Once Upon an Island-Millard Johnson

In 1930, 35-year-old Millard Ray Johnson was living in the city of Los Angeles. In the census that year he listed his occupation as “horseman”. In 1933 the Progress-Bulletin mentioned that Johnson had taken a position “working 14 head of new Carnation prospects” at the Carnation Stable (owned by E. A. Stuart).

However, by 1935 Millard and his wife had moved from the bustling city of Los Angeles and the world of elite Saddlebred show horses to Santa Catalina Island at El Rancho Escondido, the ranch property owned by Philip K. Wrigley. Despite the fact that Johnson remained the manager and trainer of El Rancho Escondido for 16 years, there are only a handful of sentences that mention his time there and only two photos that definitely identify Johnson in a photo.

Millard Johnson, Catalina Island, California on grey Arabian stallion Kaaba

In 1952, we find the first mention of Johnson in relation to what would become El Rancho Escondido and Catalina Island Arabians. Philip Wrigley wrote, “After considerable search we found an individual, Millard Johnson, who was very highly recommended as a breeder and trainer. He came to Catalina for an interview in the early spring of 1935, and was pessimistic about what he saw.”

Wrigley’s account of Johnson’s initial impressions—apparently Johnson described the results of the fledgling Half-Arabian breeding program as “monstrosities” —speaks not only to Wrigley’s honest accounting of the beginning of what would become a Nationally recognized breeding program, but Johnson’s candor in assessing what he found.

To put Johnson’s comments into perspective one needs to consider he was originally from Missouri and described as a “capable Saddlebred man” in an article in Arabian Horse World (December 1981). As such,  Johnson would have been familiar with some of the very finest quality Saddlebred’s in the nation.  There was a vibrant horse show scene in Los Angeles but I’ve yet to find any accounts of Johnson in the results of competitions so I surmise that he was one of those invaluable trainers that were responsible for starting the youngsters and giving them a good foundation.

In any case, for some reason in 1935 Johnson was between jobs and interviewing with one of the wealthiest men in America, Philip K. Wrigley. Perhaps, at the age of 35, the chance to be the head of a program—no matter how inauspicious the beginning—was tantalizing enough to entice Johnson away from the glamorous world of the high stepping Saddlebreds to take a chance on developing a program breeding Arabian horses on a remote ranch in the middle of an island.

What sort of challenge faced Johnson as the new manager and trainer of El Rancho Escondido?  Well, consider that he was taking on a horse breeding program that had been originally started with a concept crossing Kaaba on local mares and mares acquired in group of wild palominos” from New Mexico. Then factor in that the existing training program was  overseen by a colorful character  named Jack White whose training theory purported to be  that any horse you could get on without earring or blindfolding was sufficiently broke for the average rider.

In the photo above Millard Johnson is on the right and his assistant John Fouts is on the left.

What horses would have made up his stringof horses when he arrived in 1935?  We know there were many horses at the ranch besides Arabians. By 1931 Wrigley had made the decision to purchase three Arabian mares to begin the purebred Arabian breeding program, and he also purchased a number of other riding horses for ranch use because they needed working horses while they got the breeding program rolling. However, there’s no other mention of these other horses aside from "a boxcar load of wild Palominos from New Mexico". It can also be challenging to track changes in ownership of Arabian horses from this era because few transfers of ownership are reflected in the online records available from the Arabian Horse Association. However, what we do know is that there was only a tiny handful of Arabian breeding stock available to Johnson as incoming manager—the stallion Kaaba along with the only Arabian mares purchased by Wrigley’s—*Ana, Bint Yildez and Ismailia. In addition, Johnson would have found the first young Arabian foals produced on Catalina Island. Among these were the three-year-old stallion, Bakir and the young mares Kholey, Thaaniyeh and Thalth. According to various articles written in the 1980’s also residing at El Rancho Escondido were the very first Arabians every purchased by the Wrigley’s—the geldings Sheik and Alladin—purchased from their friend Albert W. Harris.  There’s also photographic evidence of one more Arabian that bears mentioning, a handsome chestnut gelding named Khoorsheed. Khoorsheed is missing in most of the accounts of the history of Arabians of Catalina Island and I hope to correct that someday!

By the time Millard Johnson retired from El Rancho Escondido, the number of Arabians shown as being bred by the Wrigley’s totalled 53, including he horses that would form the foundation of the career of next trainer at El Rancho Escondido the renowned Joe Dawkins. Horses like Baseem, Tisahmar, Bint Kaaba and Kamsar and Taybar.