The Virginia Range wild horses (Northern Nevada) are the very horses that spurred Nevada’s Wild Horse Annie (Velma Johnston) on a long, grueling political journey, beginning in the 1950s, to stop cruel atrocities inflicted upon wild horses by unenlightened humans who saw them only as an easy cash crop for slaughter (mustanging) or as objects to satisfy their need for cruel excitement. 

Annie’s journey ended in the passage of the federal Free-Roaming Wild Horses and Burros Act of 1971. Children were instrumental in helping to pass this Act.

The Virginia Range was the on-site location of the movie, The Misfits (1961), starring Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. The Misfits graphically documented the cruelty inflicted upon the innocent wild horses of the Virginia Range.

Ironically, the Virginia Range wild horses were excluded from the Act’s federal protection, as were many other wild horses across the western states. Mustanging continued in Storey County (NV) and surrounding counties until late 1993 when Storey County finally passed an ordinance prohibiting mustanging because of public outcry and zero tolerance for this senseless tradition.