Lewis Palmer is the Home of the Rangers, but what is the Ranger? Is our mascot the horse or the person who rides the horse?

Many students falsely believed that the mascot was based off of the rider of the wild horse, a wild west officer akin to Chuck Norris’ Walker, Texas Ranger. However, none of these people could explain why there is no cowboy depicted in any of our signs or spirit wear.

“I think it’s based on the person riding the horse,” Phoebe Nitchals 9 said. “I’ve never heard of a horse that is called a Ranger, that’s usually what you call the rider, but I don’t understand why everything has pictures of riderless horses.”

However this is not the case. The Colorado Ranger is a breed of horse that once roamed the prairies of Monument.

With coloring similar to that of an appaloosa, which is a common speckled breed of horse, many consider the Ranger to be an interesting looking and good mascot. However many are left to question why this specific horse would be chosen to be our mascot.

“I guess it’s cool that our mascot is based off of something specific,” Nitchals said. “But I just don’t really understand why that would be our mascot, we don’t exactly see horses, much less Rangers, all over Monument.”

As it is, the Ranger has a presidential origin story. In 1878, Ulysses S. Grant was gifted two Turkish horses from Sultan Abdul Hamid II. These horses were then given to General Colby, a Virginian horse breeder, and were bred with various horses including appaloosas.

The new breed of horse was brought to ranches in Nebraska where they continued to populate, but remained an unnamed breed. It is still unclear how exactly the horses arrived in the Centennial State and earned their modern name.

Due to the time that the breed appeared, registry of Rangers was limited and many were misregistered as appaloosas. Unfortunately, because of this, there is little to no information on how the breed arrived to roam our area.

Considering our school was built almost 100 years ago, it’s no surprise that our mascot is one shrouded in mystery, but hopefully our future graduating classes will learn our school’s history and be proud to call themselves Rangers.