally dedicated to fighting according to the loftiest ethical standards.

Wild Horse Annie is a nickname she got 20 years ago. It was intended to ridicule her but it has merely added an aura of romance to her campaign. Siding with her are a handful of staunch supporters and a Kiddie Cavalry of thousands of school children, most of whom have never seen a wild horse. Annie has instilled in her followers the belief that the mustangs are a national heritage, that they should be granted protection and spared the savage treatment they frequently suffer before they are ground up for pet food and fertilizer.

Aligned against Annie's organization—is a vast phalanx of cattle and sheep ranchers, hunters and bounty seekers. They and their predecessors have been largely responsible for the decline of the wild horse population from 8 million in 1800 to a present low of between 10,000 and 45,000. Exactly how many are left is unknown because counting techniques are imprecise.

Some stockmen graze herds on the public domain, for which they pay a minimal fee to the federal government. These men begrudge every blade of grass nibbled by the mustangs because it leaves that much less for their cattle and sheep, and they say the proliferation of wild horses could "create a serious economic hardship for meat consumers...by causing a major rise in meat prices." There are big-game hunters who want to replace mustangs with trophy animals, such as bighorn sheep. And there are other hunters who receive a bounty for shooting wild horses. They are motivated by money.

While these formidable foes wage combat on the open range with deadly weapons and behind doors with considerable lobbying power, Wild Horse Annie has challenged them armed with little more than what her husband called "the special kind of courage that comes from fear." One of her rebuttals to the livestock industry is that talk of increased prices is a "gross exaggeration. On a nationwide basis, only 1% of food cattle and 6% of food sheep are grazed on public lands." She has also developed a revolutionary philosophy concerning use of the public domain, arguing that ranchers have no right to their long-uncontested belief that livestock is entitled to "dominant use" of public lands. It is Annie's contention that this land "belongs to all Americans, to you and to me."

As for hunters, she feels they have enough game to shoot. And the mere thought of bounty seekers sends shivers through Annie, who realizes that the 25 years she has spent opposing them has resulted in state and federal laws that are only halfheartedly enforced. Despite what she has felt was overwhelming evidence in a number of cases, no one has ever been found guilty of violating a horse-protection law.

Annie's beautiful life was unalterably changed one morning in 1950. While driving to Reno, where she was working as a secretary, she saw a truck laden with what she thought were cattle. When she got closer, however, Annie was horrified to find it was crammed full of wild horses. "They were injured and bleeding, and the only thing keeping some of them from falling down was that they were packed in so tightly," she recalls. "One horse's eyes had been shot out."

Velma waged a 27-year campaign to protect America’s wild horses and burros. She was the driving force behind the 1959 law, the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the “foster program” that has become today’s adoption program and so much more. On June 27, 1977, Velma lost her battle with cancer.

Velma did not like having her picture taken. Polio had ravished her as a young girl. Popular culture can be cruel. Although she felt being ostracized for her appearance gave her a greater empathy for, and affinity to, our mustangs, the way her appearance was met by pop culture bothered her the rest of her life. She once received an invitation to appear on the television program “Truth or Dare,” but they wanted a picture. After receiving the photo they never contacted her again.

We feature more about Velma in the second floor of this special online exhibit. You can find her testimony to Congress on the second floor.

Exhibit created and presented by Wild Horse Education.

We thank the Nevada Historical Society and the University of Nevada Reno for providing permissions to feature material from their collections.

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