Handed Down - Nevada Arts Council

1989–1990
Saddlemaking:
Eddie Brooks and Alan McDonald
Saddle maker Eddie Brooks is a transplanted Texan
whose roots have grown deep into the buckaroo
country around Elko. He started working with leather
as a boy growing up around Ft. Worth, making belts,
wallets and other small items, and eventually apprenticed
in the saddle making trade that supports him today.
He was running a Texas saddle shop in 1964 when
Paul Bear from Capriola’s in Elko hired him away. He
worked in Nevada for two years, then returned to Texas
for another nine years, but came back to Elko for good
in 1975.
“I never could get this country out of my system,
I loved it up here,” he says. He was struck by the
differences in the way cattle were worked, too, and
consequently the different saddle styles in each region
of the country. He says the move to Nevada “was really
good for me, made a lot better saddle maker out of
me…When I come up here, well, they really, they sit in
them all day long. Back then, this country, there wasn’t
a fence in the country hardly, you could ride plumb to
Idaho and never hit a fence from Elko. They’ve fenced
it up a lot now, and that’s just twenty something years
ago. So they went everywhere horseback, you know,
and there wasn’t a stock trailer in the country in them
days. They had a few bob-tail trucks and if they had to
go 100 miles they’d haul their horses, but if they had to
go 30 miles they rode. So they really demanded a good
saddle…It really helped me. I wouldn’t take nothing
for it, cause it made such a difference.” Eddie ran the
shop at Capriola’s until 1982, and then started his own
custom saddle business.
Eddie’s apprentice Alan McDonald was raised in
a ranching family in southern Idaho. His father was
also a saddle maker, and Alan inherited his tools and
his love for cowboying. “I figured, well, cowboying is
basically my main interest in life, it still is pretty much,
so I just loaded up my saddle…well, I didn’t have a
saddle, I needed a saddle. So I decided, well, I’ll build
me one. So I did, I kind of got one put together, come
to Nevada, and started cowboying on it, been riding it
for about five years. It was pretty crude, but I got my
riggings in straight and it fit a horse pretty good, but it
didn’t always fit me too good so I was always taking it
apart and cutting on it somewhere and putting it back
together…I’ve always held the interest, wanted to learn.
Eddie Brooks and
Alan McDonald in
Eddie’s Spring Creek
saddle shop.
Alan McDonald uses
the saddle he made while
working as a buckaroo
on the IL Ranch in
northern Elko County.
I’d go into saddle shops and try to watch guys work. A
lot of guys will quit working when you go in, you know,
so you just kind of got to walk around and try to pick
things up, but I’d never had any formal instruction until
last winter.”
Fortunately for Alan, Eddie was willing to let him
watch and learn, and Alan built a complete saddle during
his apprenticeship. He still works as a buckaroo—
“For me, the more hours you spend in a saddle, that’s
experience towards building them,” he says—and
would like to keep riding as long as he can, but he will
also be developing his saddle making and silver working
skills, too, as a lifelong trade. Eddie and Alan agree that
the most important part of saddle making is to fit the
horse, and then to fit the rider. But as Alan says, “Then,
you know, in the end you want a product that looks
balanced, that the lines are together on it. That’s where
the pride in your craftsmanship comes in.”
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