Hitched Horsehair: Wyoming's Prison Craft That Became a Collector's Art

Hitched horsehair work is the craft of weaving horse mane and tail hair into bridles, hat bands, bracelets, and decorative wall pieces. The technique requires sorting hair by color, length, and texture, then weaving at 10 to 12 hours a day for four to six weeks to complete a single bridle. The craft was documented at Wyoming penitentiaries in the 1880s. The most famous practitioner is Tom Horn, photographed in his Cheyenne jail cell in 1903, braiding what appear to be horsehair ropes while awaiting execution. A complete bridle from a skilled contemporary maker sells at auction for $1,100 to $1,700.

This is not a revival craft or a living history program. It is a continuous tradition that ran without interruption from the territorial prison era through the present, practiced by inmates, ranchers, and craftspeople who learned from practitioners who learned from the original prison makers.

The craft itself

Hitched horsehair begins with the raw material: mane and tail from working horses, pulled or cut and sorted immediately into natural color categories. Wyoming horses produce black, white, gray, and chestnut hair in predictable combinations. No dye is required to achieve the dramatic contrast of the classic diamond pattern. Black and white hair alternated against each other in a geometric grid creates a design that remains legible at distance.

The basic tool is a hitching post or wooden dowel around which the work is anchored while the craftsperson weaves. A simple two-strand pattern (overhand hitching) produces rope and hat band work. The more complex patterns, the diamond, herringbone, and chevron designs that characterize the most collected pieces, require sorting strands by length and color before beginning and maintaining exact stitch count throughout the pattern without interruption.

The distinguishing mark of skilled prison work is pattern uniformity. Hitching 10 to 12 hours a day for weeks develops a regularity of stitch that part-time work cannot match. When evaluating a piece for authenticity and quality, consistent stitch depth and pattern register, where the diamonds or chevrons line up precisely across the full length, indicate the work of someone who spent real time at the craft.

The prison origin in Wyoming

The Wyoming Territorial Prison opened in Laramie in 1872, the territory’s first centralized penal institution. Horsehair work was among the first inmate crafts documented there. The raw material was obtainable through legitimate channels. Horse hair was a normal byproduct of the ranching economy, not contraband, and the prison industry program allowed inmates to work it into sellable goods.

The economics were roughly structured as: one-third of sales revenue to the inmate, two-thirds to the prison fund. Historical pieces sold for $20 to $50 in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A skilled maker working full-time could produce one complete bridle set every four to six weeks, generating $7 to $17 per piece in personal income. That was meaningful in an era when unskilled labor wages were roughly $1 to $1.50 per day.

When the Territorial Prison in Laramie closed in December 1901 and inmates transferred to the new Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins, the craft moved with them. The continuity was direct: the same men who had been weaving in Laramie arrived in Rawlins and continued their work. The Rawlins facility documented horsehair production through the early 20th century in surviving prison industry records.

Tom Horn and the Cheyenne jail

Tom Horn arrived in Wyoming as a stock detective for the Swan Land and Cattle Company in 1894. He operated under a fee arrangement: $600 per confirmed rustler killing, a system that invited the kind of freelance violence that ended, or is generally believed to have ended, in the shooting of 14-year-old Willie Nickell at Iron Mountain in Laramie County in July 1901.

Horn was arrested in January 1902. The Laramie County jail in Cheyenne held him through his trial in October 1902 and the appeals process through November 1903. A photographer documented him in the cell, braiding what appear to be horsehair ropes, working with the practiced ease of someone who had been doing it for years. Horn is not an innocent figure. The photograph is among the most widely reproduced images in Western history regardless.

His execution on November 20, 1903, by a novel gallows mechanism that used the condemned man’s own weight to trigger the drop, drew the largest crowd in Cheyenne’s history at that point. The horsehair work he made in the Cheyenne jail does not survive in any verified collection, though the photograph is evidence that his skill level was real and developed.

What the pieces look like

A complete horsehair bridle set includes the headstall (the part that goes over the horse’s head), the bit, and the reins. The reins are where most of the hitched work appears: long sections of woven horsehair, sometimes 8 to 10 feet, with the color pattern running the full length. The headstall typically shows simpler construction than the reins because the horse’s movement and the buckle hardware require different structural considerations.

The classic Wyoming prison pattern is the black and white diamond grid, achieved by alternating black and white hair in the warp and running a consistent overhand hitch throughout. The visual effect is geometric and almost machine-made, achieved entirely by hand. Adjacent to the diamond sections, many makers added chevron borders or herringbone bands that frame the central pattern and demonstrate the maker’s range.

Hat bands are the entry-level piece in hitched horsehair: 6 to 8 inches of the same hitching technique in roughly one inch diameter, fitted to the hat’s sweatband. They are the most readily available collectible at reasonable entry prices, starting around $85 for simple patterns from contemporary makers.

Wyoming Frontier Prison Museum

The Wyoming Frontier Prison Museum in Rawlins opened in 1988, occupying the former state penitentiary building that replaced the Laramie facility in December 1901. The museum collection includes prison-made horsehair pieces, photographs, tools, and documentary records from the facility’s operation through the 1970s.

For anyone researching Wyoming prison horsehair work, the museum is the primary physical archive. The collection documents the transfer of the craft from Territorial Prison to State Penitentiary and its continuation through the 20th century. The building is worth visiting on its own terms: the cell block, the gallows room, and the industrial production areas are intact and interpretively presented.

The museum is open seasonally. Rawlins is off Interstate 80 and check hours before making the trip.

Finding and collecting authentic work

The market for Wyoming horsehair work, both historical and contemporary, runs through several channels.

Auction houses are the primary source for historical pieces. Cowan’s Auctions in Cincinnati handles significant Western Americana. High Noon Western Americana in Mesa, Arizona specializes in cowboy collectibles including horsehair work. Both maintain searchable online databases of past sales, the best reference for current pricing benchmarks.

Western art shows and rodeos produce contemporary pieces. Cheyenne Frontier Days, the Sheridan WYO Rodeo, and the Cody Stampede all draw craftspeople who carry hat bands, bracelets, and occasionally complete bridle sets. The quality varies; ask about time invested in the piece and look at stitch consistency before buying.

The Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada publishes a directory of traditional Western artists including hitched horsehair makers. The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, held each January in Elko, is the best annual gathering for buyers who want to meet contemporary practitioners and understand the current craft directly.

The key authentication consideration for historical pieces: documentation of Wyoming prison origin is what commands the premium. A well-executed horsehair bridle without provenance is worth $400 to $600. The same piece with a photograph, accession record, or documented prison sale history commands two to four times more. Provenance in Western folk art is not an abstraction. It is the difference between a fine piece and a documented artifact.

Related reading on this site

• Wyoming Trading Post: the site’s heritage and the trading post tradition
• Hand-tooled leather: how real Western leatherwork is made
• Tom Horn: biography, trial, and legacy
• Wyoming ghost towns: the complete guide
• Cheyenne, Wyoming: the capital and what to know